At the boundaries and bridgings between separated fields of knowledge, dramatic things can happen. And even where there is not the reward of major discovery, there is at least the promise of a daring and exciting encounter as we seek in our minds to overcome the distance and sustain the tension between disparate ideas and modes of thinking. The first of these involves faculty participation in interdisciplinary research and creative activity. There are numerous projects and centers that naturally bring together widely separated disciplines. Successful urban planning requires extraordinary sensitivity to human values and social structures, as well as scientific understanding of the many technologies upon which the modern city depends.
Epidemiological research straddles the biological and behavioral disciplines.
A second means by which all of us as faculty can assist in the reintegration of knowledge is through interdisciplinary teaching. Few of us would feel comfortable teaching even a freshman course in a discipline that is far removed across the intellectual landscape from our home territory. But practically all of us could successfully team-teach a course with a colleague from a distant discipline. During my last two years at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and during my first year at USC, I co-taught a seminar with a professor of English in which we examined, through the study of literature, the impact of science and technology on human culture. It is highly unusual, and perhaps even unprecedented, for an undergraduate course to be taught by a two-person team comprising a literary scholar and an engineer.