The Kantian Effect: Reconceiving the Integration of Knowledge in Interdisciplinary Theory

In interdisciplinary studies, multiple definitions and practices proliferate. Interdisciplinarians such as William H. Newell claim that complex systems theory provides the rationale that we need to guide reform. However, complex systems theory alone cannot rationalize interdisciplinarity and inform what Ernest Boyer calls the scholarship of integration. Language and texts also play a key role. This claim is just as significant today as it was when Immanuel Kant noted the importance of texts in his controversial blueprint for higher education. Not only is Kant one of the fathers of modern philosophy and constructivism, but he is also a key architect of the disciplinary silos that instrumentalists such as Newell claim to oppose but indirectly reinforce through reductionist practices. A dialogic conceptual framework recalibrates these practices and their correlates, thus improving interdisciplinary education in the digital age. This article reveals that a study of Kantian architectonics and its dialogic reinterpretation by Mikhail Bakhtin has much to teach educators about interdisciplinarity as an agent for integrative learning and higher education reform.