Introduction: Doctrines, Disciplines, Discourses, Departments

Knowledge in the Age of Climate Change

“…On those questions the notions of "feedback" and "feedforward" take on a second significance, one of deep importance to the contemporary organization of knowledge. As we gestured to earlier, James Chandler (2009) has observed that the nature of "interdisciplinary" knowledge (particularly in the humanities) has been in the midst of a major transformation in recent years. Key to that change, he has suggested, is a gradual outward expansion of conversations among the disciplines, as exchanges among relatively proximate fields (philosophy, psychology, and linguistics, to take one influential trio) have extended to conversations among the more distant disciplines: literature, geology, and evolutionary biology, to take examples from this collection.…”

Histories of Ethology: Methods, Sites, and Dynamics of an Unbound Discipline

“…For discussions of disciplinarity in general and in biology specifically, see: Chandler 2009;Becher and Trowler 2001;Becher 1989;Guntau and Laitko 1987;Whitley 1984;Jahn 2002; Toepfer 2002. 22 See: Burkhardt 2005, on 8-9; Schurig 2014, on 201-202.23 See, e. g : Lorenz 1937a;Lorenz 1942;Lorenz 1950a;Lorenz 1956;Lorenz 1957;Lorenz 1960…”

Border cases between autonomy and relevance

“…Institutions that were linked with the previous regime were supposed to be "phased out" (Abwicklung)dthat is, closing down the institution with a stepwise plan of replacing it. One of the "hasty policy decisions" (Ash, 1999) made by the provincial government, the Berlin Senat, was unseen during the preceding reforms: ideologically laden departments would be subject to being 27 This desire for dissolving disciplines paralleled the rise of think tanks in the West that were equally guided by methodological eclecticism united by a sense of purpose rather than by traditional disciplines (Chandler, 2009). 28 This observation confirms one of the general findings of Ash (2006: 35)dthat throughout the 20th century, one can observe a continuous crowding out of research areas from universities into private and governmental research institutes.…”