Teaching and Learning > DISCOURSE

Interdisciplinarity and Philosophy

Author: Benjamin Franks

Journal Title: Discourse

ISSN: 2040-3674

ISSN-L: 1741-4164

Volume: 6

Number: 1

Start page: 123

End page: 143

Return to vol. 6 no. 1 index page

This paper is a heavily modified version of an essay written for the collection Below the Belt: The Founding of a Higher Education Institution, a Festschrift collated to mark the retirement of the first director of the Crichton Campus, Professor. Rex Taylor. It was written in conjunction with Stuart Hanscomb and Stephen Harper.

This article describes and defends the interdisciplinary model of the Liberal Arts degree,1 set up at the Crichton Campus of the University of Glasgow in 1998.2 It describes the structure of this Scottish undergraduate MA, placing it within the wider context of contemporary debates concerning education, but does so in order to clarify and promote a particular view of interdisciplinarity: namely integrated interdisciplinarity.3 In doing so this paper aims to show both the role of philosophy in constituting a significant element of the content of the courses and, more importantly, its role in framing the structure that allows fruitful interaction between the disciplines. Overtly philosophical issues (principally, but not exclusively those from epistemology, meta- and normative ethics and informal logic) provide a set of themes and questions by which to structure potentially disparate courses from separate disciplines and assist them in interacting. Philosophy thus plays a vital role in integrating interdisciplinary study, especially within a contemporary liberal arts degree, yet this is a function that is often overlooked when documenting the merits of this academic specialism.

Background

The University of Glasgow opened a new campus on the grounds of the former Crichton Royal Institution (a mental health asylum) in Dumfries, in Southwest Scotland, in 1998, and enrolled its first students in the following year. The new institution was charged with developing a high quality, innovative programme of study, using the American liberal arts college as its model, a paradigm, which as Sean Johnston and Carol Hill note was:

not [...] an 'imported model' as the US educational schema was based on the Scottish educational tradition of philosophy [...] exported to America in the nineteenth century, and is based on a traditional complement of subjects extending back to the medieval period when the University of Glasgow was founded (1451).4

There are significant differences between the liberal arts degree at the University of Glasgow's Crichton campus (henceforth referred to as 'the Crichton') and that practised in North America, not least, the differences in the economic imperatives structuring HE institutions in Scotland as opposed to those in North America and the prior educational experiences of students and academic staff. Another significant difference is that in the UK a liberal arts degree is largely unknown, and therefore, in-keeping with the conservatism5 of the age, viewed with suspicion by academic colleagues and potential students.6 Fear of the unfamiliar has led to some recruitment problems, a structural flaw that US colleges, largely, do not face.

Nonetheless, there are deliberate parallels between the curriculum and pedagogy of the Crichton model and those of North American liberal arts colleges. The liberal arts degree at the Crichton is structured around four compulsory courses (referred to as 'cores'). This set of four cores (which are described further below) consciously draws upon the Scottish generalist model of higher education which informed the American Liberal Arts tradition. As well as these four core courses, students can select electives from environmental studies (with a special emphasis on the natural sciences), the humanities (primarily literature, philosophy, sciences studies and history) and social sciences. However, even within the more discipline-specific elective courses, the concentration is on developing subject competence within the context of the particular specialism's relationships to other disciplines.

Liberal arts

Ascertaining a precise definition of liberal arts and thereby determining its appropriate basic ingredients has, historically, been a matter of much dispute. Despite the disagreements, some degree of common ground within the liberal arts can be identified. Saul Sack gives a lucid account of it's origins, starting in ancient Greece, with its priority of providing education suitable for a Free Man to the development of liberal education in American Colleges of the post-Independence period of creating citizens of good character.7 This 'democratic' aim was also embodied in the Scottish generalist tradition and the original concept of promoting well-informed citizens capable of critical reflection continues to flourish in the liberal arts. Liberal arts has, as a consequence, an implicit political bias towards the non- (or anti-) hierarchical. It promotes democratic political engagement (in the broadest sense of 'democracy'), and sees the role of education as extending beyond the elite confines of academia to influence the social realm of civil society and the state. Even in an era of extended access to tertiary education, the majority of Scotland's citizens will still not be university graduates; liberal arts recognises that a successful education is as much about the types of relationships that graduates build between themselves and non-students as it is about reaching particular learning targets in relation to a standard curriculum.

