Round Table and Closing Remarks

Distinguished guests, speakers, young scientists and students took turns to passionately discuss their wish-lists of future directions for the WKD, such as the ongoing need for bridging gaps between Science and the Humanities, better methods for popular dissemination and education of the youth, as well as the inclusion of currently unrepresented disciplines, such as theology and the arts.  Other topics of controversy were brought to the forefront, such as the debate about the subtle and important differences between models of multi-, trans-, post-, and inter-discipline communication. 

The speakers urged that complex and critical problems faced by all humanity, such as climate change and depletion of planetary resources, can only be solved through a multidisciplinary approach.  The underlying concept behind interdisciplinary dialogue is that different and distinct disciplines, when working together as a team, increase their shared capacity to understand complex problems and are thus more likely to find complex and complimentary solutions.  Whereas experts in their respective fields of sciences and humanities (including social sciences) are often considered intellectually dissimilar, each staying faithful to fixed traditions and cultures, 'multidisciplinarity' with the aim of bridging gaps between the different cultures, may also call for some dissolution of the cohesion between existing sub-groups. 

Dr. Ernst called for a set of clear guidelines or a manifesto to decrease consumption in order to reduce the degradation of the environment, to increase participation of all people in the knowledge dialogue and to increase recognition and practice of multidisciplinary activities through youth education.  Dr. Kurokowa stated that just as a healthy and dynamically stable ecosystem is required for survival of an individual species, a healthy intellectual ecosystem, with different disciplines collaborating and influencing one another in a dynamic, flexible, but structured manner, is required for the survival and transmission of collective human knowledge to future generations. 

As the WKD Foundation is still relatively new, participants and organizers alike may be still on a steep learning curve when it comes to realizing the potential of the WKD as a forum for the promotion of 'multidisciplinarity', the sharing of knowledge and intellectual freedom. It is possible that WKD meetings require more stringent delineation of goals, expectations and responsibilities. It may also be fair to say, that in the current format of the "dialogue" symposium, participants are becoming organisers and organisers are becoming participants, such that the traditional concepts behind these two words are no longer fully appropriate to what went on in Crans-Montana during WKD 2008.

It was a shared belief among speakers that university and even high school students need more guidance and encouragement in learning to dialogue with others outside their field of study, in order to reverse the trend of insularity that divides different academic disciplines today.  Academically mixed faculty and humanist-scientist collaborating pairs may be one targeted innovation that could get the two disciplines closer together.

"Satisfaction is the end of science," stated Dr. Ernst, indicating that if one is happy with the current state of affairs, no further work needs to be done. He cautioned that each innovation and each multidisciplinary effort should be regarded as a means, not the end.

Concluding remarks reiterated the importance of: ethical behaviour, the critical task of overcoming the division between the humanities and sciences, emphasizing common values, the Internet as a dual purpose vehicle for knowledge dissemination and project-based collaboration.  Participants were challenged to carry over the spirit of the WKD in their own work and in their daily communication and collaboration with others.