This article was taken from the February 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Revolutions often come from connecting different branches of knowledge. Take space archaeology, a growing area of research that uses infrared satellite imagery to discover ancient buried cities. Or the use of micro-mechanical systems for high-throughput biological research, from medical implants to point-of-care diagnostic devices, a field that combines material sciences, medicine and engineering.
What if the same approach could be used to treat disease?
My team and I have been working on such a project at the Center for Bioengineering in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. We focused on a disease called diabetic retinopathy, one of the most common causes of blindness in the west.
The disease is defined by abnormal geometries of the capillaries in the retina, which disturb the hemo-dynamic forces inside the capillaries, leading to disease. It is difficult to study since the physics and mathematics that govern such complicated structures are themselves complex.
In our research, we used different areas of knowledge in order to find a critical threshold for the treatment of the pathological capillaries' structures using laser ablation. We used an analytical description of a simplified model as a starting point. Next, we generalised it using algorithms and verified our theoretical model using miniature models of those abnormal geometries, which were fabricated using nanoscience technologies. We then turned to biology to see how living cells react to such conditions and took our model to clinics, experimenting with human retinas to validate our findings. Our insights could have only emerged from bridging areas of knowledge.
But constructing disciplinary bridges is no easy task. Highly detailed and technically intricate concepts had to be abstracted to the point at which they were truly democratised. A course, which I recently developed at the Hebrew University, has confronted the discretised architecture of knowledge at that exact point. By promoting abstract thinking, open-ended assignments and student participation, we were able to deliver advanced trans-disciplinary concepts in mathematical programming such as network analysis, signal processing, module-oriented design and mathematical modelling to students of all disciplines.
For the course's first cycle, we chose 20 students from ten disciplines ranging from computer science and engineering to psychology. Students presented us with amazingly innovative projects spanning from 3D visualisation of clouds using links from Nasa satellites, to data-encryption and decryption using optical fibres.
These projects exemplify an up-and-coming revolution in the structure of knowledge: a trans-disciplinary revolution. Instead of the scattered old concrete buildings housing faculties of applied physics, chemistry or dance, which characterise academia, we'll erect buildings appropriated for the study of the origin of life or alternatives to a monetary economy. Instead of teaching high-school students classes in physics, biology and history, they shall be given, for instance, a class on the manifestation of consciousness.
Transdisciplinary learning also deals with classic education dilemmas. It tackles the dissolution problem of the disciplines of humanities by giving fields of study such as history, ethics and philosophy a key role in the integrative approach to our interests. It also highlights the fact that knowledge today is abundant and that the role of schools has to change accordingly by promoting curiosity toward the world and teaching just how bodies of knowledge can be integrated into new objects.
Specialisation is important, but it is not the only thing that matters. Disciplinary boundaries can be dissolved to the point where our challenges are reduced to modular design -- where curiosity becomes the meaning.
Elishai Ezra is a PhD candidate in bioengineering and a 2013 INK fellow. He lectures in mathematical programming at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.