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Alf Hornborg

Alf Hornborg

Professor emeritus

Alf Hornborg

Toward an alternative dialogue between the social and natural sciences

Författare

  • Johannes Persson
  • Alf Hornborg
  • Lennart Olsson
  • Henrik Thorén

Summary, in Swedish

Interdisciplinary research within the field of sustainability studies often faces incompatible ontological assumptions deriving from natural and social sciences. The importance of this fact is often underrated and sometimes leads to the wrong strategies. We distinguish between two broad approaches in interdisciplinarity: unificationism and pluralism. Unificationism seeks unification and perceives disciplinary boundaries as conventional, representing no long-term obstacle to progress, while pluralism emphasises more ephemeral and transient interdisciplinary connections and underscores the autonomy of the disciplines with respect to one another. Both approaches have their merits and pitfalls. Unification runs the risk of scientific imperialism while pluralism can result in insurmountable barriers between disciplines. The bulk of the paper is a comparison of eight distinct interdisciplinary attempts at integration of knowledge across social and natural and science. The comparison is carried out as four pairwise comparisons: Environmental Economics vs. Ecological Economics; Environmental History vs. Historical Ecology; Resilience Theory vs. Political Ecology; and Sociobiology vs. Actor-Network Theory. We conclude by showing that none of these prominent eight interdisciplinary fields in and of itself manages to provide, in a satisfactory way, such an integrated understanding of sustainability. We argue for pluralism and advocate complex ways of articulating divergent ontological assumptions. This is not equivalent to pursuing knowledge unification either through scientific imperialism or by catering to the requirements of narrow practical utility. It means prioritizing interdisciplinary integration by simultaneously acknowledging the role of societal and natural factors in accounting for sustainability issues.

Avdelning/ar

  • Teoretisk filosofi
  • Vetenskap och Beprövad Erfarenhet (VBE)
  • Humanekologi
  • LUCSUS

Publiceringsår

2018-10-24

Språk

Engelska

Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie

Ecology and Society

Volym

23

Issue

4

Dokumenttyp

Artikel i tidskrift

Förlag

The Resilience Alliance

Ämne

  • Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
  • Philosophy

Nyckelord

  • Interdisciplinarity
  • ontology
  • pluralism
  • Scientific imperialism
  • sustainability science
  • unificationism
  • Interdisciplinarity
  • ontology
  • Pluralism
  • Scientific imperialism
  • sustainability issues
  • unificationism
  • sustainability science

Status

Published

Projekt

  • LUCID - Lund University Centre of Excellence for Integration of Social and Natural Dimensions of Sustainability
  • Science and Proven Experience

Forskningsgrupp

  • VBE

ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt

  • ISSN: 1708-3087