Employing Philosophical Dialogue in Collaborative Science

January 2007 / Vol. 57 No. 1 • BioScience 55 I human populations and per capita resource consumption have engendered pressing problems that threaten ecosystem function, ecosystem services, the sustainability of production, and the health and well-being of human populations. Solutions to these problems require the expertise of biologists, but their complexity necessitates integrated efforts involving other disciplines. For example, research to improve sustainability and biodiversity conservation involves ecology, agriculture, sociology, soil science, hydrology, and economics (Palmer et al. 2005). In public health, issues such as AIDS prevention require the collaboration of sociology, anthropology, behavioral science, clinical medicine, bioinformatics, and evolutionary biology (Stillwaggon 2005). Research that crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries (described here as “cross-disciplinary”) poses challenges that can be new to scientists, depending on the depth and breadth of integration among disciplines. First, collaborators must determine the appropriate level of cross-disciplinary integration, from a continuum that includes multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary work (box 1). A suitable level of integration will depend on the problem to be addressed and on the mutual understanding of the disciplines involved. If interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary efforts are required, participants must work together from problem formulation and hypothesis development to data analysis, interpretation, presentation, and application.An emerging literature addresses the obstacles and challenges to integrated, cross-disciplinary research, which include delineating social, biological, and physical aspects of complex problems; identifying commensurable spatial and temporal scales of measurement; identifying interpersonal and group-related dynamics that affect cross-disciplinary collaboration; and adjusting institutional and educational structures to facilitate such collaboration (Benda et al. 2002, Giampietro 2003, Heemskerk et al. 2003, Rhoten 2003, Jakobsen et al. 2004, Lélé and Norgaard 2005, NAS 2005). In addition to these formidable operational difficulties, cross-disciplinary collaborations entail combining the some-