Knowledge and Transdisciplinarity Project

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Integrative Knowledge Project

Rationale
The Union of International Associations has long been concerned with the complexity represented by the networks of 20,000 international organizations in the Yearbook of International Organizations. This interest dates back to its early concern with international documentation. It has further developed with the many sections of the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential. Since the first edition of this publication in 1976, a unique and extensive bibliography of integrative knowledge, unitary understanding, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity has been maintained.

As part of the continuing work on classification and integration of the kinds of material held in UIA databases, research continues into radical new approaches to the organization of knowledge. Some of these papers and documents are available on this site. The challenges and opportunities of working with the interlinkages between the various databases are also described in a summary document. An experiment in matrix classification of international organizations by subject is provided as an alternative entry into over 2,500 websites. In addition to the 633 integrative concept profiles, a very extensive demo exploring non-western ways of interrelating patterns of change is also available. Experiments are currently being undertaken into the use of virtual reality to provide new ways of navigating the kinds of complexity with which UIA databases are concerned.

• Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential (every 3-4 years)
• Encyclopedia Plus (CD-Rom)

International organizations concerned in various ways with interdisciplinarity are profiled in:

• Yearbook of International Organizations (hardcover edition).
• Yearbook Plus (CD-Rom)

• Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential (every 3-4 years)
• Encyclopedia Plus (CD-Rom)

The relevant bibiliographies are also available on-line

Scope
A principal characteristic of the global problematique is its apparent complexity. This calls for a complex response interrelating many different intellectual resources and insights and involving sensitivity to very different kinds of constraint. It poses special challenges to comprehension and visualization. Integrative approaches of this kind have proved inadequate or exceedingly difficult to implement in a society characterized by specialization and fragmentation. Following token interest in interdisciplinarity in its own right, recent years have seen an emphasis on a project-by-project pragmatic approach. This avoids the need for any form of conceptual framework transcending individual disciplines, but begs the question as to the relationship between such projects.

One section of the Encyclopedia (1991 edition) assembled descriptions of the range of concepts or conceptual approaches which are, in some way, considered integrative and which are held by some international constituencies to provide the key to the organization of any effective strategic response to the global problematique. Many of the words used to label these concepts are those which are considered indicators of the power of an advocated approach. They frequently appear in project proposals to trigger favourable response, whether or not any content can be given to them in practice. Words like "global", "integrative", "networking" and "systematic" are the magical "words- of-power" in the modern organizational world.

The fragmentation of society is frequently deplored, as is the fragmentation of knowledge supposedly relevant to any appropriate response to the global problematique.

There continue to be calls for integrative, interdisciplinary or unified conceptual approaches to remedy this situation. Attempts to develop such approaches have themselves become fragmented, such that certain integrative insights are considered irrelevant, superficial, or misleading by those advancing other such insights.

There is no ongoing research into interdisciplinarity in its own right and the literature on it is dispersed under many unrelated headings (which library information systems make no attempt to cross-reference). And yet words like "global", "transdisciplinary", "networking" and "system" continue to emerge as the magical "words of power" triggering favourable response to project proposals addressing the global problematique. A minimum requirement at this time is therefore an indication of the range of integrative concepts from which some indication of their unique contributions can be deduced.

A continuing concern of the research is finding a response to the dramatic problem of how to interrelate vital conceptual insights which are essentially incommensurable and in practice often mutually antagonistic. A plurality of responses is not in itself an adequate response, especially since each fails to internalize the discontinuity, incompatibility and disagreement which its existence as an alternative engenders. Some of the work has explored the possibility, implicit or explicit in recent studies, that a more appropriate answer might emerge from a patterned alternation between alternatives. This calls for a focus on the models of alternation by which the pattern and timing of cyclic transformations can be ordered between mutually opposed alternatives. It highlights the possibility that the kind of integrative approach required may not be fully describable within the language of any single conceptual framework, however sophisticated. The use of metaphor in exploring new ways of understanding complexity is illustrated by one set of experiments, presented here as a demonstration.

Concerns
In this period characterized both by profound disagreements and by intense efforts at consensus formation, there is widespread recognition of the disadvantages of the former compared to the advantages of the latter. This recognition is itself a danger however when it detracts from complementary efforts to recognize the advantages to be derived from the living reality of disagreement processes as compared to the corresponding disadvantages associated with dysfunctional consensus formation. Typically the former leads to characteristic difficulties in handling differences, "otherness" discontinuity, uncertainty, ignorance and the underdefined, which all arise frequently in social processes, especially in any transitional period of social transformation when there is a possibility of a "new" or "alternative" order.

In the search for such a new order, many "answers" continue to be produced in response to the global problematique, whether in the form of explanations, programmes, strategies, ideologies, paradigms or belief systems. The proponents of each such answer naturally attach special importance to their own as being of crucial relevance at this time, whether in the short-term for tactical reasons, or in the long- term as being the only appropriate basis for a viable world society in the future. This widespread focus on "answer production", a vital moving force in society, obscures both the significance of the lack of fruitful integration between existing answers and the manner in which such answers undermine each others significance. Such answers are inherently limited in that they fail to internalize the discontinuity, incompatibility and disagreement which their existence engenders, in such a way as to "contain", whether conceptually or organizationally, the development processes they promote. This naturally results in the emergence of new problems.

Any new order is thus engendered by the fluctuation in practice between the extreme policies of essentially antagonistic answers counteracting each others weaknesses and excesses. It is this same fluctuation which the proponents of each dominant answer at present make every effort to prevent, as a way of maintaining their dominance in the short-term, but at the expense of development in the longer- term. But it is on this very fluctuation that a viable new order needs to be built if it is to contain a development that is inherently dynamic. The desperate search for "the" model of a new magical alternative order (of necessarily temporary and limited appeal) can thus be usefully complemented by a concern for models of alternation to order the pattern and timing of cyclic transformation between such alternatives, as and when they emerge into the ecological pool of available models.

This raises a major difficulty since, as noted above, no single framework (whether logical or otherwise) can encompass the dynamics of alternation between such frameworks, whether it be cartesian or holistic, linear or non-linear, technocratic or ecological. Perception through any one of them necessarily precludes simultaneous perception through any other one (as with the wave or particle theories of light). It follows that no single conceptual language or paradigm is appropriate to the task of bridging across the discontinuity between frameworks to support the development process. This raises questions as to the nature of such a bridge and of the language with which such a bridge may be constructed.

These questions provide a continuing focus for this research. They are the subject of extensive discussion in the 1994-95 edition of the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential.

The focus of this work may be considered as complementing other lines of work within the Encyclopedia Project  in ways such as the following:

• Metaphors and patterns: By the manner in which integrative knowledge is communicated and through the evolution of forms of communication to reflect new aspects of integration.
• Human development: By the manner in which advances in the integration of knowledge are paralleled by integration of the individual and of society and require such integration in order to become meaningful.
• World problems: By the importance of integrative knowledge for comprehending the nature of the global problematique, and by the manner in which that problematique calls for new kinds of integrative knowledge.
• Transformative approaches: By the integrative characteristics required of innovative techniques.
• Human values: By the challenge of providing integrative frameworks to interrelate seemingly unrelated values and by the inherently integrative nature of value perspectives.
• Organization strategies: By the challenge of relating integrative understanding to the implementation of concrete remedial actions

The integrative knowledge project is integrated within the framework of the Encyclopedia Project and its various hyperlinked databases as follows: