“biophysics and interdisciplinarity in a transnational context,”

Practicing interdisciplinary: building biophysics in the US and China

Christine Y. L. LukArizona State University

East Asian Biomedical Research Conference

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Overview Unpacking keywords I: interdisciplinarity

Unpacking keywords II: biophysics

The research framework: biophysics as a case for analyzing and comparing interdisciplinarity

Biophysics in China: Institute of Biophysics in the Chinese Academy of Sciences

Biophysics in the US: the Biodesign Institute, ASU

Institutional imperatives, disciplinary dissonance, and epistemic culture


Huh?

What do you mean? Interdisciplinarity?


‘The challenge to disciplinarity in the 90s is a reflexive call from the academics living in their protected disciplinary domains, hoping to get closer and related to the real world in which we live in. One way to effect change is through critical reflection of the social system from which these scholars were born....Interdisciplinarity is an administrative form of anxiety and a personal form of hope.’ (Menand 2010: 63)

Interdisciplinarity is synonymous to innovation, progressiveness and is adopted as a catchphrase for any fundable proposal. (Weingart 2000)

Interdisciplinarity is nothing more than an administrative buzzword


Does interdisciplinarity really mean nothing?


It does. But to precisely define and critically evaluate interdisciplinarity is complicated and contested due to the whole gamut of issues and interests surrounding interdisciplinarity.

Julie Thompson Klein (1984, 1990, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2007, 2009...):

‘the notion of interdisciplinarity does not refer to an objective, unambiguous property of research...It is almost impossible to formulate a single definition of scholarly activities that, for example, expand the scope of questions and information sources to other fields, develop theoretical models that span conceptual spaces of several fields, or transform existing beliefs by showing evidence from other fields.’ (2009:4)


‘Interdisciplinarity remains the generic all-encompassing concept and includes all activities which juxtapose, apply, combine, synthesize, integrate or transcend parts of two or more disciplines.’

‘Interdisciplinarity is best understood not as one thing but as a variety of different ways of bridging and confronting the prevailing disciplinary approaches.’


How to empirically measure/evaluate interdisciplinary research?


•measure the cognitive content of research-the novelty of the combination of the research fields-the intended relationship between the disciplinary components -the challenge the research poses to existing cultural and cognitive boundaries -the range and depth of intellectual skills and resources that are called for •what proportion of the research is ‘interdisciplinary’ -the scope of interaction (what is integrated) -the type of interaction (how it is done)-the type of goals (why it takes place)

Criteria for assessing interdisciplinary research


Comparing the institutional imperative of interdisciplinary infrastructure by looking

at the lab history of biophysics


Why biophysics? Why not biochemistry?


“The interdisciplinary character of a research effort cannot be derived from the pure labels of the participating fields, but must instead be assessed on the basis of how the fields are represented, how they are related to the research problem and to each other, and to what extent the researchers themselves experience that the encounter of fields contains a special epistemic challenge.” (Klein et al. 2009: 15, my emphasis)


the epistemic challenge posed by the highly differentiated epistemic cultures in

biology and physics


On physics and biology“It is true that physics and chemistry have a firm hold over biology by virtue of two great generalizations: living matter is made up of the same elements as those of the inanimate world, and conservation of energy is valid for processes occurring in living matter, just as it is for all processes in the inanimate world.” (Delbrück 1966: 261)


Molecular Biology (MB)

vs.

High-energy Physics (HEP)


MB HEP

Leadership style & power structure

Individually embodied by the

lab director

Collectivized in large-scale

experiment under which individuals

are subsumed

Epistemic apparatus

Immutable mobiles and standardized

lab manuals

The “superordering” of

components & instruments

Epistemic goal Positive knowledge Negative/liminal knowledge

Epistemic site Laboratory as an

internal processing unit for experiment

Separation of experiment and

laboratory


The research questions1. What are disciplinary-distinct ways of knowing and legitimation in biophysics? How are specific differences between physics and biology instituted and re-configured in biophysics?

2. Is biophysics constructed in the same way universally? How are the epistemic conflict between physics and biology reconciled and re-instituted in different countries?


Lab studies as emplaced in the national capital?

The argument: The way place imposes a territorialized normative order to the laboratory ecology is rendered explicit in the period-specific politics of urban planning in Beijing.

The next step: mapping lab-specific politics as embedded in the period-specific politics of urban planning of Beijing


The epistemic subjecthood of biophysics: at the intersection between physics and biology or a migration from physics to

biology or vice versa?


Bio Biophysics Phy

Membership

“some traditionally trained physicists have transformed themselves into biophysicists and found rewarding new challenges. Wingreen and Laderman of Agilent Technologies have made that career trek, and their experiences illustrate the fascination of biophysics and its importance to shaping the theoretical basis of modern biology.” (American Institute of Physics 2003)



Epistemictension

“Biology now faces two possibilities, either physicalization of biology or biologicalization of physics. Physicalization of biology limits the role of observer only to an external agent as physics does. The viewpoint has been shown to be extremely successful and would suppose to continue to be so in the name of mechanistic scheme. However, this practical usefulness has been accomplished at the expense of employing a form of ceteris paribus that allows for an intrusion of interaction that remains reaction-free.” (Matsuno 1993)



Epistemic construct

Biophysics as a disciplinary construct for physicists doing biology ? Biophysics as a disciplinary construct for physicists doing biology ? Biophysics as a disciplinary construct for physicists doing biology ?


Thank you for your attention!


“biophysics and interdisciplinarity in a transnational context,”

Technology

interdisciplinarity

research elds

notion of interdisciplinarity

research poses

research framework

institute of biophysics

cognitive content of

disciplinary dissonance