by woodleywonderworks
Science Without Boundaries:
[Via AAAS News – RSS Feed]
AAAS Southwestern Meeting in Tulsa Explores Science Without Boundaries
The 2009 AAAS Southwestern and Rocky Mountain Division Annual Meeting will convene in Tulsa, Oklahoma., on 28 March for four days of events including a two-part special topic symposium on the climate and ecology of the Cross Timbers and South Great Plains.
The meeting—to be held on the campus of the University of Tulsa—will feature symposia on rainforest natural history, motor speech disorders, and alternative energies; along with student poster sessions and science communication workshops.
David Nash, executive director of the division, said this year’s meeting will emphasize the importance for science to transcend traditional boundaries.
“The largest problems facing society are so large and burdensome that no one scientific discipline, institution, or research method can find solutions,” said Nash. “This year’s meeting is going to show why scientific collaboration is vital to the scientific process.”
[More]
More meetings should be on exactly this same topic. Well, maybe not the same topic but the same underlying premise. Innovative research, and the underlying solutions that drive technology, can not be done anymore in silos of scientific disciplines.
The answers will be less and less likely to arise from a Department of Biochemistry or Oncology alone. It will take work across disciplines to find the answers.
It will require systems thinking and synthesis of information. Not reductionist approaches and analytical deconstruction.
The faster that organizations realize this and actually to something positive about it, the faster we will solve these problems. AAAS has recognized this as have several other organizations. Now if we can just change the ship of grants that is the NIH and then redo how research universities are put together we may get somewhere.
Baby Steps.
[Crossposted at Path to Sustainable and Path to Sustainable]
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