Post-industrial and late-modern knowledge societies demand interdisciplinarity in order to facilitate knowledge production. ‘Interdisciplinarity’ is one of the most popular catchwords used in present-day knowledge politics. This paper aims to clarify the various meanings of interdisciplinarity in order to distinguish different kinds of knowledge politics. The objective is to show which specific type of interdisciplinarity is involved in the NSF's scenario on converging technologies – one of the most prominent kinds of knowledge politics. I argue that the NSF's knowledge politics is based on what I call ‘techno-object interdisciplinarity’. This type of interdisciplinarity will be explicated and contrasted with the research program of the European Commission on converging technologies (CTEKS initiative). I will show that the main difference between the two kinds of knowledge politics about converging technologies the focus on object interdisciplinarity on the one hand and problem-oriented interdisciplinarity on the other. I will argue in favor of an explicit normative discourse and conclude that a critical reflection on, and revision of goals and purposes should guide knowledge politics towards our common future.
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Jan C. Schmidt (2007) studied this question.
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