It was with this broader socially-progressive end in mind that the curricular content of liberal education was developed, especially within the nineteenth century Scottish generalist degree.8 It was wide-ranging, including a variety of sciences, languages, arts, mathematics and philosophy. 9 Philosophy was a significant feature of the Scottish generalist 'liberal arts' education, as George Davie, a historian of the development of Scottish tertiary educational, explained in The Democratic Intellect.10 This discipline was viewed as essential for both its practical, vocational outcomes (what is now referred to as 'employability'), but also in terms of education's social role—how the university and its education intersected with the rest of society. Development of analytical, critical, creative and reflexive skills, rather than just professional competencies, was viewed as playing a vital role of developing the 'democratic intellect'. The 'democratic intellect' was the creation of autonomous learners, able to participate in Scottish public life, and because the curriculum was cheap to deliver, it was available to all parts of the public rather than the privileged classes of traditional English higher education.11

Those who regard the academic in elitist terms can feel threatened by the Liberal Arts pedagogy and curriculum. It is for these reasons that liberal education has drawn the ire of educationallyminded philosophers from the English, conservative tradition, such as Anthony O'Hear and Roger Scruton, or from America by critics like Harold Bloom. Anglo-American conservatisms prioritise the traditional canon of authors, with a strict division between the disciplines, which reflects these theorists' commitment to the hierarchies of the social realm. As Davie indicates, the development of the democratic intellect requires critical reasoning and student participation can undercut some of the unchallenged privileges of the educators.12 This potential for critical subversion is not always welcomed by more exclusive academics, or other authorities.

Philosophy

This is not the place to resume the battle over the correct meaning of 'philosophy'—for such debates often rest on the unfounded assumption that there is one correct interpretation, applicable to all social and historical contexts. The battles within the academic discipline (what I shall refer to as 'scholastic philosophy') have concerned its curricula, appropriate canon, and in more contemporary times, formal benchmarks which mark out its priorities, the inclusions and exclusions.13 The term 'philosophy', however, has been more widely applied (and occasionally misapplied) to a variety of subject areas, techniques and beliefs. More vulgarised uses of the term have seen its application to collections of popular, practical advice or unreflective (and occasionally contradictory) commonplaces.14

Some of the more rigorous uses of the term have come from those working within separate disciplines and other professions, to refer to the abstraction of principles, laws and rules which underpin a discipline, and their analysis and conceptual reapplication. This wider understanding of 'philosophy' is, nonetheless, often tied back in with the tasks of scholastic philosophy. For instance, a particular field of study often requires students and practitioners to explore its epistemology and/or metaphysics (such as the philosophy of natural sciences or jurisprudence). Specialisms increasingly insist that practitioners critically examine the codes of behaviour that constitute its major practices (for instance medical ethics or the ethics of social research). The texts of the philosophical canon are often used in these ethical and epistemological tasks.

Scholastic philosophy, although having a reputation for insularity, provides particular techniques or tools that, as the QAA recognises, are vital for other disciplines.15 Formal philosophical training provides a study in such areas as formal logic and critical thinking, and these, as Peter Milne identifies, are crucial in providing the terminology of argument-assessment and evaluation used beyond formal reasoning.16 So whilst someone engaged in scholastic philosophy might increasingly specialise on the discipline's own particular discourses and specialist texts, there are also philosophical themes, practices, questions and techniques that appear in other fields of study. These concerns and techniques, formally claimed by scholastic philosophy, are also essential to the formation and function of other academic disciplines, such as their distinctive claims to knowledge (epistemologies) and accounts of appropriate behaviour (ethics). As a result some key texts and thinkers viewed as canonical by philosophy departments are similarly viewed by other disciplines as central to their specialisms (for instance, Karl Marx and Adam Smith, are shared by philosophy and social sciences such as economics and sociology, Michel Foucault with philosophy and history, and Aristotle is shared across the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences).

