Discipline development

The development of a discipline may be envisaged as taking place in three stages:

1. Problem-oriented, multidisciplinary stage, in which people identifying themselves with an established discipline, apply and extend their methodologies to the new problem.

2. Interdisciplinary stage, in which a set of methodologies emerges out of the study of particular multidisciplinary problems. Specific problems are approached as a part of a new interdisciplinary field.

3. New discipline stage, in which there is formal recognition of the new field as one which possesses a coherent overview and a set of distinct methodologies of general applicability.