Interdisciplinarity: from the origin to the present time

DOI:10.15343/0104-7809.200630.1.12

Abstract

To begin the itinerary with the word’s etymology, the study of interdisciplinarity demands understanding and the sense of
the disciplinary approach. Receiving a first meaning in Antiquity, the division of study in disciplines acquires the characteristics of its
contemporary version in Modernity, with the Scientific Revolutions coming from contributions of Galileo, with a new methodology for
physics, and Descartes, with his dualism of the substance. Only in the second half of the twentieth century knowledge’s fragmentation
came to be seen as an impediment and as an alternative interdisciplinarity emerges. However, many are the difficulties of a interdiscipli-
nary approach, for it demands, going beyond the transference of methods of disciplines to one another, a change in the habits of pupils,
teachers, researchers and professionals. Moreover, modifications in social habits are also demanded. However, twentieth century is
marked by two world-wide wars, by the emergence of quantum physics and an ensuing critique of the basic principles of Classical Logic.
Responding to the needs of this new understanding of the world, transdisciplinarity comes in, having as its foundations the recognizance
of reality’s several levels, complexity and the third included. Knowledge is understood as a construction and its main characteristic is
plasticity. Considering this itinerary and the characteristics of the Rehabilitation work, one concludes for the need to constitute it as a
transdisciplinary work that allows for the third included, the constitution of the other as a legitimated being and the understanding of
the many possibilities that life’s complexity presents them.