We wrote a book! It's the first-ever volume telling the entire story of the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative. Cross-disciplinary scientific collaboration is emerging as standard operating procedure for many scholarly research enterprises. And yet, the skill set needed for effective collaboration is neither taught nor mentored. The
Successful collaboration requires effective communication. Differences in professional, disciplinary, or cultural background can create opportunities for innovative collaboration, but they also create challenges to free-flowing communication. What follows is an account of a collaborative effort to develop philosophical tools designed to help meet these challenges—tools
Diversity within science teams is both a blessing and a curse. The power of team science derives largely from its ability to leverage individual differences in many forms—e.g., experience, gender, expertise—to enhance the breadth and depth of insight and innovation. But these differences can also
Integration is crucial to interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work and it therefore deserves perennial attention by scholars and practitioners of such work. Few have thought so carefully, deeply, and tenaciously about integration as Julie Thompson Klein. In this article, we recount the development of Klein’s thinking
This paper contributes to the underdeveloped field of experimental philosophy of science. We examine variability in the philosophical views of scientists. Using data from Toolbox Dialogue Initiative, we analyze scientists’ responses to prompts on philosophical issues (methodology, confirmation, values, reality, reductionism, and motivation for scientific
Aim/Purpose Collaborative, interdisciplinary research is growing rapidly, but we still have limited and fragmented understanding of what is arguably the heart of such research—collaborative, interdisciplinary reasoning (CIR). Background This article integrates neo-Pragmatist theories of reasoning with insights from literature on interdisciplinary research to develop a working definition of
This article examines the relevance of survey data of scientists' attitudes about science and values to case studies in philosophy of science. We describe two methodological challenges confronting such case studies: 1) small samples, and 2) potential for bias in selection, emphasis, and interpretation. Examples
The methods of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research (hereafter, “cross-disciplinary research” or CDR) are “fragmented”, that is, distributed in unconnected ways across the intellectual landscape. Fragmentation results in inefficiency, which motivates systematic organization of methods. Systematic organization has value for both cross-disciplinary practitioners and theorists since
Transdisciplinary teams are called upon to research and resolve problems associated with socio-ecological systems, which are notoriously wicked. We propose that the formation of these teams is itself a wicked problem. We support this claim by identifying in transdisciplinary team formation characteristics from Rittel and
One way to articulate the promise of interdisciplinary research is in terms of the relationship between knowledge and ignorance. Disciplinary research yields deep knowledge of a circumscribed range of issues, but remains ignorant of those issues that stretch outside its purview. Because complex problems such