Discipline as Method: Interdisciplinarity as Epistemic Intervention

Interdisciplinary research is frequently conceptualized as an integrative endeavor that synthesizes disciplinary perspectives to yield more holistic explanations of complex phenomena. Although this integrative paradigm has yielded valuable outcomes, it often frames disciplinary differences principally as barriers to be surmounted. Drawing on insights from science and technology studies (STS), this article advances an alternative epistemological framework by reconceptualizing disciplines not as repositories of accumulated knowledge but as historically stabilized methodological apparatuses that actively constitute explanatory objects and practices. Building upon this reconceptualization, the article develops an interventionist epistemology that positions disciplinary differences as generative epistemic resources rather than impediments. The proposed framework delineates a three-stage mechanism—interpretive juxtaposition, cognitive friction, and methodological reflexivity—whereby the deliberate and sustained co-presence of incommensurable explanatory logics disrupts the naturalized authority of any single disciplinary method, thereby fostering reflexive scrutiny of underlying epistemic commitments and normative implications. Through illustrative cases from climate policy modeling, management research, and evidence-based medicine, the analysis demonstrates how interpretive juxtaposition manifests across diverse institutional contexts, generating cognitive friction that prompts methodological reflexivity without necessitating premature synthesis or resolution of differences. These examples illustrate that prolonged exposure to plural explanatory regimes can productively intervene in epistemic assumptions, thereby reshaping the conditions of legitimate judgment and knowledge production. The article concludes by elaborating the implications of reframing interdisciplinarity as epistemic intervention rather than integration, and by identifying promising directions for future empirical inquiry within STS, including investigations into the institutional conditions that enable or constrain such reflexive dynamics.