Philosophy of and as interdisciplinarity

“Interdisciplinarity” is now a buzzword for more than 40 years since Erich Jantsch coined the term for a broader audience, together with “transdisciplinarity” (Jantsch 1970; see also Apostel et al. 1972). The exact meaning of these and related terms seems to be still in flux. However, as Britt Holbrook explains in the first contribution to this special issue, we can observe a convergence in the literature according to which we could distinguish three notions. Following Holbrook’s report about more or less accepted terminology—which he himself criticizes in his contribution—we restrict, for the purposes of this special issue, “multidisciplinarity” to a juxtaposition of two or more academic disciplines focused on a single problem; “interdiscplinarity” to the integration of one or more academic disciplines; and “transdisciplinarity”—although this usage is more contested—to “the integration of one or more academic disciplines with extra-academic perspectives on a common (and usually a real-world, as opposed to a merely academic) problem.” 1