Applying multidisciplinarity

Presenting a variety of disciplines within the same setting, but without making explicit possible relationships between them.

From a systems point of view, the successive steps of cooperation and coordination between disciplines lead to the definition of the organizational principle for a single-level multi-goal, hierarchical system, without cooperation between the parts.

Individual development of the disciplines occur concurrently, and 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.