Recently The Chronicle Review asked a number of academics to speculate on what will be the defining idea of the coming decade. As you might expect when you ask 20-or-so clever people such a question you get 20-or-so different answers. But I did detect one recurring theme – that we need a new way of thinking about the traditional academic disciplines.

As Rice University’s Elaine Ecklund put it:

“Universities have traditionally prized disciplinary purity and specificity, but that approach is ill-equipped to nurture the kind of expansive, creative, multipronged thinking that is needed to meet our biggest, most pressing problems.”

Other respondents talk of a coming “collision of fields” as newer disciplines bump against more traditional ones, and of the impact of “interdisciplinary creativity”.

The idea of the interdisciplinary university is gaining ground in the wake of massive and relentless technological, social and economic change.

As Simon Marginson suggests:

“The deepest problems – ecology, climate, food, water, disease, poverty, military conflict and civil chaos – are often world-wide in their causes and always world-wide in solutions.”

But are universities properly aligned to deal with such problems?

Increasing numbers of people think not. Elaine Ecklund again:

“If we are ever going to meet the scholarly and public challenges we face, we may want to abandon disciplines. How else will scholars learn to think beyond old boundaries?”

Seductive though these arguments are, interdisciplinarity is easier said (and even that takes some effort) than done. The academic disciplines are there for good reasons, and they have served us well.

And it is not as if they have remained frozen in time.

Universities long ago moved on from the trivium (grammar, rhetoric and logic) and quadrivium (mathematics, geometry, astronomy and music).

Higher education in the 21st century spans many fields and specialties.

And universities are confronting the challenges of the modern age.

For example, at Macquarie University we understand that today’s global problems require multi-disciplinary solutions, so our students learn a comprehensive range of generic, analytical and critical skills.

Let’s not forget either that much work goes on between disciplines: academics from one field frequently work with researchers in another.

As just one Macquarie University example, a philosopher, Professor John Sutton and colleagues work with scientists in the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science on issues related to individual and collective memory.

Given, though, that the problems we face will become ever more complex and intertwined, perhaps it is time to seriously consider how we can move away from a system that in general is focused on specialty – learning more and more about less and less, as the cynical might say.

A recent UK report floated an intriguing idea: head back to the future and take a lesson from the Renaissance.

The thoroughly modern model scholar, in this view, would be someone akin to Leonardo da Vinci – a polymath, an expert not in one field but in many. Such people, says the report, may be essential for future innovation in business and industry.

The da Vincis and Michelangelos of this world are one-off geniuses, and cannot be replicated off the peg.

But could it not be possible to nurture a future generation of polymathic academics?

For sure, much would have to change – disciplines would need to be reconceptualised, the PhD and other postgraduate qualifications restructured.

And let’s remember that we will still need specialists in all fields. Dilettante engineers and doctors, for example, would not be good for society.

So over to you. Can it be done? What would need to change? Do we even need to do it?

I’m most interested in your thoughts.

- Steven Schwartz