Additionally, as Nigel Warburton in his introductory guide to philosophy reminds us, there are other professional applications to our discipline, both to the professions and to the creative arts.17 Thus, philosophy is found across the disciplines, but this does not, in itself, lead to interdisciplinarity, or at least not in a defensible form. Nor is it just in academe and the instrumentalism of the working life that philosophy assists. As Simon Blackburn remarks, the canonical thinkers look at the major questions, 'the big themes' of freedom, the good life, the nature of knowledge, reason and justice.18 These larger themes interest individuals and groups beyond the institutional setting of academe or business and assist in maintaining or creating social values that underpin and shape social relationships. In particular disciplines, there are modes of address, forms of conduct and identifiable boundaries to types of enquiry; for interdisciplinary activity, new types of relationship are sought, and boundaries of enquiry are sometimes transgressed.

Interdisciplinarity

There are a number of misconceptions surrounding the term 'interdisciplinary'; for instance, as Margaret Boden points out, some mistake a collection of sub-disciplines for interdisciplinarity. The existence of molecular biology, genetics and ecology within a standard Biology degree, for example, does not make that degree interdisciplinary, as these are subsections of the biological sciences. These sub-disciplines share an established epistemology with similar theoretical assumptions, central concerns and a shared canon. As such they are consistent with a singular disciplinary approach.19

Interdisciplinarity is not necessarily present simply because courses' key texts emanate from different sections of the library, written by authors who inhabited separate departments within academia. These authors may all share the same theoretical commitments to the gathering and categorising of knowledge, be committed to the resolution of certain pre-defined problems and constitute a clearly defined canon; yet the strength of interdisciplinarity is that through the combination of epistemologies and the introduction of techniques from different areas of study, it can bring to light new questions, which could not have been predicted.

Interdisciplinary pedagogy is a key characteristic and one of the main strengths of the liberal arts. Yet there are different forms of interdisciplinarity. These vary from those of encyclopaedic interdisciplinarity, in which there is no requirement for modes of integration between the discrete courses; one simply provides a range of courses and leaves it up to the student to choose at will, as if selecting from a pick and mix confectionary counter, so that any educational sweetmeat can be consumed next to any other. An alternative to this is reductivist interdisciplinarity. This form of interdisciplinarity regards all modes of knowledge to be generated from one singular meta-discipline. A good example of this form of supposed interdisciplinarity is the Marxist journal Historical Materialism, which maintains that all forms of knowledge generation are merely a subset of economics.20 It would be equally absurd to make a similar claim for philosophy. Just because every academic subject, in theory at least, could generate a field of scholastic philosophical enquiry ('the philosophy of X'), does not mean that philosophy is the ultimate ground. After all, every academic study has its own history (and geography and language); but this does not make history (or geography or linguistics) the reductive meta-discipline.

Integrated interdisciplinarity is distinct from these alternatives, and avoids the absolutist and totalising claims of reductivism or the potential incoherence of the encyclopaedic approaches. Whilst prescribing no set outcomes, nor boundaries of study, it instead promotes techniques of amalgamation between the distinctive disciplines constructing the degree. Highlighting the search for areas of similarity between the different forms of knowledge and accenting areas of conflict within the differing epistemologies, it thereby promotes original insight and innovation.

