Cross-disciplinarity comes with many challenges. Some are more practical and relate to the funding, departmental organization and evaluation of cross-disciplinarity, others are more cognitive and concern the goals and knowledge generation processes of cross-disciplinary research. While we know that cognitive challenges are caused by differences between disciplines with respect to their underlying epistemological and metaphysical assumptions and methodology, the concrete ways in which these differences cause difficulties are still largely black boxed. One way to unbox the challenges, is by means of a contextualist theory that allows to explicate the research worldview and methodological norms (as well as their interconnections) of given discipline, and to compare across disciplines. In my talk, I explain how to build such a contextualist theory using data structures from AI called ‘frames’. The resulting theory not only allows to gain insight into cognitive challenges for cross-disciplinarity, but also provides a theoretical basis for the development of tools and strategies for dealing with these challenges.

Dr. Julie Mennes is a Postdoctoral Researcher through the Research Council Flanders at the Centre for Logic & Philosophy of Science
at Ghent University.

Zoom meeting option:
Meeting ID: 987 4890 8382
Passcode: 157068