Abstract
This essay examines the growing concerns about disciplinary narrowing occurring in agricultural research and the prospects of ameliorating the detrimental effects of disciplinary compartmentalization while capitalizing on its positive effects. The general model for agricultural science is that disciplinary groupings set the logic and standards for research; the disciplinary sciences are set in a hierarchical arrangement which allows communication from the relevant basic sciences through applied research into technology development and use and problem-solving. But agricultural research throughout most of its history has been goal-oriented and, therefore, is subject to ethical judgements of its worth and consequences. Also, strategic aspects of agricultural research have been subject to the evaluations and criticisms of both scientists and critics with differing interests at stake. Goals can change and organizations can be set to enable multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research, but both goals and organizations come up against values associated with the disciplinary quality of the research, the social setting of academic science, the competition for resources, and the scientific reward system. However, there are changes underway in the agricultural scientific community which may recast the impacts of disciplinary structuring: (1) changes in the disciplinary components of subject areas and departments, (2) evolution and introductions of integrative and systems sciences into the system, (3) infusion of the same new powerful tools into most of the sciences, and (4) increased networking among scientists of different disciplines. Given that scientists' values and personalities intrude in agricultural science and research strategies, the future of agricultural research may rest on the scientists' intellectual vision and philosophical awareness that go beyond the expected disciplinary limits.
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Additional information
H. O. Kunkel is Professor of Life Sciences at the Departments of Animal Science and of Biochemistry and Biophysics of Texas A&M University. He has served as Associate Director and Director of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station and from 1967 to 1988 was Dean of Agriculture. He was jointly responsible for establishing the program in agricultural ethics at Texas A&M and has been a member of the task force on ethics in agricultural and natural resource policy of the National Agriculture and Natural Resources Curriculum Project. Professor Kunkel teaches a graduate course in issues in animal agriculture.
A version of this paper was presented at the meetings of the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society, Orlando, Florida, October 8, 1987.
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Kunkel, H.O. Issues of academic disciplines in agricultural research. Agric Hum Values 5, 16–25 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02217644
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02217644