Especially relevant is the contextualising function of the core courses. Here philosophy, in its narrow and broader senses, plays a particularly important role in assisting in this co-partnership of disciplines. The aim is that different disciplines can be integrated into solving new problems utilising a variety of techniques and 'contributing theoretical insights' that can inform each other; this, for Boden, is the cornerstone of effective, integrated interdisciplinarity.21

Structure of Interdisciplinary Studies

Liberal arts recognises that such a goal requires knowledge of multiple disciplines. Integrating these plural approaches is one of the fundamental features of a successful Liberal Arts degree that distinguishes it from students merely nibbling at a dozen disconnected courses. The aim is to broaden the horizons of existing disciplines, by bringing to bear the epistemologies and concerns of other modes of knowledge, as two of my colleagues, Sean Johnston and Mhairi Harvey, describe in their account of developing and teaching an Environmental Ethics course. They brought together the multiple viewpoints adopted in cultural studies and philosophy to the issues addressed by environmental science. As a result, the course broadened the concerns of environmental science, extended the interests of students, and helped to develop the discourse of critical debate.22 In keeping with the generalist tradition, this reflected back on to the activities of participants who reconsider the ecological issues in their own, home environments.23

For some, interdisciplinarity carries an enormous, and unjustifiable risk, namely that it blurs the very boundaries that are necessary for the creation of identifiable forms of knowledge.24 But interdisciplinarity does not rule out discipline specific courses and routes of study. The requirement of rigour, depth and clearer boundaries, which as Weingart indicates are the characteristics of a discipline,25 are also characteristic of integrated interdisciplinarity. Disciplinarity is a prerequisite for integrated interdisciplinarity, just as internationalism is posited upon the existence of discrete nation states, and is not synonymous with antinationalism. But the boundaries, limits and problematics that distinguish disciplines become apparent when students have experience of other disciplines, with their corresponding distinctive epistemologies, methodologies, canons and aligned pedagogies. Making students sensitive to the different claims to knowledge, approaches to texts and audiences, and underlying ontologies that demarcate disciplines, is a task to which philosophy is particularly well suited.

Students may then, as a result of identifying particular forms of knowledge, pursue a specific and specialised approach. However, because of the broader context of the Liberal Arts degree, they are also aware of the wider context that their chosen discipline operates within, its limitations and lacunae, something that participants would miss out on if they had opted for singular disciplines from the outset. The four core courses provide this broader contextualising dimension.

Core courses

There are four core courses at the Crichton Campus of the University of Glasgow. In 2006-07, two will be taught at Level One: Text and Communication (T&C) and the aforementioned Science: History and Culture (S:H&C). Two will be taught at Level Two, Issues in Contemporary Society (ICS) and Argument-Rhetoric-Theory (A-R-T). T&C draws texts, both literary and visual, from a range of sources (academic, scientific and cultural) to analyse the complex interrelationships among texts, authors, audiences and cultures. The early part of the course provides tools of textual analysis such as linguistic and stylistic features of language; narrative structure, authorial intention, problems of translation and ideological bias. These are then applied in subsequent lectures and seminars on news texts, advertising, fiction, film, science texts and political texts.

S:H&C draws attention to the evolution of scientific knowledge and how its functions, applications and status alter according to the social, political and economic factors that interact with it. About half the course traces the history of science from pre-historic times to the nineteenth century (with special focus on the scientific revolution and science's cultural impact in the Victorian era), and the other half explores sociological and ethical themes from the twentieth century (and beyond) such as the World Wars, nuclear power, the Cold War, medical controversies and the public perception of science and scientists. This course also has a section on reasoned thinking.

ICS investigates the ethics at the heart of many contentious issues. From 2007 it will likely be divided into five sections that cover medical ethics (consent and organ donation, resources, euthanasia), politics (civil disobedience, democracy, liberalisms, feminisms); relativism and conflict (relativism and virtues, just war theory, terrorism); environmentalism (vivisection, global warming, deep ecology), and education (principles of selection, free schools, self-development and educating the emotions). At the beginning of the course there is a grounding in ethical theory and continued work on argument recognition and construction.

