Gabriele Bammer (ed.): Disciplining interdisciplinarity: integration and implementation sciences for researching complex real-world problems (and the deeper science challenge to co-evolve with complexity)

Abstract

This book’s major contribution to applying scientific knowledge to address complex problems is timely, as these problems are proliferating due in part to a history of reductive science, and because scientific thinking is changing rapidly. I appreciate the book’s motivating question: BHow can academic research enhance its contribution to addressing widespread poverty, global climate change, organized crime, escalating health care costs or the myriad of other major problems facing human society.^ I support the author’s focus on interdisciplinary thinking and her concern that interdisciplinary research remains at academic margins because it lacks substantial, wellestablished, internationally accepted methodology. I agree with her expressed need for methodological soundness, greater interaction among diverse groups, and managing of unknowns to help realize the potential of interdisciplinary research. The book proposes a framework grounded in theory, relevant research, broad exchange of ideas, and collection and evaluation of methodologies. It makes four arguments: a specific focus is required; research embracing multiple methods constitutes a style called integrative applied research; a new discipline, Integration and Implementation Sciences (I2S), can be an effective way to document and transmit integrative applied research concepts and methods; and given that today’s complex problems require urgent attention, the process should be accelerated through a Big Science-type project of the scale and power of the Human Genome Project. The book seeks to propose a structure for the I2S discipline, plant the seed for an I2S Development Drive as a new Big Science-type project to establish I2S, and start a worldwide discussion about I2S and the I2S Development Drive. This review is informed by my 40+-year evolving focus on systems, general systems theory, systems science, complexity science, and design science. In the review that follows, I first discuss each of the book’s four arguments in relation to object-, system-, and meta-levels of systems engagement. Agreeing strongly that today’s complex problems require urgent attention, I then discuss the system-level at which the challenge can best be addressed, as well as the nature and urgency of the challenge, from a complexity science perspective. Argument #1, TAKING A SPECIFIC FOCUS, targets research involving experts from multiple disciplines investigating common complex real-world social and environmental problems. By focusing on problems, this argument engages systems at the objectand system-level, in ways that help practitioners make more integrated and implementationinformed decisions. I see this argument focusing on symptomatic problems of complex systems whose functionality has been degraded, but not the meta-level engagement needed to re-empower complex systems to fully regenerate, co-adapt, and complexify. Argument #2, DEFINING A NEW RESEARCH STYLE; INTEGRATIVE APPLIED RESEARCH, seeks to identify unknowns, embrace multiple types of knowledge, and appreciate diverse methodologies. This focus helps diverse disciplines broaden their perceptions of problems, encourages processes to have methodological flexibility, and helps integrate diverse