This book addresses the urgent need for a large and systematic analysis of current interdisciplinary (ID) research and practice. It demonstrates how ID is essentially a cognitive phenomenon, something different from the frivolous and inconsequential attempt of trying to overcome the disciplinary competencies and exigencies. By ID, the authors show that it is a manifestation of the transversal rationality that underlies current scientific activity. It is the very progress of specialized disciplines that requires interdisciplinary new research practices and new forms of articulation between domains, something that has a strong impact on the traditional disciplinary structure of scientific and educational institutions. Divided into two parts, the book presents a conceptual framework as well as several case studies on ID practices. The book aims at covering three main themes. It contributes to the stabilization of ID meaning and characterizes the main ID theorizations which have been proposed until now. It builds an innovative and broad understanding of the several ID determinations as an essentially cognitive phenomenon and of its institutional implications at the level of disciplinary structures and curricular organization. Finally, it distinguishes and maps the diversity of ID procedures and practices which are being used and tested by contemporary scientific and educational institutions. This book is addressed to philosophers, scientists and every one interested in science production and reproduction, including science teaching.

This volume critically reexamines Otto Neurath s conception of the unity of science. Some of the leading scholars of Neurath s work, along with many prominent philosophers of science critically examine his place in the history of philosophy of science and evaluate the relevance of his work for contemporary debates concerning the unity of science."

This volume puts together most of the papers given at the interdisciplinary workshop on DIAGRAMMATOLOGY AND DIAGRAM PRAXIS held at the University of Lisbon, 23-24th March 2009. The workshop was organized by the Research Project "Image in Science and Art" of the Center for Philosophy of Science of the University of Lisbon (CFCUL), aiming to analyze the place of image and diagrammatic thinking in different epistemological and semiotic programs. The articles are organized in three main sections. The first, Fundamental Issues of Diagrammatology, is more historically oriented including papers from Olga Pombo, Sybille Kramer, Jan Wopking, Frederik Stjernfelt and Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen. The second part, Visual Diagram Praxis, comprises four case studies on diagram practices from Augusto J. Franco Oliveira, Angel Nepomuceno-Fernandez, J.R. Croca and Matthias Bauer. Finally, the third part, On Maps, consists of studies by Valeria Giardino, Alexander Gerner, Christoph Ernst and Catarina Pombo Nabels.