[Médias et transdisciplinarité- Michel Cazenave]

As all of you know, my current post as research fellow is dedicated to studying transdisciplinarity which will culminate in the creation of a new academic journal dedicated to transdisciplinary studies in creative technologies. I have been blogging about my journey so far and serendipitously Basarab Nicolescu (can we say "father" of transdisciplinarity...at least in it's contemporary sense?) read a blog post, commented, and since them we have maintained a dialogue. It is this online dialogue which has brought me from the virtual world into the physical (which is Paris) to join the EHESS's annual sessions of seminars in transdisciplinarity (co-organised with Alfredo Pena-Vega).

Michel Cazenave's seminar gave me lots to think about; as I said lastnight when we went to coffee to dissect the talk: "je dois penser encore!" The talk was very philosophical but I suppose that is to be expected from someone who is ecrivain, poète and philosophe. Something that kept coming up was the idea that science (with a capital S) has specific demands and methods which means it operates on a different level of being than transdisciplinary enquiries (one might say this holds also for spiritual, moral, or more "humanities" driven questions).


After the talk there was some time for questions and one came from a woman at the back who asked something that has been posed to me: "give a concrete example of a transdisciplinary..." and in this case it was of a film. Cazenave had a good answer: how to give a concise example for something that is so complex and complicated?




NB: that catchy title of "studies in..." is thanks to Basarab Nicolesu who, while chatting about transdisciplinarity (but of course), noted that aptness of the word "studies."

NB: The top photo is Salle 1 in the EHESS before we began. At the front of the room on the left is Basarab, in the middle with the book is Michel and on the right by the green door is Alfredo.




Addition 23 Jan. 2009: I found this report on an interdisciplinary conference: