Lessons for Interdisciplinary Working from Medieval Science is a short piece reflecting on some of the interdisciplinary practice we have developed within the Ordered Universe project by Tom McLeish and Giles Gasper. We’ve drawn together some of the lessons that we have learnt, and some that we hope might be of use to others in similar contexts. Not that, in any shape or form, we advocate interdisciplinarity for its own sake. In quite the opposite fashion we advocate interdisciplinary research as a powerful tool for academic research, an on-going and evolving collaborative experience, which has the capacity to provide deeper insight and elucidation of the past, and to act a mirror to current questions and investigations. To compare the medieval science of Grosseteste to modern science is not an exercise in merely juxtaposing modern theory and knowledge against medieval. It is to create the environment in which modern scientists work with medieval specialists with a single purpose in mind: the elucidation and understanding of Grosseteste’s scientific texts. The experience that we all bring to the table allows that elucidation to occur in a richer, more valuable manner. The Ordered Universe is a genuinely interdisciplinary project; possible only with the different constituencies we all represent, to create a new research arena and collaborative results. Lessons for Interdisciplinary Working from Medieval Science was originally commissioned for the Working Knowledge Project Short initiative from the Hearing the Voice Project funded by the Wellcome Trust.
Interdisciplinary Lessons
