Introduction: The Ethics of Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching

This introduction develops an ethical, epistemological, and ontological account of interdisciplinary learning grounded in complexity and the role of integration in producing new understanding. It argues that complexity characterises the object of study, whereas interdisciplinarity is a mode of inquiry defined by the relational reconfiguration of disciplinary insights. Against views that equate interdisciplinarity with breadth, the chapter claims that its distinctive purpose is epistemic novelty: the creation of new relations that no single discipline can generate. It then shifts from teaching to learning, proposing that interdisciplinary learning unfolds through structural paradoxes involving disciplinary adequacy and the authorisation of integrative claims. These paradoxes generate dialectical movements between immersion and reflection, dependence and autonomy, through which a distinctive interdisciplinary perspective gradually emerges. This perspective is not a meta-stance above disciplines but a relational field constituted through the learner’s interpretive and creative activity. Because this perspective shapes what becomes thinkable, interdisciplinary understanding is inherently ethical, grounding pedagogical and institutional responsibilities to support students in becoming capable of creating the new.