CyberSightings

In the Spotlight

What if a psychologist could spend some time doing research at CERN? Or what if an entomologist was invited to lecture in a sociology lab? Although exchange programs are an established practice in modern science, the potential of extradisciplinary collaborations has not been explored. Yet, often major breakthroughs occur when concepts from seemingly remote disciplines are combined. For instance, Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection was influenced by political economist Thomas R. Malthus's ideas on population expansion. ¹ As recent research has pointed out, scientific creativity is influenced by both expertise and diversity: the tendency to collaborate exclusively with people who have the same background can significantly reduce the team's innovative potential. Collaboration with experts from remote disciplines can boost the generation of new ideas or solutions in several ways. Learning theories and concepts from other disciplines can help to reframe a problem from a totally new perspective. For example, in developing the “field theory,” social psychologist Kurt Lewin borrowed ideas from physics and mathematics. Similarly, Carl Gustav Jung was probably inspired by physics when he elaborated the influential (yet controversial) theory of synchronicity, which he described as the simultaneous occurrence of two meaningful but not causally connected events. This interest eventually lead the Swiss psychiatrist to start a collaboration with physicist Wolfgang Pauli, and within this framework they explored the connections between the disparate realities of matter and mind.

Outside academia, companies have already exploited the added value of extradisciplinary collaboration in the development of innovative products and services, recognizing the key role played by the diversity of skills and knowledge in this process. However, unlike the industrial sector, within academia, encounters between “alien” scientific fields are mostly left to chance. Thus, the organization of extradisciplinary knowledge exchange programs may be a potentially effective strategy to foster intellectual diversity and enhance scientific creativity.

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