CATALN: A Transdisciplinary Dictionary for Research and Practice
Supporting Transdisciplinary through Common Language
Overview
This guide aims to provide a set of common meanings for key concepts used across academic disciplines. The objective is to reduce discord and misunderstanding. The CATLAN community will aim to use these terms within the broad meanings given, developing these where required. The article is however publicly accessible, so that others might borrow from our conventions.
Background
The background to this article is that English is an unregulated organic language: there are no bodies that claim to have overriding authority to deliberate and set expectations for correct and standard uses. Some bodies, organisations and publications — such as Oxford University’s Dictionaries — do have the function of setting standards to aid standardisation and effective communication. However, these only attempt to use pragmatic definition to reflect common meanings; through status association such patterns are then reinforced in practice (Britannica 2023).
Within academic discourses, the signified meaning of many words has retained greater diversity, and meanings of the same word are often significantly, and indeed, problematically, different within disciplinary communities. This creates practical and often deeply emotionally embedded frictions —via deeply entwined senses of identity — when those trained in one or a limited number of disciplines discuss with those from different disciplinary traditions.
Building on the methodology of dictionaries, of both common language and academic discourses, this article aims to generate a set of terms and associated meanings that support transdisciplinary thought, discussion and practice. Terms are chosen for their likely relevance in transdisciplinary communication and the general development of intellectual activities that draw on a multitude of disciplinary contributions to wider and more universal understanding.
Vocabulary for Transdisciplinary Working
Analysis: the process performed when information is abstracted from one intellectual context and placed in another, with the objective of deepening and/or broadening understanding as a result.
A more colloquial way to describe this to “take two sets of knowledge and bash them together: you look for what parts of each sticks together, and what falls out”.
As an abstract example: the content of qualitative testimony given at interview is compared to an existing body of conceptual or theorical understanding. Practically, this likely involves the “coding” of a transcript according to theoretic or conceptual categories to identify the degree of congruence and completeness, all the time searching for any lack of fit, or insufficiency in overlap. The practices of coding is the physical mechanisms to undertake analysis, but this is done to force intellectual comparison. The object is to deepen understanding of either the empirical situation or the applicability of existing theory/concepts in a new empirical situation. Likewise, a empirical case study of a certain practice is compared to wider theory/conceptual models that claim to predict the existence of certain characteristics: this helps deepen understanding of the case study and provides a means to critique the existing theoretical/conceptual knowledge used.
Colonialism: Can be usefully interpreted as embedded in knowledge and practice that concentrates power for one human identity community by marginalises and disempowering another. Colonialism can be manifest in ontologically objective practices, such as the forceful invasion of one community's space by another, which might then extend to denying the local community access to resources naturally arising in that space. This form of colonialism is traditionally associated with imperial world systems, in which some few nations states occupied other territories and extract natural resources for the advantage of certain powerful groups. However, colonialism has also existed in ontologically subjective processes, and these are usually closely embedded with physical processes of power. For example, the knowledge generated and regenerated by certain communities in European dehumanised Africans, being instrumental in supporting their enslavement. Changes and finally a transition in these discourses supported the active, physical deconstruction of slavery. Much of our European language however, remains colonised, embedded with often implicit misogynistic and racist tropes, to identify but two instances of colonialism. For example, females of often thought of, and represented in language as emotional, while make actors are ascribed characteristics of stability and rational analysis.
Decolonisation: The intellectual and practical commitment to identifying colonial realities and deconstructing them from within language and knowledge, as well as human practices and material coding. The removal of status of those who made their fortune and generate difluence through trading black salves is an example of the latter; identifying and communicating concern for colonially embedded discourses is another.
Discourse, Discourses: These are “texts”, or sets of representations, of a subject in written, pictorial or aural form. The analytical term is valuable as it acknowledges that these constructions are also mixtures of empirical, epistemologically objective statements and normative positions. Discourses are always embedded with ontological and epistemological assumptions and structure their creation, use and assimilation. Therefore, discourses are always created, create and recreate process of power that shape knowledge and understanding.
The article below offers an excellent analysis of how subtle and likely unconsidered components of an image embed meaning and power relations.
