Historical Development of the Interdisciplinary Studies

Abstract

In a fast-changing world, which depends on science and technology, it is very hard for disciplines to remain isolated and hide away from each other. When disciplines are isolated, students' outcomes and achievements are affected negatively. A graduate will be equipped with multi skills, when disciplines interact with each other instead of just one skill when a particular discipline exists in isolation. To address this problem of graduates, many universities offer “interdisciplinary studies”. This chapter discusses the “interdisciplinary studies” and their history. To discover the history of the “interdisciplinary studies”, the current study aims to explore the definition of the “interdisciplinary studies”, as well as their historical development. This study is a theoretical study designed to trace the history of “interdisciplinary studies”. The study adopted a qualitative research methodology, as the essential purpose of the qualitative methodology is to understand reality. The findings revealed that the literature is full of studies that define “interdisciplinary studies”, and all the studies that related to the “interdisciplinary studies” agreed that the “interdisciplinary studies” involve researchers from different institutes and disciplines to solve a problem that is hard to solve by a single discipline. With respect to historical development of “interdisciplinary studies”, the study found that, as a term, it appeared in the 20th century, but as a practice, it is imbedded in the work of old societies, where several millennia ago, the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, and the Greeks put interdisciplinary into practice.