a scholarship of integration, we do not suggest returning to the “gentleman scholar” of an earlier time, nor do we have in mind the dilettante. Rather, what we mean is serious, disciplined work that seeks to interpret, draw together, and bring new insight to bear on original research.
This more integrated view of knowledge was expressed eloquently by Mark Van Doren nearly thirty years ago when he wrote: “The connectedness of things is what the educator contemplates to the limit of his capacity. No human capacity is great enough to permit a vision of the world as simple, but if the educator does not aim at the vision no one else will, and the consequences are dire when no one does.” It is through “connectedness” that research ultimately is made authentic.
The scholarship of integration is, of course, closely related to discovery. It involves, first, doing research at the boundaries where fields converge, and it reveals itself in what philosopher-physicist Michael Polanyi calls “overlapping [academic] neighborhoods.”8 Such work is, in fact, increasingly important as traditional disciplinary categories prove confining, forcing new topologies of knowledge. Many of today’s professors understand this. When we asked faculty to respond to the statement, “Multidisciplinary work is soft and should not be considered scholarship,” only 8 percent agreed, 17 percent were neutral, while a striking 75 percent disagreed (table 2). This pattern of opinion, with only slight variation, was true for professors in all disciplines and across all types of institutions.
The scholarship of integration also means interpretation, fitting one's own research—or the research of others—into larger intellectual patterns. Such efforts are increasingly essential since specialization, without broader perspective, risks pedantry. The distinction we are drawing here between “discovery” and “integration” can be best understood, perhaps, by the questions posed. Those engaged in discovery ask, “What is to be known, what is yet to be found?” Those engaged in integration ask, “What do the findings mean? Is it possible to interpret what’s been discovered in ways that provide a larger, more comprehensive understanding?” Questions such as these call for the
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