Transdisciplinarity

Transdisciplinarity is a principle of scientific research that describes the application of scientific approaches to problems that transcend the boundaries of conventional academic disciplines. Such phenomena, such as the natural environment, energy, and health, are referred to as transdisciplinary.
A similar concept is interdisciplinarity which usually refers to collaborative projects in which scientists from several fields work together. In his work On Transdisciplinarity, Jürgen Mittelstrass argues that interdisciplinarity is actually transdisciplinarity:

"Interdisciplinarity properly understood does not commute between fields and disciplines, and it does not hover above them like an absolute spirit. Instead, it removes disciplinary impasses where these block the development of problems and the corresponding responses of research. Interdisciplinarity is in fact transdisciplinarity." The paper can be found at this link: [link] - it is near the end of the document.
A different approach of transdisciplinarity that the one of Mittelstrass was developed from 1987 by the 163 researchers of the International Center for Transdisciplinary Research (CIRET). A Charter of Transdisciplinarity was adopted at the 1st World Congress of Transdisciplinarity (Convento da Arrabida, Portugal, november 1994).
In the CIRET approach, transdisciplinarity is radically distinct from interdisciplinarity.

Interdisciplinarity concerns the transfer of methods from one discipline to another. Like pluridisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity overflows the disciplines but its goal still remains within the framework of disciplinary research.

As the prefix "trans" indicates, transdisciplinarity (word introduced in 1970 by Jean Piaget)concerns that which is at once between the disciplines, across the different disciplines, and beyond all discipline. Its goal is the understanding of the present world, of which one of the imperatives is the unity of knowledge. The transdisciplinarity is defined by Basarab Nicolescu through three methodological postulates : the existence of levels of Reality, the logic of the included middle, and complexity.

In the presence of several levels of Reality the space between disciplines and beyond disciplines is full of information. Disciplinary research concerns, at most, one and the same level of Reality ; moreover, in most cases, it only concerns fragments of one level of Reality. On the contrary, transdisciplinarity concerns the dynamics engendered by the action of several levels of Reality at once . The discovery of these dynamics necessarily passes through disciplinary knowledge. While not a new discipline or a new superdiscipline, transdisciplinarity is nourished by disciplinary research; in turn, disciplinary research is clarified by transdisciplinary knowledge in a new, fertile way. In this sense, disciplinary and transdisciplinary research are not antagonistic but complementary.

As in the case of disciplinarity, transdisciplinary research is not antagonistic but complementary to multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity research. Transdisciplinarity is nevertheless radically distinct from multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity because of its goal, the understanding of the present world, which cannot be accomplished in the framework of disciplinary research. The goal of multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity always remains within the framework of disciplinary research. If transdisciplinarity is often confused with interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity (and by the same token, we note that interdisciplinarity is often confused with multidisciplinarity) this is explained in large part by the fact that all three overflow disciplinary boundaries. This confusion is very harmful, because it hides the huge potential of transdisciplinarity.

SOURCE: OPENTOPIA