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KAMBHAMPATY | The Case for Transdisciplinary Studies
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In his book Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future, Peter Thiel discusses the ideology of competition, “Elite students climb confidently until they reach a level of competition sufficiently intense to beat their dreams out of them.” I wonder why we are doing this, but more importantly, how can we change this? A department for Transdisciplinary Studies may be the answer. Transdisciplinary research is defined as “research efforts conducted by investigators from different disciplines working jointly to create new conceptual, theoretical, methodological, and translational innovations that integrate and move beyond discipline-specific approaches to address a common problem.” The key here is the idea of moving beyond disciplines. Transdisciplinary research breaks down the boundaries between traditional disciplines and creates new ways of looking at issues. This is different from interdisciplinary research, which simply combines two or more varying disciplines and perspectives.