Transdisciplinary personality?

In academia we discuss vividly about transdisciplinarity, multidisciplinarity or whatever you want to call the practices that aim at finding new research questions or solutions by crossing the borders of different disciplines. Some say that a transdisciplinary personality is possible others say that it cannot happen. Trying to find new ways of looking at the world or solving some problems with people from different paradigms could be prosperous as soon as you find the common language. This is certainly one of the biggest obstacles to collaborating smoothly with different discplinary perspectives. But what if there would be a pool of persons who are stirring the discourses of different disciplines and tearing down disciplinary boundaries?

I argue that transdisciplinarity is much about language skills, and a sensitivity to listen to other languages in use. Now I am talking about language more as a discourse than as a language as such. I would like to draw on an example from bilingualism. For many years bilingualism was seen as impossible, or well you could speak many languages fluently but you couldn’t attain the right sensitivity or thorough knowledge that is needed when you are a writer for example. This is no longer the truth, as we have many authors that write with a beautiful, interesting language which is not their mother tongue. Of course you have to be talented but we know that the brain is different for those who have learned at least two languages early in life. A brain that is more dynamic and maybe more apt to find more nuances in life in general. Maybe that is also what transdisciplinarity is all about. There are people who have a talent to learn different theoretical discourses more easily and also to combine them in an appropriate way. A certain sensitivity, openness and even some risk-taking attitude is needed. And as bilingual people, an urge to find new expressions by combining something old. So transdiscplinarity should be offered as early as possible in the academic life. By showing, for example, how different disciplines are born by striving for less ambiguity in the development of concepts could be a solution.