Introduction

Summary

Transdisciplinarity is a relatively recent term: it emerged in 1970 in France during an event held to discuss the role of multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity in university settings, entitled ‘L’interdisciplinarité: problémes d'enseignement et de recherche dans les universités’. During the event, three participants presented and discussed the new concept of transdisciplinarity. Jean Piaget and Andre Lichnerowicz focused on disciplinary relations, while Erich Jantsch addressed the concept from the perspective of social purpose.

The event proceedings (Apostel et al. 1970), with more than 300 pages, were the most important source of reference in the field for a long time, until two other theoretical frameworks were published (Klein 2013): Mode 2 Knowledge Production of Michael Gibbons, Limoges, Nowotny, Schwartzman, Scott and Trow (1994) and Basarab Nicolescu's Manifesto of Transdisciplinarity (1993).

All perspectives, moreover, sought to understand the multidimensionality of reality and the inclusion of social values that dismantle the division into academics (i.e., the experts) and non-academics, fostering new partnerships between university and society. The valorization and increment of these forms of interaction in the pursuit of the unity of knowledge signalled a new form of integration between society and academia, especially for the conduct of scientific research.

The pursuit of the unity of knowledge, in fact, is the epistemological problem highlighted by transdisciplinarity. It dates back to the time of ancient philosophers and has never ceased to be a relevant topic of study. In Morin's words, it flows through time:

As Pascal said: ‘I hold it is as impossible to know the parts without knowing the whole as to know the whole without knowing the particular parts’. Pascal's statement reminds us of the need for back-and-forth movements that run the risk of forming a vicious circle, but which can constitute a productive circuit as in a shuttle movement that weaves the development of thought […] complexity is not just the union of complexity and noncomplexity (simplification); complexity is at the heart of the relationship between the simple and the complex, because such a relationship is antagonistic and complementary. (Morin 2005, p. 136)

In this context, transdisciplinarity is involved in a series of changes that have become necessary to transcend and integrate disciplinary paradigms.