Academic Journal of Suriname 2012, 3, 221-226 Extra disciplinary

Short communication

Path Dependency as a Justification for the

Abolition of Disciplines?

Daniël A. Lachman1
1
Institute for Graduate Studies & Research, Anton de Kom University of Suriname, Paramaribo

Abstract

Throughout the ages, people have always tried to bring order in their reality.
Scientific disciplines are a manifestation of this, in order to tackle looming
challenges. This division originated during the Enlightenment and was globalized,
and is therefore a form of path dependency. Using the Multi-Level Perspective it is
shown that regimes in the existing systems that are affected by these disciplines
attempt (consciously or not) to keep this paradigm at the center stage. However, the
division of reality in scientific disciplines results in poor communication between the
disciplines, path dependency within the disciplines themselves, and questions
surrounding the extent to which disciplines are able to conquer challenges in
practice.
On the other end, scientific disciplines have not been without their merits, especially
concerning relatively easy to solve issues. This paper therefore attempts to open up
the discussion whether the current prevailing paradigm should be followed or
whether the existing system is in need of an overhaul, and if so to what extent.

Keywords: Path Dependency, Scientific Disciplines, Regimes

1. Introduction intertwined with perceptions, beliefs, values,

Man has always had the habit of
dividing the environment in which he lives
into different categories with the objective of
bringing order into his complex surroundings.
Ordering the environment has enabled him to
better digest the complex reality. In this way
throughout the ages, different realms could be
distinguished, such as the social, technical,
managerial, political, economic and
environmental realm, to name a few. This has
actually been a popular approach to solve
problems; the problem was divided into
different portions and each portion was
separately attacked (in Dutch they have a
saying “hakken in vakken en zagen in lagen”).
But let’s take a step back from this
otherwise seemingly sensible approach and
reflect a bit on this division of reality and the
habit of addressing each portion separately. If
one looks closely at “technical systems”, then
it could be seen that this system is actually
procedures, rules, institutions, etc., all items
associated with the “social portion” of reality.
Examining a typical technical infrastructure,
for instance the electricity network, then it can
be seen that typical characteristics of this
infrastructure are given shape by social
phenomena, such as locations where people
live, utility operator shift durations, legislative
agreements on voltage, health and safety; and
the list goes on. However, the reverse is also
true, namely that the technical realm shapes its
social counterpart; shift operator routines,
maintenance procedures, operator and
maintenance skills, behavior regarding
electrical hazards, etc. etc. One could say that
technical artifacts influence social reality, and
that social reality gives meaning to technical
artifacts: an alarm clock can be used to wake
someone up, or to trigger a bomb, but
possibilities for its use are limited by its
design.

Correspondence to: Daniël A. Lachman. Institute for Graduate Studies & Research, Leysweg 86, Paramaribo,
Suriname. Tel: 597 323281. E-mail: danny_lachman@yahoo.com

