Discovering the Plan behind the Gordian Knot New Trends in Social and Liberal Sciences

At the beginning of December 2015, Dr. Tamer Balcı, one of the founding editors for New Trends in Social and Liberal Sciences, asked me to “write an essay or a welcome message indicating the significance of interdisciplinary studies.” It is a rare but rather daunting honor to be asked to write an opening essay for a new journal. How does one who is immersed in such interdisciplinary research share that excitement with others who are similarly engaged; or more provocatively, with those who are not? Perhaps by recog-nizing that interdisciplinary studies is not “new” per se but rather that it is the most dy-namic means of understanding phenomena in the social and liberal sciences.