Borrowed Knowledge: Chaos Theory and the Challenge of Learning across Disciplines

by Stephen H. Kellert

What happens to scientific knowledge when researchers outside the natural sciences bring elements of the latest trend across disciplinary boundaries for their own purposes? Researchers in fields from anthropology to family therapy and traffic planning employ the concepts, methods, and results of chaos theory to harness the disciplinary prestige of the natural sciences, to motivate methodological change or conceptual reorganization within their home discipline, and to justify public policies and aesthetic judgments.

Using the recent explosion in the use (and abuse) of chaos theory, Borrowed Knowledge and the Challenge of Learning across Disciplines examines the relationship between science and other disciplines as well as the place of scientific knowledge within our broader culture. Stephen H. Kellert’s detailed investigation of the myriad uses of chaos theory reveals serious problems that can arise in the interchange between science and other knowledge-making pursuits, as well as opportunities for constructive interchange. By engaging with recent debates about interdisciplinary research, Kellert contributes a theoretical vocabulary and a set of critical frameworks for the rigorous examination of borrowing.

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the more challenging books I’ve read: I would have failed had the writing been any less superbly nuanced, gracefully accurate or profoundly human. I hate academic philosophical writing. But if more of it were more like this, I might come to love it (well — at least I might come to welcome the challenge of it). Bravo.

Addendum: there’s an interpretation of Derrida’s quote about nothing being outside the text that I quibble with, for it slips into the easy assumption that text is a product of human consciousness, and that therefore Derrida was saying something about social construction and relativism. I think Derrida went further - or at least, there’s an alternative and more compelling idea: that consciousness, itself, is a product of text. That a (maybe “the”) fundament of “reality” is language/symbol.

[Paul, · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only read about half this book. It was too repetitive, and delved too deep into very specific philosophical issues. However, the summary of chaos theory seemed well done, and the framework and guidelines the author proposed for borrowing knowledge from other disciplines was pretty helpful.