I had some difficulty understanding the query Reid was presenting in his email. It took a bit of translating, I think. I'll try to describe my reasoning. The initial, plain reading was that Reid didn't understand the paragraph because it contained words he was unfamiliar with. I tried to find them. The paragraph in question passes through Word with far fewer red squigglies than most of mine, and I consider my own writing to be downright folksy. Gods help us if we are limited to Word's words. With the exception of an AWOL apostrophe, I cant think what I would change. Simply writing to a list indicating you don't understand particular words strikes me as a terrific waste of time, so I realized that Reid must have something else in mind. Clearly, there was a deeper meaning that needed to be drawn out. Perhaps what Reid was saying is this: "Although exposed to terms like axiology and praxis--as any social scientist has been over the last few decades, whether wittingly or no--those in my own field(s) tend to treat these ideas superficially and uncritically. I wonder whether Jeremy or others might be willing to provide some good entry points to the idea of transdisciplinarity for someone who does not have a significant background in, say, cultural studies or STS." At least that is the way I translated his epistle, and as someone who has spent the last few years bathed in a different kind of scholarly credo, it resonates with me. Its purpose was not transparent, and I suppose there are other possible interpretations. I hope that Reid will correct me if the one I have proffered is incorrect. Alex PS. Yes, I made up the word "squigglies." It is a portmanteau of "squiggles" and "uglies," i.e., something that squiggles in the ugliest of ways.

...

This was taken from Jeremy Hunsinger's website at: http://transdisciplinarystudies.tmttlt.com/

Evidently, science as Jeremy understands it, is properly described by crafting words of his own making. In my judgment, it suffers from a di-flucass of the ugang and is further compackliated by a clogged zortch.

Reid

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Dr. W. Reid Cornwell The Center For Internet Research P.O. Box 6369 Breckenridge, CO

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Perhaps what Reid was saying is this: "Although exposed to terms like axiology and praxis--as any social scientist has been over the last few decades, whether wittingly or no--those in my own field(s) tend to treat these ideas superficially and uncritically. I wonder whether Jeremy or others might be willing to provide some good entry points to the idea of transdisciplinarity for someone who does not have a significant background in, say, cultural studies or STS."

actually, I think that both cultural studies and STS focus on interdisciplinary/disciplinary studies, which is why i wanted to push for transdisciplinary studies. I think the best place to look for transdisciplinary studies is to grab an encyclopedia of higher education or other encyclopedia that is fairly advanced and to see if it is in there. Once you have that, and it is in a few encyclopedias, then you will have the context for the early debates on transdisciplinarity vs interdisciplinarity, with that context in hand, then you might look at the transformation of institutions to include the idea of transdisciplinarity in the 70's, along with the Guattari and Vilar report to the U.N. on the topic, that report was 1992 and can be found: http://web.archive.org/web/20020612053100/http://www.fnet.fr/ASLB/ ARCHIVES/TEXTES/GUATTARI-transdicip.html That report, I think, reopened much of the current debate in Europe and Australia in regards to transdisciplinarity. What launched my interest and my reframing of some of my ideas into transdisciplinarity was the Gary Genosko's book 'Félix Guattari: an aberrant introduction' along with Guattari's works Chaosmosis and Three Ecologies. Other works that I'd recommend are : http://www.interdisciplines.org/interdisciplinarity/papers/5 http://www.btgjapan.org/dial_01.html http://epl.scu.edu:16080/~gbowker/elusive.pdf Other works can be found in other field, such as the fields that I mentioned in the description of the Transdisciplinary Studies book series. Hope that helps (I realize that transdisciplinary studies is actually not the topic of air-l, so I'll leave it at this) Jeremy Hunsinger School of Library and Information Science Pratt Institute () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.aoir.org The Association of Internet Researchers http://www.stswiki.org/ stswiki http://cfp.learning-inquiry.info/ LI-the journal http://transdisciplinarystudies.tmttlt.com/ Transdisciplinary Studies:the book series

yes, i realize that some people prefer things to be simple. Personally, I prefer precision and clarity, though. We don't really have an association motto... and if we did... I'd support "we're all in this together', where 'this' takes many possible meanings. On Aug 12, 2006, at 12:36 PM, Ellis Godard wrote:

I'll second that, uh, sentiment. Maybe "Unclog the zortch!" could be the new association motto. :)

-eg

Jeremy Hunsinger School of Library and Information Science Pratt Institute () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.aoir.org The Association of Internet Researchers http://www.stswiki.org/ stswiki http://cfp.learning-inquiry.info/ LI-the journal http://transdisciplinarystudies.tmttlt.com/ Transdisciplinary Studies:the book series