ABSTRACT
At risk of offending the editor, other contributors, and readers of a volume on interdisciplinary bridge building, I wish to suggest that building these bridges is, more often than not, folly. I raise this disquieting prospect not because I doubt that other disciplines have valuable insights to offer social psychology-or that social psychology has valuable insights to offer them. Quite the opposite. I raise it because I think a false assumption about geography of the intellectual enterprise underlies the call for bridges. The assumption is that different disciplines (e.g., psychology, biology, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy)—or even different areas within a discipline (e.g., clinical, cognitive, developmental, personality, physiological, and social psychology)—are islands of inquiry and insight in a sea of ignorance. Were this true, then bridge building would be wise indeed. Like connecting the islands in an archipelago chain, it would allow one to encounter new people and new ideas, to expand commerce and culture, to get someplace.
