Undoubtedly, there is a perspective in which we can glimpse that we will have to take better care of the human being’s movement on foot, not only from the point of view of pedestrian safety, because to a large extent this concept has been taken into account -although it has not been resolved in its essence-, but from the other aspects of the exercise of walking that brings numerous and effective benefits in all aspects of the human condition (Future Post WALKING: KING OF EXERCISES).
This post is the third of 9 that will lead us to define the NEW WALKING PARADIGM.
I consider that in order to attend all these scenarios we will have to orient ourselves with mechanisms of disciplinary hybridization, in order to attend them in the medium term; which of course will give rise to a new hybrid discipline, which will involve other disciplines, to respond to this unavoidable and urgent social exigency. A disciplinary concurrence or hybridization that has already been developing in some instances and regions of the most advanced countries.
I repeat: this process of hybridization will have to give rise to a hybrid discipline. In fact, I am still considering the title of this post, as I believe that it should have both meanings: the formulation of a disciplinary hybridization as an innovative and forging mechanism, but also that it should lead to a hybrid discipline, which would have required changing the title of the post, calling it Walking: a necessary hybrid discipline.
The hybrid form of study and research is achieved through the conjugation of two or more sciences or disciplines, which by partially moving away from the central parts of the body of knowledge and scientific experience of each of them, are associated and combined in a more creative way, which allows finding better solutions and innovations to problems of all kinds that may be affecting human beings, in one or more of their essential needs.
Disciplinary conjugation that uses those zones or frontiers far from the strict, inflexible and narrow norms and procedures of each one of the different specialties where the innovations and alternative answers to the problems that we have nowadays can be found.
We said in Post THE WALK-RWD SYSTEM AND THE INTERDICIPLINARY FLOW OF IDEAS, PART II: “It should not be understood that we recommend to have a formal academic specialization, supported with a great experience in the disciplines involved, but only to have the intention to venture into them with the clear objective and the declared will to seek the exchange of techniques, concepts, processes and methods that each of them have. In other words, we are not asked to be the great specialists in any of the disciplines or sciences ‘mixed’, for the achievement of any task”.
Just as we can observe in the different disciplines their own domains, as other sub-disciplines are structured, these in turn create their own domains, or sub-domains. These own specializations give rise to combinations and recombinations, to other mechanisms and theoretical and practical processes of these new sub-domains, rearticulation in the theories and research of the sub-disciplines, with their own borders and centers of domain (1).
Thus, for example, we have the sub-domains of Urbanism, that is, sub-disciplines subordinated to a parent discipline:
1. Architectural Urbanism
2. Anthropological Urbanism
3. Institutional Urbanism
4. Urban Planning
5. Social urban planning
6. Etc.
All these subdomains are open to a certain extent to the subdomains of other disciplines, such as ECONOMICS (National Economic Planning); to ARCHITECTURE (anthropological architecture, history of architecture, etc.); to ANTHROPOLOGY (physical anthropology, social anthropology, etc.).
With Hybridization we seek to increase the creative potential to strengthen the conclusions that will lead to a new URBAN PARADIGM (Future Posts A NEW WALKING PARADIGM; NEW MODEL FOR WALKING: FREEDOM, FREE TIME AND LEISURE. PART III; NEW WORLD EXISTENTIAL PARADIGM), which will be immersed in several disciplines: URBANISM, ARCHITECTURE, URBANISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY, ANTHROPOLOGICAL URBANISM, PALEONTOLOGY, etc., which will not be out of place to invite to integrate their opinions in this media. It is a possible conjunction of natural and social sciences.
How well can this effort work? Only by trying will we be able to know.
Architecture has its own subdomains:
1. Lighting Architecture. …
2. Research architecture. …
3. Restoration architecture. …
4. Landscape architecture. …
5. 3D architecture. …
6. Acoustic Architecture. …
7. Bioclimatic Architecture. …
8. Commercial Architecture
9. Scenic Architecture
10. Advertising Architecture. …
11. Design Architecture
12. Vernacular Architecture. …
13. Architecture of Schools and Universities
14. Hospital Architecture. …
15. Industrial Architecture.
16. Interior Architecture
17. Urban Planning
18. Architecture and Urban Planning
19. Archaeoastronomy.
20. Aquatic Architecture
21. Etc.
We can observe in these branches of Architecture a substantial hybridization, and that it is also combined with Urbanism. Now it seems to us that they are two disciplines that should always walk together.
Anthropology has also created its own subdomains:
1. Economic Anthropology.
2. Evolutionary Anthropology.
3. Philosophical Anthropology.
4. Physical Anthropology.
5. Forensic Anthropology.
6. Genetic Anthropology.
7. Religious Anthropology
8. Social Anthropology
9. Cultural Anthropology.
10. Urban Anthropology.
11. Paleoanthropology or Human Paleontology.
12. Linguistic Anthropology
13. Etc.
We can already observe in these branches a hybridization that Anthropology has had with other disciplines, including hybridization with urbanism: Urban Anthropology, which in general terms is dedicated to studying within the cities, the problems intrinsic to them, such as poverty, unemployment, the marginality of human beings, their homeless inhabitants, etc., in short: it studies human life within the cities.
