Editorial

For some time now, ISR has depended to a large degree on thematic issues, some commissioned, some independently proposed. This has been necessary because the journal would otherwise not have had a sufficient number of high-quality articles to keep it going. One does not have to look very far for an explanation: interdisciplinary work is so very hard to do and is seldom rewarded, though not as Stanley Fish has argued, impossible (Fish 1989; cf. Liu 2008). The problem that motivated founding Editor Anthony Michaelis — was a paucity of dialogue among scientists of different specialisms. The urgent need for skills in wayfinding among the disciplines of the sciences and humanities — does not make things any easier. Our reward-structures in effect raise the bar even higher.

Strong arguments for the benefits of interdisciplinary research are not scarce, especially for the largest and most difficult problems we face. Energetically curious and adventurous researchers cannot be stopped thinking ‘outside the box’, even if the risks are great, as we know them to be. But careers can be thwarted or delayed by the very structures that provide a nurturing place to begin and a guaranteed audience of critical readers. What do we do? Fish’s argument was directed primarily against the notion that being interdisciplinary means achieving a perfectly neutral standpoint and command of all disciplines from some kind of intellectual panopticon. Yes, this is impossible, but ISR’s overall, long term purpose is different: to help establish interdisciplinary research in the academy, among the disciplines, by publishing the results of doing it — rather than engaging with the seemingly endless ontological argument over the meaning of ‘interdisciplinarity’.

The good news is that the submission rate of publishable unsolicited articles has rather dramatically increased in recent months. Hence, the second ‘open’ issue this year and already a sufficient number of submissions to more than populate the next such issue, 37·2 (June 2012). Thematic issues in various stages of development are also plentiful, into 2014: on computational picturing (37·1), Warren McCulloch and his circle (37·3), the machine as master and slave (37·4), D’Arcy Thompson’s On Growth and Form (38·1), design science (38·2), exhibiting the brain (38·3), theatre and science (38·4) and poetries and sciences (39·1). Ideas are always welcome.

In this open issue, we are trying something new among the several worthy contributions (one of them, Charles S. Cockell’s ‘The Macrobial Stages of Humanity’, playful as well): Steve Fuller ’s ‘Putting the Brain at the Heart of General Education in the 21st Century’. This is a proposal for an interdisciplinary course together with a substantial discussion of the motivating intellectual background. Ordinarily, as you well know, course-proposals are not published in peer-reviewed journals; publication may result from teaching a course, but proposals are ordinarily for committees to read. But the brain, however much unknown to the specialized sciences concerned with it (as it is, greatly), is also a cultural object now of pre-eminent importance, as Fuller argues. Hence the attention he would have it given.

We may rightly be troubled when scientific ideas suffer uncertain translation into popular discourse, where long after being discarded by scientists, they tend to have an independent life with undeserved authority derived from their scientific origins. An example is provided by some work in computational stylistics, where antiquated notions of experimentation have hardened into doctrine (Rudman 1998; contra Burrows 2008). We are less often troubled by the naïve ideas of scientists about society or humanity, which when represented in scientific work, take on that undeserved authority and then feed it back into public discourse as truth. An example here is Warren Weaver ’s revealing popularization of his and Claude Shannon’s mathematical model of communication in Scientific American, which in effect put into circulation a highly influential but quite misleading scheme for understanding ‘how . . . men communicate, one with another ’.¹

Given how important the brain is as a cultural and social object, teaching a university course such as Fuller proposes would seem a good idea. We need something along these lines to counteract errors such as I have described and to inform the sciences with the humanities and vice versa. We also need it to educate those who are benevolently disposed to technological know-how, and who therefore will admit that the sciences are worth the money spent on them, but who cannot see a need for learning about anything else. What should such a course cover? From what perspectives should it be approached? Fuller ’s proposal is offered here in order to begin or advance a conversation. Letters to the Editor, though rare in ISR to date, are welcome.

Notes

¹Weaver (1949, 11); ‘its endurance in popular discussion is a real liability’, Chandler (2008); ‘Despite a long history, this model is less useful today, given the convergence of information and communication technology and an interactive, multimedia environment in which communication no longer takes place in a linear fashion’, OTA (1995, 77). For early resistance to the scheme, see also McLuhan et al. (1978, 93—4), which reports on work eventually published in McLuhan and McLuhan (1980).