A-R-T looks at the links and tensions between rationality and processes of persuasion. It begins with the nature and elements of arguments (introduced in S:H&C and ICS) and moves on to an in-depth analysis of some common, alleged, fallacies (for example ad verecundiam, ad populum, ad hominem). To this extent it has much in common with informal logic or critical thinking courses familiar to philosophy curricula. It then looks at the nature of rhetoric and its dangers and advantages (the focus here is on Plato and Aristotle and on the modern psychology of persuasion). The final section explores the limits of argumentation and rationality via pragma-dialectics and post-modern critiques. Throughout the course students practise argument and persuasion skills in debates and persuasion dialogues and, particularly in the middle section, they build on prior learning about communication and ethics gleaned from the other core courses.26

The four core courses complement one another in pursuing three main objectives in support of the Crichton Liberal Arts degree and its commitment to integrated interdisciplinarity. These three objectives are:

  1. In the tradition of Liberal Arts, they enable active citizenship, not just in promoting an understanding of formal democratic participation, but in the creation of relationships with others in the wider community.27
  2. More specifically, they socialise students into good academic practice. The core courses emphasise both formal and summative assessments, extensive feedback, and have been at the forefront of experiments in referral for writing skills and study skills.
  3. The cores encourage students to become reflexive learners who are able to think beyond the confines of any single discipline. They enable students to think critically and creatively about their educational learning. As a result the four cores provide techniques for integrating their studies. That is to say, the cores do not provide the key skills for any singular subject designation or discipline; rather, they support the framework for students to organise their learning and incorporate it into a coherent package.

In terms of curricular content the core courses are not designed to provide all the essential elements of any discipline. No set of four courses could provide the basic grounding to students for all the different specialisms a student might choose to concentrate upon as part of their undergraduate Master of Arts degree. Instead, these four core courses offer a way for students to integrate the courses they do undertake from a mixture of designations into a coherent learning experience.

What the four core courses also share, consistent with the liberal tradition, is an amalgamation of practical and theoretical skills. Competencies such as critical thinking, argumentation and textual analysis are mutually reinforced across the cores. To take ICS as an example: participants are introduced to contemporary political and social issues. Through these they are introduced to the theoretical debates that underpin them. The students come to understand the practical influence of these debates through the use of case studies, and this is enhanced by the talks delivered by practitioners in the field with whom they have the opportunity to debate. In keeping with the Scottish generalist tradition, scholastic philosophy in the widest sense of the term (including ideas from a variety of Continental schools, ethics, logic and rhetoric) is an important component of the core course; but it is by no means the only discipline covered. Ideas and modes of analyses drawn from gender studies, history, literary studies, media research, political science, social theory, social science and natural science also constitute the cores. They play important roles in illustrating areas of investigation, which inform the problematics of the other courses undertaken by the students and provide areas of linkage between otherwise discrete educational blocks. In terms of pedagogy, the students are also given opportunities to participate actively, through student-led tutorials and structured debates and to reflect on their own activities, ambitions and the educational process by analysing the functions of schooling, study and research.

These elements are supported and enhanced across the four core courses. The cores are designed not only to be free standing, and to work cogently as a four-piece educational package, but also to support other educational options. The cores, perhaps pre-eminently, foster a reflective, questioning approach. In part they raise issues and ways of thinking that encourage students to assess their own learning. They enable participants to make decisions concerning their own educational progress. Crucially, too, the cores are supported by the other courses. It is a mutually beneficial relationship. Skills and perspectives brought in from other disciplines are shared in class discussion, thereby broadening the opportunities for learning, opening opportunities for distinctive insights and highlighting the strengths and absences of a particular specialism.

