Interdisciplinarity in Engineering Research and Learning

Disciplines are distinguished partly for historical reasons and reasons of administrative convenience (such as the organization of teaching and appointments) and partly because the theories which we construct to solve our problems have a tendency to grow into unified systems. But all this classification and distinction is a comparatively unimportant and superficial affair. We are not students of the same subject matter but students of problems. And problems may cut right across the border of any subject matter or discipline. Sir Karl Popper Conjectures and Refutations (Popper, 1962, p. 67)