Phase (matter)

Process (computing)

Engineering

Philosophy

Critical realism (philosophy of perception)

Philosophy of medicine

Operating system

Computer science

Management science

Alternative medicine

Organic chemistry

Discipline

Realism

Transdisciplinarity

Epistemology

Sociology

Ontology

Artificial intelligence

Medicine

Chemistry

Perspective (graphical)

Engineering ethics

Pathology

Social science

Journal of Critical Realism

This article uses the philosophy of critical realism to overcome the problem that most contemporary guidelines for interdisciplinary research fail to provide would-be researchers with adequate advice. It arrives at five important steps in the interdisciplinary research process: an initial planning phase; a disciplinary phase; a teamwork phase characterized by cross-disciplinary understanding; and a transdisciplinary, creative phase that involves epistemic emergence, and that results in the integration of knowledge. The fifth phase is the result of the integrative fourth phase; it provides a holistic interdisciplinary understanding of the involved structures and mechanisms of the issue at hand. To make interventions derived from interdisciplinary research useful, they must be disseminated in such way as to include a return to reality, that is, there must be a movement from epistemology to ontology.

Applied interdisciplinary research: a critical realist perspective