Notwithstanding this long list of Anthropology, we could select others that at the present time have dozens of sub-disciplines that could participate in this disciplinary hybridization, towards the New Paradigm of Walking.
I also mentioned in the same post, the following: “In the following image we can see the contact that is achieved between the different disciplines and in each of them we can assume that there is a great activity of creativity, by the only interdisciplinary contact.
The use of multi-disciplinarity, for the task that has been described, is graphically illustrated in the above diagram as the border inter-sections that are areas of complementarity between the disciplines that participate in the research, production and creativity phases, where their specialized fields are united in order to achieve all the proposed goals.
Each analyst will be able to cross the theoretical and practical boundaries of the different specialized disciplines in search of his personal objectives within the research or study that is carried out in an interdisciplinary manner; for such effects, each one in his defined projects, must be attentive when he must move from one discipline to another, due to the unrestricted need to resort to the specialized tooling of any of them, of the social, technical, artistic or scientific type, new methods or specific procedures, to obtain the ‘answers’ that are required and continue with his work of analysis and synthesis.”
In future Post A NEW WALKING PARADIGM, we will come to define the different disciplines and sub-disciplines that will combine, in the not too distant future, to constitute and structure a new paradigm that will give an answer to this essential need of the human being.
ANTHROPOLOGY
SOCIOLOGY
ARCHITECTURE
HISTORY
PSYCHOLOGY
ENGINEERING
CHILD DEVELOPMENT
URBANISM
PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
ARCHAEOLOGY
RELIGIOUS ANTHROPOLOGY
PALEONTOLOGY
COMPARATIVE PRIMATOLOGY
BIOLOGY
ZOOLOGY
GEOLOGY
PALINOLOGY
Other novel concepts will have to appear in this process of interdisciplinary hybridization, such as that of disciplinary heritage -and others- with the purpose of having a clear idea of how this paradigm could be realized in the future of the modern walk of the human being.
As a rule and imminent process, we can assume that all interdisciplinary flow is carried out in 2 aspects. One of these aspects is the movement (circulation) of ideas that is generated as a source of informal hybrid creation; the other is the source of formal, collegiate and officialized hybridization, which gives a channel to the related disciplines (and sub-disciplines) that compete “bidding” to participate in the hybridization that conjugates a new (hybrid) discipline.
Having thus posed the problem, we must analyze how this GAP (of knowledge and research) has been filling and increasing through the creation and construction of an inter-disciplinary bridge, which will undoubtedly give rise to a new discipline (science) that will achieve the beginning of the conformation of the New Paradigm of Walking, of the human being of the future.
The conclusion and synthesis of this process, which will be structured naturally (social and academic pressures) and programmatically (plans and programs), will result in a new discipline.
How is a real and deep hybridization achieved? It is not a meeting or several meetings between specialists, which usually and in the best of cases, there is a difficult interdisciplinarity in the typical cases of confluence to solve a problem.
In general, the domain of a discipline “bids” to create one more “specialization” in its disciplinary body, which for some time has already manifested a desire to achieve greater “depth” (specialization) and scope over one or several of the human activities within a specific field, in the broad spectrum of the social, natural and physical sciences.
Sometimes it is achieved with greater ease and speed than others, due to the prevailing social, economic and physical conditions, and those of the region (Universities, Institutes, society, etc.) where it is gestated and appears.
Each of the disciplines and sub-disciplines that have competed and will continue to compete for the gestation of the New Paradigm of Walking, will place, according to their displacements from the center to the periphery, their competences in specialty, their specific contents, potentialities and their magnitudes, in relation to the demand of the function of walking, their contribution according to the demands of this, in specialty and intensity.
(1) For more information on these fields and their usefulness, see the essay by Dogan Matei and Pahre Robert, “The new social sciences. (Original title in French: L’innovation dans les sciences sociales. La Marginalité creatice), Grijalbo, Mexico, 1993.
The domain of a discipline (science, subject, matter) is the functional area of knowledge in which it has superior skill, experience and ability relative to other disciplines.
This superiority is given in techniques, procedures, norms, rules, skills, abilities, experiences, methods that it has created within its field of knowledge and experience obtained in its process of generation, formulation and disciplinary support.
Disciplinary sub-domains are created as a result of the subordination to domains of a root discipline. With the passage of time they become independent of that subordination, of their disciplinary ascendancy, and become autonomous, creating their own fields of study, practice and knowledge.
To conclude theoretically on this process of imminent disciplinary hybridization, we can assure that this need of the human being to lead towards a New Paradigm of Walking, has already been conforming within a sinfronism, as a natural practical wisdom, as assimilated by Aristotle since his remote times, which has been conjugating in various parts of the world and that will have to appear spontaneously; however, I believe that we must carry out some activities in a timely manner to accelerate this process towards the channels that will find its successful outcome.
With the publication of this post I am updating Post UPDATED DYNAMIC INDEX OF POSTS 1-110, incorporating 10 more, so now there will be 120 posts, where you can see their titles and link directly.