Available online January 23, 2012

Acad J Sur 2012 (3) 221-226

 Abolition of disciplines?
2. Socio-Technical Systems and the
Multi-Level Perspective
If then seemingly technical entities
(factories, infrastructures, etc.) are intertwined
with social reality, to what extent can problems
on a system level be effectively solved? This is
actually a rhetorical question, since the logic
above states that it cannot; social and technical
intertwinement makes that problem solving
cannot just exclude either the social or the
technical. It is therefore better to speak of
socio-technical systems, which is a term first
coined by Thomas P. Hughes in the 1980s in
order to exhibit the fact that artifacts also
inhibit immaterial and epistemic elements,
apart from their technical specifications. It is a
technological system impregnated with
ideology and integrating actors and
institutions, and is dependent on the social
context; its design is shaped in an historical
context and is in some measure mirroring the
distribution of power in society.
To illustrate this point, once again the
energy infrastructure is placed under scrutiny.
Currently there is a lot of focus on
transitioning from the current fossil fuel-based
energy system towards sustainable
alternatives. Lately, awareness has risen that
this not only means a change in technical
infrastructure, but also a change in habits (for
instance the fact that electric cars have shorter
ranges than their fossil fuel-based
counterparts), legislation (e.g. the provision
needs to be created that collected solar energy
on the roof of a home can be sold to the
utility), procedures and routines (for example
maintenance and operation of wind turbines),
etc. etc.
Processes of change within socio-
technical entities can be visualized using the
so-called Multi-Level Perspective (see figure
1) consisting of the landscape level and the
levels of regimes and niches.
Regimes are defined as “rule-set or
grammar embedded in a complex of
engineering practices, production process
technologies, product characteristics, skills and
procedures, ways of handling relevant artifacts
and persons, ways of defining problems; all of
them embedded in behavior, mindsets,
institutions, infrastructures etc.” (Geels 2004).
222
”Rules” refer to formal, cognitive and
normative rules:
- Formal rules refer to standards,
regulations, etc.;
- Cognitive rules refer to search heuristics,
guiding principles, etc.;
- Normative rules refer to behavioral norms,
role expectations, etc.
Figure 1: The Multi-Level Perspective (Geels 2002)
Niches can be defined as structures
formed by a small group of agents that deviate
from the regime and that might build up a new
regime that is able to break down and replace
the incumbent regime, or in other words, the
niche level can be defined as the locus for
radical change, i.e., the locus from which new
trajectories originate. The landscape level
conceptualizes the influences from the
exogenous environment that affect regimes
and niches, or in other words, provides an
influential backdrop with ramifications across
a variety of regimes and niches.
3. Path Dependency
More or less resembling evolutionary
processes, niches attempt to dethrone regimes
by becoming the rule-set. This can be
facilitated by pressures exerted from the
landscape level, which destabilize regimes or
by internal destabilizing processes (e.g.
disagreement between regime actors on rules).
An excellent example is the recent emergence
of the electric vehicle (facilitated by fears for
climate change – a landscape factor – due to
fossil fuel use) as a contrast to the earlier
doomed emergence in the mid-1990s when
tire, steel and oil companies (the regimes)
pressured General Motors (and other car
Acad J Sur 2012 (3) 221-226
 223
manufacturers) to pull the plug on the (niche)
project which had a strong following from so-
called early-adopters. Thus changes come
about when processes at multiple levels link up
and reinforce each other, creating a “window
of opportunity”, resulting ultimately in a
change of the socio-technical entity.
Regimes have the “built-in” tendency
to protect their reign within the system and
will thus prevent niches from taking over. This
phenomenon leads to a situation where socio-
technical entities tend to stick to regime-
dictated rule-sets (e.g. policies, procedures,
beliefs, etc.), leaving little room for other
possibilities. This is called path dependency
(also known as “lock-in”). The earlier example
of the electric car is a textbook example of
path dependency (as a result of an obstruction
of niches) regarding the transportation
infrastructure, viz. a dependency on fossil
fuels.
The concept of “path dependency”
shares great similarity with Thomas Kuhn’s
notion of “normal science”. He makes a
distinction between revolutionary and normal
science, where the former not necessarily
represents a period of accelerated progress, but
rather a qualitative different approach than
normal science. Normal science in itself is
compared as “puzzle-solving” in the sense that
the puzzle solver is confined within the
boundaries (in terms of space, rules, number of
players etc.) of the puzzle itself (whether it be
a crossword or jigsaw puzzle or a game of
chess). Thus, regardless of one’s puzzle
solving skills, he/she is restricted to the nature
of the game, or in other words is path
dependent in his/her road to reach a solution
(Kuhn 1970).
4. Scientific Disciplines as a
Manifestation of Path Dependency
The paper started off with the notion
of the division of reality into different realms
and the statement that this division is actually
counterproductive when looking at solving
problems regarding technical artifacts (such as
factories and infrastructures) since these
should be regarded as socio-technical entities
with their own regimes, niches and path
dependencies. A form of path dependency that
Acad J Sur 2012 (3) 221-226
Daniël Lachman
takes central stage in this paper is the use of
scientific disciplines within academia.
Though reality has been studied throughout the
ages, the dominant manner currently in use
originated from the West, which dug up the
natural sciences and conceptualized the social
sciences around the time of the Enlightenment
and the rise of Capitalism (Sankatsing 2001).
The social sciences represented a response that
Europe faced in the eighteenth and nineteenth
century. Western societies devised disciplines
according to their criteria as a manner to bring
order within the study of reality, and as a way
to part with criteria, norms and rules from the
metaphysical era which contained too many
speculative elements for positivists (and
scholars of the natural sciences). Through
various means, this dominant way of studying
reality was propagated as the only appropriate
manner; deviations from this standard were
deemed “unscientific” by the majority of
academics from the developed world
(Lachman 2011). Thus, the use of disciplines
has spread all over the world and though many
more disciplines have been conceived or have
spun-off from others, it is clearly evident that
the use of disciplines is almost unthinkable in
our educational system. As a matter of fact, the
educational system and society are adapted to
the paradigm of disciplines: disciplines have
given shape to professions, institutions,
legislation, curricula, design of learning
facilities, etc. On the other hand, developments
in (primarily Western) societies give rise to
new disciplines or form existing ones (since
science is used to overcome problems facing
societies.) To put it another way, disciplines
and society co-construct each other. The fact
that this way of addressing the study of reality
has been upheld for centuries, can be
concluded that this paradigm has garnered a
strong foothold. In other words, the paradigm
of disciplines constitutes a strong regime
within academia.
The fact that the division into
disciplines originated a couple of centuries
ago, has since been globalized, and is still in
use today, is evidence of a strong path
dependence within academia. However, this
constitutes three major problems:
1. Due to the complex nature of reality, it is
unthinkable that it can be split up into
 Abolition of disciplines?
separate realms for study (the whole is
more than the sum of its parts). This is the
