Introduction

This chapter focuses on the antinomies of contemporary interdisciplinarity, despite the extravagant lip service paid to interdisciplinarity, there is little sophisticated analysis in the literature that explains its philosophical necessity. It suggests how sophisticated research procedures can be designed to enable scientists to integrate the knowledge gained from various individual disciplines. The chapter discusses the practical issues involved in achieving interdisciplinarity, such as how to encourage co-operation among researchers. It also discusses a characteristic of the interdisciplinarity literature, which is that in the absence of an adequate metatheoretical justification for interdisciplinarity researchers characteristically approach interdisciplinary research from the perspective of their particular disciplinary focus. The chapter elaborates the critical realist implications for interdisciplinarity, which leads to recommendations for researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers, and also presents some key concepts discussed in the book. The book outlines the main concepts of critical realism.