There are other side-effect advantages to the suite of four core courses. Given the relatively small size of the University of Glasgow's Crichton Campus and the division into separate designations (currently three, but likely to increase again in the near future), the cores provide a rare opportunity for students and staff to be involved in a large class atmosphere (sometimes class sizes have risen to 90 students). Students have a chance to socialise with colleagues, from other designations, with whom they might not otherwise have an opportunity to interact. Exchanges take place between students with distinctive academic backgrounds.

An additional advantage is that because of the large class sizes and the high numbers of students per academic staff member, the cores have been amongst the most cost-effective of the 50 or so courses available at the Glasgow University section of the Crichton Campus.28 This criterion of economic-efficiency should not be confused with the stronger pedagogic justifications for the core courses and the liberal arts mode of study. However, it is a criterion which is increasingly being used to justify forms of study within the contemporary educational sector.

More pedagogically relevant, however, is that given the wide variety of students coming from such diverse backgrounds, finding shared examples by which staff can illustrate their points is relatively difficult. Arguably, the Crichton Campus has a more diverse undergraduate population than any other higher education department in Scotland, including students of all ages, backgrounds, and several different countries. There is often little shared cultural reference between the teenage Dumfries woman fresh from the local school and the retired industrial worker from Glasgow. However, in T&C every student reads a variety of texts as diverse as Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, Karl Marx and Frederich Engels' Communist Manifesto and Jonathan Swift's Modest Proposal and is introduced to many key terms in critical and cultural theory. In S:H&C a large number of case studies are explored including those on the claims to knowledge of parapsychology and phrenology, the history of the local nuclear power-plant at Chapelcross and the Galilean Revolution. In ICS all students are introduced to the terminology of ethical debate (benevolence, rights, duties, virtues), and discuss the status of animals, the claims around global warming, and the key concerns in the euthanasia debate. Students participating in A-R-T explore the rhetoric and fallacies invoked in debates around ecotourism and drug legislation. As a result, by the more advanced level courses, staff and students can refer to key texts and examples with which all students have had acquaintance, in order to illuminate more complex material (or more complex readings and interpretations of the same material) without cultural exclusion.

Opposition

Opposition to the liberal arts comes from many quarters. It is not surprising, for example, that many specialist academics are wary of the notion, and its interdisciplinary underpinnings, given the overriding cultural tendency towards specialism since the Enlightenment.

Gradually during the nineteenth century, the ideal of the unity of knowledge—that a genuine scholar ought to be familiar with the sum total of humanity's intellectual and artistic output—gave way to specialisation. Humanity's ever-growing store of knowledge, and the fact that each person is bestowed with a unique set of aptitudes, left most scholars and artists stranded in ever-shrinking islands of competence.29

Our society needs specialists; yet a society of specialists may result in the kind of blinkered 'technism' that was feared by many twentieth-century philosophers and artists as wildly divergent in their political views as Spengler, Ortega y Gasset, and Orwell, or, less dramatically, in the increasing polarisation of arts and sciences feared by C. P. Snow.30 As Snow and others have argued, a complex and hyperspecialised society needs thinkers who can work across specialisms. In a society in which the division of labour is increasing, we need to produce critical thinkers and actors who can apply their analytical skills across a range of subjects, from books, art and cinema, to politics, warfare and welfare, and to the pressing ethical conundrums thrown up by the controversies over genetic research and other new technologies. In short, we need citizens who can confidently participate in debates in these areas without fear of transgressing disciplinary boundaries.

