|
:::I agree that some jargon is valuable, but my experience as a lit. student leads me to believe that even when it's not necessary people invent and use jargon to make their texts more obscure. The main problem with jargon in the lit. field, is that it is not precise, and that it has come to have no other function than to keep outsiders out. In other fields, I've studied the problem is more complex because there is value in brief and clear communication which factors into the use of jargon. Still, it's a common occurrence to see three-penny jargon words used when a simple English word would suffice. A philosopher friend of mine is always "adjudicating between positions" when he could simply be deciding... |
|
:::I also agree that much of what is done under the guise of interdisciplinary work is just plain bad scholarship, and that's just another part of the problem. |
|
Hmm... "Will the real interdisciplinary people please stand up?" I agree that interdisciplinarity is presently being given a bad name by all sorts of opportunists. But in my opinion there is room for "good" interdisciplinary work. For instance, I'm thinking of synthetic work that points out the commonalities between the ways things are done in different fields. There are many different-but-actually-the-same jargon words out there. Things can get pretty exciting when you finally find the name that has been given in a particular field to what you're interested in. It opens up different ways of thinking about it. And prevents you from reinventing the wheel. I wonder how many people have unknowingly reinvented mathematical structures and ideas, just because they didn't know they had already been explored? In a way, math is the meta-jargon that binds a lot of things together... --Seb |
|
Have a look at [''Tied knowledge''] by Brian Martin for related lines of thought... |
![[Home]](wikipedia.png)