Experimental entanglements: Social science and neuroscience beyond interdisciplinarity

Fitzgerald, D. and Callard, F. (2018) Experimental entanglements: Social science and neuroscience beyond interdisciplinarity. In: Meloni, M., Cromby, J., Fitzgerald, D. and Lloyd, S. (eds.) The Palgrave Handbook of Biology and Society. Palgrave Macmillan: London, pp. 441-472. ISBN 9781137528780 (doi: 10.1057/978-1-137-52879-7_19)

Abstract

This chapter is an account of the dynamics of interaction across the social sciences and neurosciences. Against an arid rhetoric of ‘interdisciplinarity’, we call for a more expansive imaginary of what experiment—as practice and ethos—might offer. We oppose existing conceptualizations of dynamics between the social sciences and neurosciences, grouping them under three rubrics: ‘critique’, ‘ebullience’ and ‘interaction’. Despite their differences, each insists on a distinction between sociocultural and neurobiological knowledge. We link this insistence to the ‘regime of the inter-’, an ethic of interdisciplinarity that guides interaction between disciplines on the understanding of their separateness. We argue: (1) that this separation is no longer sustainable and (2) that the cognitive neuroscience experiment offers opportunities for exploring this realization.

• Item Type: Book Sections
• Status: Published
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Callard, Professor Felicity
• Authors: Fitzgerald, D., and Callard, F.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Geographical and Earth Sciences
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• ISBN: 9781137528780