The blind men, the elephant and the CT scanner.

The parable of the blind men and the elephant suggests that disputes among scholars arise not so much from errors of fact and argument as from differences of perspective--incomplete perceptions, each from a different angle of view, of a more complex reality. The CT scanner offers an analogy, taking two-dimensional images from multiple points of view. The heart of the device is the computational process integrating these images into a three-dimensional view consistent with each. Effective interdisciplinary research requires the institutional equivalent of the CT scanner's integrative capacity. The normal dynamics of university-based research, however, pull instead toward disciplinary solitudes. Our new journal is a step in the right direction, but there is still a distance to go.