Vol. 26 - Fields are smaller from the outside
Transdisciplinary work means being wrong a lot - and that's good.
Imagine a valley. Once a small settlement, it grew into a village, then a few, and people there developed their own culture. Their own traditions. Because, like all proper valleys, it is nestled between steep mountains, eventually there was nowhere to build but up. And one day, someone built a little house at the very top of the mountain. Looking back, they could see the valley. Densely built. Full of life and nuance. And looking forward, far in the distance, they could see other small houses at the very top of mountains.
And so, of course, they thought: all these people could achieve was a lousy house at the top of a mountain. I am so fortunate that I live in such a bustling, refined little valley. I could know everything there is to know about them in a day. After all, the house they built, although it is far away, looks just like mine. Obviously, not quite as nice.
Hey, so this is a blog post about transdisciplinary work.
The mistake that our protagonist is making is lacking the imagination, or the empathy, to think that maybe what they see is just the tip of the iceberg. Just the house that the weirdest weirdo three valleys over decided to build to see what it looked like outside. And when we start establishing collaborations with fields that are outside our own, it is easy — and counterproductive — to do the same thing.
Scientific fields look tiny from the outside because often what we see is the very minuscule part that looks like our field. And when we are meeting our colleagues on transdisciplinary grounds, finding a balance between “this is wrong because of lack of understanding” and “this is a matter of having a different perspective” is difficult.
The further apart fields are, the more difficult it gets to identify what common grounds feels like. Or to be a little more blunt: sometimes, I can be so wrong that my colleagues don’t even know how to explain it. And the opposite is true.
But finding common ground over which we can build transdisciplinary projects is important! And one powerful way to go about it is to get in the habit of asking, “should I learn about this, or should I trust you?”. I learned this trick from a colleague who is very upfront about informing us of whether they will read more, or just trust us. And this is brilliant! I love it!
Of course, this can only work when we fully embrace that we will be wrong. Which is fantastic (that’s when we learn new things)! And in some instances, something magical happens: I offer an idea, and someone informs me that it is wrong, and then they fix it. The veil over what’s going on in their field lifts a little bit, we both of us get less wrong. Something new is created.
Maybe this transdisciplinary work requires that we accept that there is simply too much to know; that we accept that as soon as we step outside our field, we will be wrong far more often than we will be right. It doesn’t matter that fields are smaller from the outside, as long as we can work with people who will help us figure out what is important.