Transdisciplinarity as a discipline and a way of being: complementarities and creative tensions

Transdisciplinarity is generally defined by the inclusion of non-academic stakeholders in the process of knowledge production. Transdisciplinarity is a promising notion, but its ability to efficiently address the world’s most pressing issues still requires improvement. Several typologies of transdisciplinarity have been proposed, generally with a theoretical versus practical dichotomy (Mode 1/Mode 2), and effort has focused on possible linkages between different types. However, in the last two decades, transdisciplinarity has significantly matured to the extent that the classical theoretical versus practical distinction appears clearly limited. In this paper, a reframing of the debate is proposed by considering transdisciplinarity as a new discipline and as a way of being. The conception of transdisciplinarity as a discipline can be related to the recent development of the broader discipline of “integration and implementation sciences” (i2S), to which “practical” Mode 2 transdisciplinarity is a major contributor. When transdisciplinarity is considered as a way of being, it is inseparable from personal life and extends far beyond the professional activities of a researcher. To illustrate this conception, the work and life of Edgar Morin can be used as an exemplary reference in conjunction with other streams of thought, such as integral theory. Transdisciplinarity as a discipline and transdisciplinarity as a way of being have complementarities in terms of researchers’ personal dispositions and space for expression in academia. The proposed distinction also raises the question of the status of consciousness in transdisciplinary projects, which may be a fruitful controversial topic for the transdisciplinary research community.