Interdisciplinarity Doesn't Exist :-)

A few days ago (17th May, 2010, to be precise), there was a lecture by Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharya on 'Indo WordNet'. Nothing extraordinary.................Unless we consider the fact that Prof. Bhattacharya is a professor at IIT-Bombay in the Department of Computer Science and Technology, whose broader research interests include NLP, particulalrly in relation to wordnet and semantics. Where would we expect someone with such background to deliver a lecture at? Lot of places. But is there anyone (who is not working in the area) who would expect someone like him to deliver a lecture at a 'Special Centre for Sanskrit Studies' at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi? If anyone has any doubt about this conclusion, just rewind a few years of your life. Come to the time when you had just passed out of boards and imagine telling your parents that you want to study Sanskrit........eeeeeeeeeeee.........Don't wait for long. Before you are thrown out of the house tell them that you were joking and you want to study PCM so that you could become computer engineer at IIT-Bombay. Now that is normal. The point is that did anyone, including you, ever thought that there could be any kind of link between Computer Engineering and Sanskrit at that point of time? Try telling that to someone even now. And this is not just one isolated instance. I could cite several other instances. A retired professor of Human Physiology at Lady Hardinge Medical College in New Delhi used to give several special lectures to the M.A. students at 'Centre for Linguistics'. A professor of Linguistics presented a paper on the mapping of human brain and genomics at a life science conference in the School of Life Sciences. Another professor of Linguistics was called at an archaeology conference to present her findings. A group of cartographers, computer scientists and linguists worked together to produce an Atlas of Endangered Languages of the World. The list goes on........ This whole issue is also somewhere related to this mad rush of becoming an Engineer or Doctor. And in case someone decides to do a simple graduation, then definitely do an MBA or UPSC. These are respectively the two groups of super-duper-hallowed and super-hallowed career choices available to the Indian students. Think beyond these and you are doomed! Your career is finished and your life is going to be a waste. You cannot do or achieve anything in life (of course, achievement is measured by how much money you earn, just as you your talent and merit is measured by how much marks you get in the stupid exams; it is always the numbers!). This very assumption is based on a very naive and narrow concept of 'discipline', 'area', 'line' or 'subject' of study. There are very clear-cut demarcation of subjects right from our school days. Without understanding the reason, rationale and concept behind all the different subjects they are being taught at the school level like completely discrete and isolated entities. It is a place where an English teacher has no knowledge about Maths and a Botany teacher has no idea what Hindi literature is all about. And this continues till the time we complete our education. In fact if anything at all happens, it is the further divisions and isolation. What was previously taken to be one, later on, they are perceived as completely different areas of study. Based on this concept of strict disciplinarity our whole career and whole life is chalked out. In recent times, however, there have been some attempts to counter this at the level of higher education with the help of things like interdisciplinarity and cross-disciplinarity. I have serious objections to this conception also mainly because, at some level, it also assumes the existence of separate disciplines and there should be and there are some points of areas of overlap across disciplines. This has helped in breaking the barriers of discipline to some extent but still the boundaries remain. Well these boundaries are probably necessary to lend some order to all this chaos. But these boundaries should not be constraining or limiting; they should be like the sky which encompasses all; which is all around you but still you are free to fly anywhere; no one is really aware of where one sky ends and other begins; or where one horizon ends and other begins. What I am proposing here is the concept of non-disciplinarity. There does not exist any discipline (as it is made out to be); there does not exist any interdiscipline (since there is no discipline as such). Nothing is complete in itself, even though it looks so. It is only when we take a look at the whole that we will be able to make sense of the little part that we are looking at (just the way the six blind men were trying to make a sense of the elephant by looking at its individual parts in that famous story). Let us try to understand this whole concept of non-discipline in this way. Everyone of us try to understand the phenomena, events, incidents etc around us in our own way. And we try to understand different aspects of the same thing. And it is these different ways and aspects that has led to the formation of different disciplines. And all these different ways and aspects contribute to our overall understanding and knowledge about this whole world in nature. Lets take an example to understand this simple fact. Lets take the study of brain and mind. Psychologists study mind from one point of view, neuroscientists and neurosurgeons from another, philosophers from yet another point of vies and even linguists, to some extent, are interested in this stupid brain. Now the understanding about the brain is increased by input from all these (and more) and this understanding can become complete and whole only when all these continue to contribute to this knowledge base. Add to this the fact that brain is just one part of the human body; there are other parts of the body which