Multidisciplinarity implies cooperation between different disciplines.
The condition of multidisciplinary is called multidisciplinarity . The adjective multidisciplinary (or multidisciplinary ), meanwhile, refers to what involves or encompasses different disciplines .
It is important not to confuse multidisciplinarity with interdisciplinarity ( interdisciplinaridad ). In multidisciplinarity, each discipline maintains its precepts and methods. Interdisciplinarity , on the other hand, is linked to a mixture of disciplines that are integrated.
Multidisciplinarity is associated with cooperation between disciplines, but not with interactivity between them. It lacks an integration similar to that registered with interdisciplinarity.
There are other notions that can be confused with multidisciplinarity, but they do not refer to exactly the same thing. Transdisciplinarity , for example, transcends disciplinary boundaries, while pluridisciplinarity implies a union without integration of two or more disciplines.
Examples of multidisciplinarity
It is common for multidisciplinarity to appear in the field of health . A patient is usually cared for and assisted by experts from different areas, who work together to make diagnoses and define treatments. These experts, such as cardiologists, pulmonologists, infectologists, etc., collaborate with each other, although each one contributes what concerns their specialty. That is why there is multidisciplinary care for the individual's condition.
A research that is carried out with a multidisciplinary criterion, meanwhile, uses the participation of different professionals. An NGO , to cite one case, can call on a sociologist, an anthropologist and an economist to generate a report on the cultural production and consumption of a community.
In these two examples, the cooperative nature of multidisciplinarity can be seen quite clearly: each professional or group of professionals contributes their knowledge and techniques in different stages, all with the same final objective but without merging with the others. In other words, it is as if a box were traveling along an automatic conveyor along which one worker put the contents in it, another closed it, another put a label on it, and the last one removed it and stacked it: none of them You must collaborate directly with others, but do your task individually and in isolation.
Multidisciplinarity is common in the field of health.
The concept in video games
In the field of video game development, for example, it is very common for collaboration of this type to take place, although it can also border on interdisciplinarity. It all depends on each company and, ultimately, on the needs of each project. Generally, the disciplines involved are the following, among others: engine programming, interface programming, gameplay programming, story and script writing, two-dimensional drawing, three-dimensional design, animation, musical composition, creation of sounds, marketing and creation of promotional videos (known as trailers ).
Although some of these fields coincide in the many meetings that take place throughout the extensive development process to make decisions and gradually shape the final game, the normal thing is that once the list of tasks is defined , each one develops independently. separate, without direct influence from others . In this case, it may be that the limitations imposed by one of them affect the others; For example: the capabilities of the engine, which one of the teams develops, strongly conditions the freedom of almost all the other creative teams, in relation to the characteristics and complexity of the game. However, it is not normal for their knowledge to be merged to solve problems, with some exceptions.
This means that for multidisciplinarity to be achieved, each team must work using its own knowledge and professional training . If this is not enough to meet the stated objectives but rather it becomes necessary to cross this barrier, then we speak of interdisciplinarity.