Liberal arts education also promotes hostility from those who consider education to be more akin to technical training. Proponents of vocationalism regard any non-vocational course as empty scholasticism and ivory tower escapism.31 This is surprising given the longstanding importance that practical training takes in the Liberal Arts curriculum. Practical skills alongside theoretical were and are regarded as essential to create a broad-based education for the modern citizen.32 Placing knowledge at the service of the citizen is part of the Scottish generalist tradition. However, there are perhaps justifiable fears concerning the future of higher education, in which the main, over-riding objective is turning out the right sort of trained product for the twentyfirst century labour market.33 In addition, there have been escalating efforts by governments and business for the imposition of market relationships over scholastic ones within academia, such that students are expected to act like consumers of, rather participants in, learning.34

The type of interdisciplinarity developed at the Crichton is clearly in conflict with both anti-educational trends inflicting themselves upon the contemporary university. The empowerment of students to determine their educational path puts Crichton's liberal arts approach at variance with the more tightly defined human resource objectives of the employers. Philosophy, in particular aesthetics and ethics, whilst capable of articulating a case for economic efficiency, is also the home for other values that are not reducible to exchange-value. In addition, the skills that students develop through the Crichton Liberal Arts degree programme will have longer lasting outcomes than the shorter term, and often quickly obsolete, competencies demanded by employers looking towards quick returns on investment.

The pedagogic methods of the core courses in general and the contemporary liberal arts, which prioritise collaborative and dialogic pedagogy, face a problem in these cost-effective times, for such pedagogy mitigates against producing identical teaching packages demanded by an education market geared to unindividuated mass consumption. Off-setting these costs are the large class sizes of the core courses and the economies of scale thereby achieved, and the use of new technologies to reach new audiences, and to facilitate staff-student and student-student dialogues. There have been remote video-linking of courses such as ICS and S:H&C to locations both within and beyond formal educational institutions, providing access to these courses to those otherwise excluded. This has meant that cores have been at the forefront of remote delivery whilst maintaining their pedagogic integrity (the core courses remain at the cutting edge of remote delivery— T&C, for example, is currently in the process of modification for partial delivery via an interactive web-based learning environment).

The extension of educational opportunities through these technologies, and the Liberal Arts degree's flexible modular structure, means that more people, especially those who had been formerly under-represented at universities, have benefited from the Crichton Liberal Arts degree. Educational reactionaries, like Kingsley Amis during his later, conservative period denounced the initial opening up of universities in the late 1960s with the phrase 'more means worse'.35 In making such a declaration, Amis was assuming that resources and that new teaching techniques would be less effective than traditional methods, thereby creating debased educational experiences. To counter Amis's pessimism, Frank Furedi's example is useful. The expansion of provision by the hospitals under the emerging National Health Service in the post-war period did not mean that their standards fell as access to health-care increased. So long as the political will exists, at all levels, to grant resources, extended access need not lower standards, although Furedi, amongst others, fears that at present, in the UK, such political will does not exist.

Others oppose generalist education because they believe that their singular discipline takes educational priority. One cannot refute such a belief. The acceptance of interdisciplinarity demands a certain, perhaps unusual, modesty from academics, as a commitment to interdisciplinary approaches admits that one's own specialism is but one amongst many, with no special claims to pre-eminence or perfection, that it has absences and blind spots. It also accepts that other forms of knowledge can assist in the development of that specialism. However, interdisciplinarity also provides opportunities for new types of engagement and often surprising types of collaboration.

There is a third criticism that can be aimed at the core courses, which are essential to the Crichton model of integrated interdisciplinarity, namely that as compulsory courses they unjustly interfere with the autonomy of the learner. There are some standard defences of this type of educational imposition; after all, almost every university degree includes a substantial element of compulsory course, especially at the introductory stage, and the critics who wish to replace integrated interdisciplinarity, with the pre-eminence of their own subject, merely wish to enforce a different (and often more stringent) set of alternative compulsory courses. However, these defences, whilst true, are unsatisfactory; after all, if cutting down on student choice is bad practice, the fact that it is endemic, or used by one's opponents, is no justification. Nor can the other standard defence for compulsory courses—cost-effectiveness— be used to excuse bad practice. Ultimately, the validation of the four compulsory core courses can only be done through the same defence of any form of enforced requirement: that it ultimately extends the autonomy of those subject to the rule, so that those who have been subjected to the obligation can see the benefit of such a regulation. It is clear from the student feedback (both in formal evaluations and in informal discussion), that the overwhelming majority of students recognise the benefits of the core courses once they have participated in and completed them.