Empirics, Empirical: A body of knowledge, or process for developing knowledge, that requires observation of what happens in reality. Empirical knowledge can be developed in both naturally arising and experimental contexts: an example of the former being the observation of how people use a pavement on a city street (open system), and the latter might be measurement of reactants and products in the closed system of a glass beaker. NB. Not all empirical studies create equally representative insights into patterns in open systems — what happens in a beaker might not be the same as what happens to the same chemicals in the earths atmosphere.
Epistemology: the philosophical concern of how we might create valid and meaningful representations (knowledge / “truth”) of different aspects of our lived experience. Meaningful consideration of this almost inevitably requires prior thought about the Ontology of our subject matter. Epistemology likely also requires a consideration of how the concept of Discourses might mediate the possibility of creating accounts that are sufficient credible to be valuable in informing theory and action.
Knowledge:
Information:
Language: The role of language is fundamental to the human creation of knowledge. Transdisciplinary thought about this might involve the way that language is created: usually through signs, which can be thought of as created when a “signifying” term (or word, being an oral or orthographic representation) is paired with a “signified” meaning. Traditionally, some have argued these relationships are objectively arising, being given from outside of human agency and power. However, more academically robust theories have suggested that words are subject to arbitrary variables. more serious study recognises that different categorising systems have different Ontological underpinnings. Some language communities use categories that arise from practical usage: here, “tomatoes” are placed under the larger category of “vegetables” because this is where they are found in a supermarket. Others classify tomatoes as fruit, based on genetic science that establishes that the reproductive characteristics and process of tomatoes are closer to other berries, than any other vegetables. The way language is used to represent the world is complex; it is subject to need and power dynamics. Some actors and communities use one construction of meaning over another, and as academic thinkers, we should take care to consider this social reality, its implications and make an informed and transparent plan as to how we will manage this. Understanding how power is embedded in language is also help by reference to the concept of Discourses.
Laws: Body of knowledge created from empirical observation that does not offer any explanation for why a pattern occurs, but only that all observations of the same process result int he same outcome. As such, Laws are also predictive. E.g. the Laws of gravity do not explain why gravity works, only that given certain variables, certain outcomes will always result.
Methodology: A body of knowledge that combines philosophical consideration of Ontology (metaphysics) and Epistemology with practical thought about how to generate data.
Ontology: the philosophical consideration of what the world is? The discussion arises from intellectual concerns that what humans perceive as a reality “external” to their minds, might lack the assumed substance. For example, Plato suggested that human experience might be actually be closer to watching a shadow puppet play, cast on the wall of a cave, and controlled by puppeteers. More contemporary and popular media has considered the same possibility: for example, the movies The Truman Show and the Matrix offer engaging considerations of the fallibility of human ontological understanding the true nature of the world outside their senses. The question for thinkers and learners is always: can we know that our life experience represents the “real”, and therefore something worth of study; or might the lack of a substantive external reality negate the need for any serious concern to create knowledge about this? Beyond this question, the way that human Language imposes categories in order to classify the world is essential for reflection.
Political, politics: politics arises when Power is embedded in interactions between human actors. Therefore, politics is everywhere, and almost all human activity is political to some extent. The key academic quality of transdisciplinary thought is to acknowledge this social reality, and manage it reflectively and appropriately in the creation of knowledge.
Power: Foundationally, this exists when an actor or object is influenced to do or be something they might not otherwise have done or been. Power is everywhere and omnipresent. Power can have different Ontologies: some power is derived from ontologically objective mechanisms and actants: a falling rock and impact the physical existence of biotic and abiotic components of external reality; introducing more energy into a closed system alters entropy of that system. Power is also a socially constructed fact of lived human reality: a judge makes a decision to condemn a person accused of a crime and they can be imprisoned; yet, all of those social facts are invented and accepted in human consciousness and nothing is externally given. The most widespread source of ontologically subjective power is Language. This is because language does not just represent knowledge; language is also the medium through which knowledge is actively constructed, individually and collectively. Understanding how power is embedded in language is helped by reference to the concept of Discourses. All forms of knowledge creation, be they teaching and learning, or research focused, are therefore inherently political acts.
Theory and Theories: Body of knowledge created from empirical observation that — unlike Laws — offers an explanation about why a pattern occurs and therefore, provides the opportunity to predict empirical outcomes in yet unseen situations.
