Archdisciplinary Research Center
= "work between big picture frameworks that synthesize everything humanity has learned about ourselves, the world, and the universe, and we apply that knowledge for greater good".
URL = https://www.arc.voyage/
Contextual Quote
"The history of human civilization is a story of moving towards increasing degrees of resolution in our renditions about the environments, world, and universe that we inhabit. We’re at the point where we are getting some good bearing on where we came from, where we are at now, and where we’re going. Individuals and groups who work at this level of inquiry do not often find homes at universities. Universities often focus on disciplinary and interdisciplinary (sometimes called multidisciplinary) theory and practice. Transdisciplinary university studies are still quite rare, yet are slowly making their way into the mainstream of academic inquiry. The kinds of challenges that we face as a species can’t wait around for university politics to change. We created this nonprofit and research lab to fill this need for both ourselves and for others who want a professional setting to work on this."
(https://www.arc.voyage/research-lab)
Description
"The Archdisciplinary Research Center (ARC) is a nonprofit organization. We are a growing collective of independents and academic scholars who have created and/or work between big picture frameworks that synthesize everything humanity has learned about ourselves, the world, and the universe, and we apply that knowledge for greater good.
Our mission is to advocate for and support individuals, groups, and institutions with big picture, theory of everything, transdisciplinary, widely-encompassing unification metatheoretical frameworks and practices. We pursue this endeavor through research, education, community, and agency.
ARC takes a neutral, non-denominational approach to the diversity of big picture frameworks, and partners with those who want to make a better world. We focus more on comparative analysis and joint cooperation, and less on critical analysis. Where critical analysis is warranted, we advocate for constructive criticisms towards helping big picture frameworks become more stable and reliable. "
Discussion
Archdisciplinarity as Scopes of Inquiry:
"Scopes of inquiry are like containers for each scale of theory. For scopes of inquiry, the sequence of its growth has been as follows. In academia there are a wide diversity of disciplines, each with their own respective theories and practices. A discipline can borrow from another discipline, but it stays grounded in its roots. When people do research and practices with multiple disciplines together jointly, it’s called interdisciplinarity. When people do research and practices and draw from all known disciplines, it’s called transdisciplinarity. We are introducing a new term, called archdisciplinarity. Archdisciplinarity is when people do research and practice at a scope that stretches across transdisciplinary approaches. Archdisciplinarity is not an ideology, it is a scope of academic inquiry.
Archtheory as Scales of Inquiry:
Scales of theory follow closely with scopes of inquiry. Historically, there have been theories which are produced by disciplinary research and practice, and metatheories which are mostly produced by interdisciplinarity research and practice. Everyone knows what a theory is – a proposition about what is true with supporting evidence. Metatheory can mean different things to different people. Metatheory can be a theory applied to itself, or a theory about one or more other theories. When metatheories broaden to include all known theories and fit them together into a unified framework, they become unification metatheories. We are introducing a new term, called archtheory. An archtheory is a proposition about how to fit together unification metatheories with supporting evidence. When doing archdisciplinary comparative analysis, universal congruencies or archetypal universal patterns that hold across unification metatheories are found, called arches. Arches are the means in which unification metatheories are fitted together, and the basis in which archtheories are made. Arches are good candidates for natural laws.
Archmodernism as Stages of Social Evolution:
Stages of social evolution require multiple people co-existing with the same kind of sensibility. There are distinct stages of social evolution, each with their own sensibilities. They can can be shown to emerge in a historical sequence, but they can also describe sensibility characteristics of individuals, cultures, institutions, and societies coexisting today. With pre-modernism sensibilities, people primarily base their worldviews on religious notions. With modernism sensibilities, people primarily base their worldviews on scientific notions. With post-modernism sensibilities, people primarily base their worldview on something called structuralism, which means that people think all truths and knowledge are relative and situational. With metamodern sensibilities, people primarily base their worldviews on recognizing that all the previous sensibilities have positive and negative traits, and that we can carry the best of what came before us forward.
We are introducing a new term, called archmodernism. Archmodernism is very new, and we don’t really have a lot of examples to observe about it. What we do know, is that it involves people who have authored or advocate for unification metatheories, all coordinating together towards a higher order synthesis of human knowing and doing, with the intention to understand, solve for, and overcome our local to global complex challenges in new ways. It means acknowledging that while previous sensibilities have solves problems from the previous social sensibility, they create new problems of their own, and that no previous sensibility has yet been able to implement the kind of changes our world needs at the scope and scale it requires."
(https://www.arc.voyage/research-lab)
More information
- Booklet: Foundations of Archdisciplinarity. Archdisciplinary Research Center.
"Archdisciplinarity is here introduced as the academic inquiry that treats big picture, transdisciplinary, theory of everything, unification metatheories as units of analysis for comparison and contrast. Foundations of Archdisciplinarity is a free booklet that provides an in-depth look at the evolution of human knowledge – where we came from, where we are at, and where we’re going."