need to be understood so that the human body could be understood in totality. Moreover to understand it in better way we need to understand other organisms as well. Thus we understand human body. We also need to understand how do we survive; we need to undestand the land and the vegetaion around. But is human body and human survival the whole of human being? Being a human consists a lot of other things like human society, language, culture, etc. We need to understand all these to understand the human behaviour and humans in general. And then is it complete? We also need to understand how we have evolved and how we have become what we are today. We even need to understand what we are today. What are the things that influence us and how do they influence us? What are the things that make us happy and efficient? By understanding all this we try to create a better world for ourselves, where everyone is happy, content and satisfied. This is the goal of the whole of our educational effort. And only by understanding each and everything about ourselves and those related to us can we become stronger, sharper and healthier. And if any of these is not properly understood then we are doomed; the life of the whole of human race is endangered. This is what needs to be urgently understood when we start studying. We need to understand that all these are intricately intertwined and connected to each other by a bond, just the way everything in 'Avatar' was bonded with each other. If we lose any of these then we lose all. Let us take the analogy of the way computer functions. The speed and performance of the computer depends on a lot of things including its processor, RAM and the operating system. If all of these are perfect and the best then our system gives optimum performance. If any component of the system is affected then the whole of performance is affected. And what happens of any of these components break down and stop working? This whole pursuit of knowledge is a similar system, where we need to keep every component working and in the best of the health. Thus this non-discipline defines any discipline as just one part of the super-discipline called Knowledge (just as pragmatics is a sub-part of Linguistics). In order to understand any one these we need to have a basic understandng of everything else (can we understand pragmatics completely in Linguistics without having a basic knowledge of phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and everything else). And I guess this was the reason why students were supposed to know (and not learn) so many subjects in the school. It was assumed that a basic knowledge of everything would help them in looking at the same thing in different ways and deciding which way and which aspect do they like most and pursue that way to futher the human knowledge. But of course they will also be aware of the other ways which would help them take insights and inspirations from everywhere else and also use all that knowledge in their point of view. This is the most efficient and effective way of development as this will check redundancy and consequent wastage of effort and time to a large extent. Now interdisciplinarity also does not exist once we begin to take in the concept of non-disciplinarity since then it all becomes part of only one super-discipline. Do we call a discussion on Morphosyntax in Linguistics an interdisciplinary discussion (even though it covers two aspects of studying the same phenomenon)? Or do we call a conference of doctors where cardiologists, ophthalmologists, paediatrician, gynaecologists and everyone else is presenting their paper an interdisciplinary conference (even though they belong to different areas of medical science)? Or what about an International Relations seminar where everyone is discussing relationships among different sets of countires? If these are not interdisciplinary because they belong to the same umbrella discipline then why should the interaction among different non-disciplines be called interdisciplinary if they also belong to the same umbrella discipline? They should not be called so simply because they are not. Because of the lack of this understanding of non-disciplines and super-discipline of Knowledge we are witnessing a very sad and skewed scenario today. Everyone is moving towards these hallowed non-disciplines leaving behind everything else in lurches. Interest and aptitiude do not matter anymore. It is just the pseudo-lucrativeness of the field that matters. We do not understand the simple fact that all these non-disciplines are not separate entities with some being great and others being poor. They are all equally important part of the same machinery; they are all essential and great in their own ways. And this understanding is never going to descend upon us unless we are told that these non-disciplines are not discrete, clean-cut separate areas; rather they are just meant to look at the same thing from different directions; we could get a multi-dimensional, complete and comprehensive picture only when we merge these visions from all around. Then what about the numbers? What about the money? What about the success? Come on baby.........you want me to answer all that............Just look around you. A post-graduate in some exotic arts subject like 'Linguistics' is going to build her own house (one of the supreme examples of success) a few years after she completed her stupid PhD. In the same city an engineer from a fairly reputed college commits suicide for the lack of money. And these are not the isolated instances...............Wake up girl! Its high time you go beyond cliches and stereotypes. The world is moving ahead. If we do not want India to be lagging behind then shun that prejudice. Take my word.........If you work as hard in any discipline as people do in completing their Engineering and Medical courses then you are going to earn as much as they do, if not more (and not just money). And I know that for sure.