ABSTRACT
By the early part of the 20th century, academia in the English-speaking world had stabilized (or ossified!) into a set of scientific and humanistic disciplines that still survived at the century’s end. The natural sciences have such disciplines as physics, chemistry, and biology, and the social sciences include economics, psychology, and sociology. These disciplines provide a convenient organizing principle for university departments and professional organizations, but they often bear little relation to cutting-edge research, which can concern topics that cut across or occur at the boundaries of two or more of the established disciplines. When this happens, productive research and teaching must be interdisciplinary.
