ABSTRACT
Major investments have been made in research programmes worldwide that try to bring physical and social sciences relevant to climate into positive working relationships. This chapter will review the ways in which knowledge integration has developed over time across the physical sciences in relation to climate change, and the rationale and issues of joint working that have resulted. It will then proceed to outline some of the challenges of developing meaningful and useful interfaces between this somewhat interdisciplinary group of physical sciences and the social sciences. A critical perspective will be adopted in terms of the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings or enabling frameworks for this project. This latter section will explore the potential of critical realist approaches to interdisciplinarity and will raise questions towards an expanded research agenda for critical realism as a philosophical research programme.
