Do You See What I See? The Epistemology of Interdisciplinary Inquiry

It seems to me that since the answer to the question in the title of my paper is, for members of interdisciplinary groups, not always and obviously, yes, an examination of why this is so and how it might be overcome is in order. The impetus, and, indeed, part of the content for this investigation arose out of my participation in the Sloan Program of the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois over the past two years. That program was in large part designed as an interdisciplinary effort to examine the role of the social sciences and humanities in an engineering curriculum. The method was interdisciplinary faculty seminars, and my particular interest was in the processes which occurred in those seminars. I was a general participant in the meetings which brought in a series of speaker-discussants on the topics, How does View the World. X was each week replaced by the name of the discipline of the speaker. In addition, I chaired an interdisciplinary subgroup whose topic was the interdisciplinary research and teaching process. Much of what I will say in the following is a result of these experiences, and although a philosopher, I will be making some non-