main logic behind the notion of the earlier
mentioned socio-technical entity. Even
within the realm of natural sciences it is
almost impossible to categorize a problem
under the banner of a particular discipline.
Engineers are confronted with this all the
time, when they are engaged in problem
solving exercises; technical systems are
always a complex of parts which hail from
different disciplines, for instance in the
fields of chemical, civil, mechanical and
electrical engineering. Thus, an engineer
who is involved in problem solving must
be able to expand his frame of reference
outside the confines of his own discipline;
2. The disciplines developed over the
decades relatively separate from each
other. Therefore, another form of path
dependency within academia exists within
the fact that this rigid system of relatively
autonomous disciplines fostered
respective regimes within each discipline.
This has led many times to situations
where disciples from different disciplines
do not agree upon a set of methodological
tools proposed from within one particular
discipline, often because the rule-set
within one discipline differs from another,
and thus communication and consensus
between different disciplines is
problematic since they each have a
different view on things, which in turn is
caused by their focus on a portion of
reality and their respective autonomous
development (this is again frequently
encountered within the sphere of problem
solving by engineers). With this in mind,
one might question the notion of multi-
and trans-disciplinary approaches, since
these still use the autonomous disciplines
as their foundation;
3. Regimes within the autonomous
disciplines themselves have each led
respectively to path dependency within
that particular discipline. This has led to
the contemporary situation where
students, researchers, professionals and
firms, all guided and formed by the
existence of disciplines, are guided (path
224
dependent) in their search for answers:
they are engaged in localized searching
instead of exploring the entire search
space. They stay close to what they
already know, viz. the regime, which also
provides an explanation for the difficulty
in communication between different
disciplines.
These three outcomes from the use of
disciplines within academia have led to a
situation where science cannot adequately
serve its purpose, i.e. provide answers for
challenges stemming from reality, since the
use of its disciplines questions the efficiency
and effectiveness of contemporary problem
solving by practitioners of these disciplines.
This problem tends to become more serious in
the contemporary age, which is characterized
by an increasing rate of intertwinement of
previously non-related aspects of reality;
nowadays even the notion of “convergence
technology”, technology which is a melting
pot of different technologies (c.f. energy
technology and nanotechnology in the
development of renewable energy
technologies) is becoming more apparent. It
thus seems evident that effective and efficient
problem solving in a more complex becoming
reality requires a reflection of reality within
academia which is more accurate than the sum
of the existing disciplines.
5. Disciplines: to be or not to be?
At first glance, one would say that the
answer to the problem placed under scrutiny
above is the rejection of disciplines altogether
and the transition towards an educational
system that is bent on the production of
experts. For example this would be in line
with a current trend in the medical sector in
developed countries (which originated in
India) to have hospitals and medical centers
specialize in the prevention and cure of certain
diseases and symptoms, rather than being able
to attend to all diseases and symptoms. In this
manner, a start has been made in the
Netherlands to have each hospital specialize in
a different form of cancer.
Sankatsing (2011) even goes farther
by saying that the proper way to examine
Acad J Sur 2012 (3) 221-226
 225
reality is by utilizing a so-called “extra-
disciplinary” approach which
“stands outside of the traditional system of
disciplines, but without discarding in advance
any of its achievements or its methodological
tools which have been accumulated over the
course of time. The basic premise of this
approach is that social processes and
phenomena can only temporarily be isolated
as objects of study, but that immediately
afterwards they must be set again within the
network of interrelationships in which they are
to be found in social reality. ... The extra-
disciplinary approach rejects the procedure
common among present-day social sciences of
sharing out a field of study among relatively
autonomous disciplines, which isolate fields of
study, processes or phenomena as pertaining
to their special expertise, without attempting
subsequently to reinsert them into their natural
context. Specializations are necessary for a
systematic study of such a complex reality, but
only as interrelated fields of study, which will
not infringe on the integrity and unity of social
reality, as do existing social science
disciplines.”
Another rejection of disciplines and
the subsequent rule-sets, search heuristics and
path dependency can be found in Feyerabend’s
“Against Method” (1975) where he states that
people should not become proficient in the use
of a particular tool (regardless of the fact how
successful it has been) but must be trained in
the use of several (even conflicting tools) and
above all gain the ability to assess which tool
must be used depending on the circumstance.
On the flipside of the coin, most will
agree that disciplines have brought forward the
existence of professions which seem to do
fairly well in solving relatively easy problems.
A general practitioner is well equipped in
addressing a typical case of the flu; he doesn’t
have to be a flu-expert.
This leads to the following questions:
- To what extent is there a need for experts /
specialists?
- To what extent is there a need for
“simple” professions coming directly out
of the disciplines?
- Would a system of experts and disciplines
cover the entire spectrum of problems, or
is the whole notion of specialists versus
Acad J Sur 2012 (3) 221-226
Daniël Lachman
disciplines nothing more than a dog
chasing his own tail?
- Who makes the judgment if a particular
problem calls for a specialist or someone
directly hailing from a discipline? This
question becomes even more important
when considering the sometimes long time
span that is required to see the full effects
of intervention come to fruition.
- Based on the questions above, to what
extent must the educational system, which
is still heavily founded on the use of
disciplines be altered in order to address
problems in a more efficient and effective
manner?
6. Concluding Remarks
This paper has made an attempt to
indicate the path dependency inherent in the
use of disciplines in academia. This path
dependency does not guarantee that problems
will be solved, only in the most efficient
manner, but also in the most effective way,
even in the case of multi- or trans-disciplinary
approaches, since these still utilize the
disciplines as their foundation. Combining this
remark with the notion of the faster increasing
intertwinement of different aspects in reality
(e.g. convergence technology), questions the
validity of the use of disciplines. On the
flipside of the coin, disciplines have their
successes, though these are to be found more
in addressing less complex problems.
So what should the future
development of our (higher) learning institutes
look like? Will the path dependent dominant
paradigm be kept alive, or is a transition
required towards a new educational system?
This paper does not attempt to answer that
question, since it is fairly complex to fit within
one paper, but nevertheless it is an important
question in need of an answer. What this paper
does try to achieve however, is to open up this
discussion and bring forward (alternative)
ideas, paradigms, models, schemes, etc. in
order to arrive at what might seem to be the
most acceptable solution for the time being.
Such a process of analysis and synthesis of (an
alternative for) the disciplines-paradigm is
quite a gargantuan task, but one that can
 Abolition of disciplines? 226

