Studying water: reflections on the problems and possibilities of interdisciplinary working

Some of the barriers to interdisciplinary working are not between natural and social scientists, but are philosophical rather than disciplinary. In this essay we explore the implications of this for the production of knowledge intended to support effective human intervention in a field such as the study of water catchments, and tentatively propose four strategies for addressing these barriers. These are: (1) avoidance, through researchers with different philosophies working alongside each other without integrating their knowledge; (2) working in multidisciplinary but single-paradigm teams; (3) adopting common philosophical ground, in which context we suggest critical realism as a potentially valuable candidate; or (4) for researchers to develop common criteria for assessing the quality of their work, even where they differ over philosophical fundamentals. Of these the last seems likely to be most fruitful, and would require an interdisciplinary team to examine explicitly their understanding and criteria for validity, to recognise similarities in their approaches to generating well-grounded knowledge, and to be open-minded in their acceptance of difference.