Cooperation achieves its beneficial effects by improving communication, promoting gains from specialization, enhancing organizational effectiveness, and reducing the risks of harmful conflict. Members of an institutionalized academic discipline jointly benefit in all these ways. Unfortunately, members of different disciplines typically do not. The boundaries of most disciplines were largely set 100 (plus or minus 50) years ago, and efforts to redraw the boundaries (e.g. at Irvine and Carnegie Mellon) have not been met with much success. I would like us to consider how the more or less fragmented research community can best respond to new opportunities (AI), new problems (climate change), new modes of education and governance, and new understandings of human behavior and values.
ROBERT AXELROD, Walgreen Professor for the Study of Human Understanding at the University of Michigan, is best known for his interdisciplinary work on the evolution of cooperation. He is author of The Complexity of Cooperation and The Evolution of Cooperation. Robert Axelrod's Edge Bio Pag