significantly help in encountering future

challenges.
However, there is one tricky part in
all this. Who should take the initiative and
guide this process of analysis and synthesis?
The likely candidate that first comes to mind
is the university as the primary research
institute; however, the university is dominated
by the same regimes that try to keep the
disciplines alive and obstruct any niches that
attempt to change this. One likely scenario
might be the “window of opportunity”: the
inability to effectively and efficiently confront
challenges (landscape factors) weaken regimes
and provide opportunity for niches
(alternatives to the disciplines-paradigm) to
break through. Or might there be a possibility
that one should not have to wait for such an
unpleasant scenario, but that change starts to
occur within the regimes themselves? That
might be the start on a trajectory towards
promising futures where our learning institutes
are geared to tackle threatening problems.

References
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s.l.

Geels, F.W., 2002. Technological transitions as

evolutionary reconfiguration processes: a
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Geels, F. W. 2004. From sectoral systems of

innovation to socio-technical systems:
Insights about dynamics and change from
sociology and institutional theory. Research
Policy 33 (6–7): 897–920

Lachman, D. A. 2011. Domination of the Mind.

Imposition of Scientific Paradigms. The
Academic Journal of Suriname, Vol. 2, p.
133-138, Anton de Kom University of
Suriname, Paramaribo

Sankatsing, G. 2001. Social Science as a Victim of

Its Own Disciplines - The English- and Dutch-
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Revolutions. Second edition, University of
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