How Interdisciplinary Synthesis Happens in the 21st Century

For nearly four centuries Salomon’s House has stood as an exemplar of empirical interdisciplinary inquiry undertaken for the benefit of society, inspiring the formation of scientific associations and research organizations in diverse nations and cultures (Bacon, c. 1623).  Changing circumstances impose new demands on the organization of science and engineering, on the institutions (rules, laws, principles, and ethics) that guide their workings, and on their engagement with other aspects of society.  Meeting emergent challenges will require dramatically new forms of research organization —a rethinking of the “architecture” of science, a redesign of Salomon’s House and its setting.  Organizational innovations are underway in the US and around the globe, and would benefit from a sturdier theoretical foundation and related empirical research.   Drawing upon published scholarship and original research conducted within a national synthesis center and an international environmental research network, this paper outlines a theory of intellectual fusion in collaborative research, illustrated with empirical examples, and discusses its implications for the design and operation of research organizations.  At its heart is a model of group interaction that achieves intellectual fusion through a combination of capital (cultural, intellectual, social, technological); diversity (of persons and their skills, attributes, and contributions), intensity (the energy, purpose, and clarity of interactions), and duration (of episodes and of a related series of episodes).  The talk explores how that model might operate within new forms of research organization (such as synthesis centers) and closes by imagining how Salomon’s House must look in order to meet the knowledge and technology challenges before us.