Conclusion

The Crichton Campus model of interdisciplinarity is supported by the four core courses, which provide a successful contemporary version of the Scottish generalist tradition. This Liberal Arts degree, with its democratic and student-centred approach, is anchored by the core courses embedded in philosophy (in both the wider and more scholastic interpretation). Whilst integrated interdisciplinarity faces hostility from a range of sources, its innovative and open approach to tertiary education provides students with a range of educational options. This type of degree, which in the twenty-first century is innovative in the UK context (although drawing from older Scottish generalist traditions), provides another example of the pedagogic usefulness and pertinence of philosophy in both its broader and narrow (scholastic) sense.

Bibliography

Endnotes

  1. The higher case 'Liberal Arts' is used to identify the formal degree, lower case 'liberal arts' for the more generic form of study.
  2. Although there have been modifications in the last seven years, the undergraduate MA in Liberal Arts still remains the format of degrees offered followed by the overwhelming majority of the students.
  3. Boden, 1999; Johnston and Harvey, 2002: 131.
  4. Johnston and Hill, 2005: 1; Ward, 2005: 169.
  5. See Anthony Quintin's description of conservatism being based on the disposition 'to love the familiar and to fear the unknown' (Quinton, 2000: 245).
  6. See Ward, 2005.
  7. Sack, 1962.
  8. Anderson, 1992: 71-72.
  9. Anderson, 1992: 71.
  10. Davie, 1982.
  11. Carter and Withrington, 1992: 9-10.
  12. Davie, 1982: 15
  13. Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, 2000.
  14. See for instance the actress Teri Hatcher's book Burnt Toast: And Other Philosophies of Life.
  15. Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, 2000: 1.
  16. Milne, 2004, 137: 145-46.
  17. Warburton, 2004: 4.
  18. Blackburn, 1999: 1-2.
  19. Boden, 1999: 13.
  20. 20 Historical Materialism, 10: 1; Boden refers to a similar phenomena of generalising interdisciplinarity in which 'a single theoretical perspective becomes applied to a wide range of previously distinct disciplines'. Her example is of mathematics dominating the theoretical approach of computing, psychology, physiology and anthropology in the area of cybernetics (1999: 19-20).
  21. Boden 1999: 21-22.
  22. Johnston and Harvey, 2002: 131.
  23. Ibid: 137.
  24. For a discussion of this view of disciplinary study and the dangers of its elimination see Frank Furedi, 2004: 96-97.
  25. Weingart, 2000: 29. This is a theoretical definition of disciplines, which is favoured over the sociological analysis preferred by Stephen Turner who describes disciplines in terms of institutional structure and operation (Turner, 2000: 47-49).
  26. Glasgow University, 'The Core Courses', http://www.cc.gla.ac.uk/layer2/core_modules.htm
  27. This is sometimes addressed in terms of 'community service', but such a term is too limiting suggesting that the relationships that students and graduates develop with non-academic communities are formalistic and paternalistic. However, for a discussion of the role of experiential student activity to liberal arts higher education in the US context see Rhoades, 1998. Course list available at: 'A-Z Course Index', http://www.cc.gla.ac.uk/level_2/course_index.htm
  28. Cummings, 1989: 2.
  29. Snow, The Two Cultures.
  30. Baumann, 1987: 38.
  31. Sack, 1962.
  32. See for instance, the infamous remarks ascribed to the then New Labour Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, that universities exist to 'enable the British economy' and that subjects which are not market-orientated are merely 'ornamental' and should not be financially supported by the state, Q. Clarke, Baty, 2003. For other complaints about the restructuring of education primarily upon market relationships see Evans, 2004.
  33. Furedi, 2004: 116-17.
  34. Q. Amis, Furedi, 2004, 99.

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