Once they achieved their foothold in the academic bureaucracy, however, they became more and more like everybody else. They wanted that prestigious discipline label, and they began to play the same academic games. Many individuals speak about the obsolescence of our current disciplinary structure, but all we seem able to do collectively is reproduce and reinforce what exists with a few modest additions which then can become like all those that have preceded them. Perish the thought that we would actually reconsider how we are academically organized. The university is inherently a reductionist institution.
Departments are little reductionist boxes.
The disciplinary structure of knowledge is reductionist. The classroom is a bastion of individualism. The prevailing religion, the scientific method, is thoroughly reductionist. After all, this is the efficient way, the only practical way to analyze and conduct research. Thus looking at the whole picture does not come naturally to the modern university.