Interdisciplinarity

Sustainability science is fundamentally an interdisciplinary venture, but what does this interdisciplinarity imply in practice? And how can, and should, we think about interdisciplinarity more generally? These are important philosophical and methodological questions for sustainability science, the answers to which remain at least partially out of sight for a variety of reasons. This chapter has three main aims. First, it provides a discussion of various dimensions of interdisciplinarity and how it can be understood from a philosophical perspective. Second, a historical perspective is assumed as well, as it introduces the history of interdisciplinarity and problem-driven science governance and some previous attempts at establishing interdisciplinary fields (ecological economics and cognitive science). And third, it provides an outline of an important strategy within sustainability science, suggesting that the focus has been on institutional reform.