An Overview of Archdisciplinarity
Throughout the website, we use the term “big picture framework” and “big picture thinking”, because it’s everyday language that every day people can more easily understand. Yet we have more technical language that we use. There are three terms to explain what we mean.
The three terms are 1) archdisciplinarity as a scope of inquiry, 2) archtheory as a scale of theory, and 3) archmodernity as a stage of social evolution.
Archdisciplinarity as Scopes of Inquiry
Scopes of inquiry are like containers for each scale of theory. For scopes of inquiry, the sequence of its growth has been as follows. In academia there are a wide diversity of disciplines, each with their own respective theories and practices. A discipline can borrow from another discipline, but it stays grounded in its roots. When people do research and practices with multiple disciplines together jointly, it’s called interdisciplinarity. When people do research and practices and draw from all known disciplines, it’s called transdisciplinarity. We are introducing a new term, called archdisciplinarity. Archdisciplinarity is when people do research and practice at a scope that stretches across transdisciplinary approaches. Archdisciplinarity is not an ideology, it is a scope of academic inquiry.
Archtheory as Scales of Inquiry
Scales of theory follow closely with scopes of inquiry. Historically, there have been theories which are produced by disciplinary research and practice, and metatheories which are mostly produced by interdisciplinarity research and practice. Everyone knows what a theory is – a proposition about what is true with supporting evidence. Metatheory can mean different things to different people. Metatheory can be a theory applied to itself, or a theory about one or more other theories. When metatheories broaden to include all known theories and fit them together into a unified framework, they become unification metatheories. We are introducing a new term, called archtheory. An archtheory is a proposition about how to fit together unification metatheories with supporting evidence. When doing archdisciplinary comparative analysis, universal congruencies or archetypal universal patterns that hold across unification metatheories are found, called arches. Arches are the means in which unification metatheories are fitted together, and the basis in which archtheories are made. Arches are good candidates for natural laws.
Archmodernism as Stages of Social Evolution
Stages of social evolution require multiple people co-existing with the same kind of sensibility. There are distinct stages of social evolution, each with their own sensibilities. They can can be shown to emerge in a historical sequence, but they can also describe sensibility characteristics of individuals, cultures, institutions, and societies coexisting today. With pre-modernism sensibilities, people primarily base their worldviews on religious notions. With modernism sensibilities, people primarily base their worldviews on scientific notions. With post-modernism sensibilities, people primarily base their worldview on something called structuralism, which means that people think all truths and knowledge are relative and situational. With metamodern sensibilities, people primarily base their worldviews on recognizing that all the previous sensibilities have positive and negative traits, and that we can carry the best of what came before us forward.
We are introducing a new term, called archmodernism. Archmodernism is very new, and we don’t really have a lot of examples to observe about it. What we do know, is that it involves people who have authored or advocate for unification metatheories, all coordinating together towards a higher order synthesis of human knowing and doing, with the intention to understand, solve for, and overcome our local to global complex challenges in new ways. It means acknowledging that while previous sensibilities have solved problems from the previous social sensibility, they create new problems of their own, and that no previous sensibility has yet been able to implement the kind of changes our world needs at the scope and scale it requires.
What is the research lab?
We do three things: comparative analysis, theory building, and real world application. We’re interested in doing comparative analysis across unification metatheories in search of the conclusions they all share in common about how we, our world, and the universe works. We also do theory building – improving existing theory, metatheory, and unification metatheory, and fitting together unification metatheories into archtheories. Our end goal is to apply this high level theory and discover new ways to make our world a better place. This kind of research requires people from diverse backgrounds with a wide array of expertise at all scales of theory.
How is research done?
How research is done, is by investigating these big picture, theory of everything, unification metatheories in search of what they have in common. The methodology we place emphasis on is comparative analysis. Comparative analysis means that researchers try and put aside their biases and look at unification metatheories as artifacts of human knowing and doing. Comparison is a natural cognitive function, and can be done in a lot of different contexts.
An easy way to begin is to do comparative analysis by looking for how big picture frameworks are related over eras, across places, or the individual, cultural, institutional, and social contexts in which they were made.
An intermediate approach would be doing a comparative analysis by taking one or more arches that have already been identified from previous comparisons of other big picture frameworks, see if and how they also exist in frameworks within or across any scale of theory.
An advanced comparative analysis would be to do a full one-to-one comparative analysis between two big picture frameworks on a fine-grained level of analysis to get super clear on what is the same, similar, different, or opposite – towards discovery of arches.
This is a new field, so we encourage researchers to be creative in their comparative approaches.
Why is this research done?
The history of human civilization is a story of moving towards increasing degrees of resolution in our renditions about the environments, world, and universe that we inhabit. We’re at the point where we are getting some good bearing on where we came from, where we are at now, and where we’re going.
Individuals and groups who work at this level of inquiry do not often find homes at universities. Universities often focus on disciplinary and interdisciplinary (sometimes called multidisciplinary) theory and practice. Transdisciplinary university studies are still quite rare, yet are slowly making their way into the mainstream of academic inquiry. The kinds of challenges that we face as a species can’t wait around for university politics to change. We created this nonprofit and research lab to fill this need for both ourselves and for others who want a professional setting to work on this.
Where is this research done and how can I get involved?
If you want to join us to participate in research, visit our FaceBook page, or contact us directly.
Foundations of Archdisciplinarity: Advancing beyond the meta
Foundations of Archdisciplinarity introduces Archdisciplinarity as the academic inquiry that treats big picture, transdisciplinary, theory of everything, unification metatheories as units of analysis for comparison and contrast. In this book, we show the evolution of human knowledge through sociocultural stages, articulate scopes and scales of theories and practices from theory to archtheory, and propose universal pattern laws called arches that persist across the most advanced, integrated frameworks in the world.
Download Foundations of Archdisciplinarity
