For a Realistic, Defragmented, and Planetary Education

At the time, Jean Piaget had shown the tendency to defragment modern disciplinary thought. In its initial idea the emergence of the transdisciplinary would overcome the interdisciplinary, but according to ^{Alvarenga, Sommerman and Alvarez (2005)} what was observed in the future developments was a different movement resulting from the broad process of discussion held in various international meetings and congresses in the following decades, notably from the second half of the 1980s. In the official documents there is a recognition that interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity are closely related; that are not excluded and will not be excluded in the new process of development of science, nor will both exclude disciplinarity, multi and pluridisciplinarity. The justification for this is that these, in their own set, represent different degrees of possibilities of treatment of reality through the recognition of the existence of its different levels (^{Alvarenga et al., 2005}).

Therefore, the aspiration for an articulation between the disciplines so that the teaching-learning process was closer to the real scenarios is not new. Transdisciplinarity has been used more commonly in teaching and in the field of education, precisely because of its reflective role on the disciplinary content and on the interrelation of educational themes (^{Pires, 1998}).

The transdisciplinarization of research in favor of the Anthropocene

To problematize the limits of each discipline is to question it at its own freezing points and universality. In fact, in the transdisciplinary perspective we are bet for “[...] nomadizing the borders and make them unstable: to chaotize the fields, destabilizing them to the point of making them plans for the creation of other object-subjects” (^{Passos; Barros, 2000}, p. 77). Transdisciplinary research provides this reflective beyond.

Transdisciplinary research exhibits this deconstructive peculiarity to construct again from meanings once despised. ^{Lencastre (2008)} states that studies on the adaptation of scientific knowledge to the public space show that the linear model of the transmission of so-called “pure” knowledge between experts and laypeople has been replaced by an idea of “negociation of meanings” that takes place at various levels, at different times and involving people from different socio-cultural contexts.

In the meetings of negotiation of meanings so-called scientific references are also liable to be questioned by those outside the scientific educational system, based on the assumption that there are levels of reality to consider in all problems. They are exercises and clashes that will follow the process of knowledge production that will also influence the production of new content and new emerging disciplines.

Transdisciplinary research has already been applied to several areas of knowledge (^{Hadorn et al., 2008}) with specificities and recognizable characteristics (^{Wickson; Carew; Russell, 2006}), in the search for the recognition of the literature of what is transdisciplinary (^{Klein, 2008}), questioning its expansion and methodological reason (^{Pohl, 2011}), deciphering the structure of transdisciplinary thought (^{Pohl; Hadorn, 2007}), oriented to public policies (^{Pohl, 2008}), and as a methodological challenge (Pohl; ^{Hadorn, 2008}), in the direct direction of sustainability (^{Lang et al., 2012}), as a potential link between health and social sciences (^{Rosenfield, 1992}), in historicizing versions (^{Kessel; Rosenfield, 2008}), in leadership (^{Gray, 2008}) or as a methodological tool for transdisciplinary research projects (^{Roux et al., 2010}).

The problematic of the Anthropocene points us to the unusual methodological destiny (trans) that allows the integration of perceptions, experiences, facts and data to assist in decisions. From the various narratives, we saw that there are many developments in the study of the Anthropocene, with its peculiarities. ^{Belcher and Schmidt (2021)} have recently signaled that industrialism, colonialism, wars, threatening technologies, genocides, slavery, nuclear power, and capitalism itself are articulated differently, but often related to the inequalities of social conditions that lead to planetary forcing.

The three pillars of transdisciplinarity: levels of reality, the logic of the included third and complexity

^{Nicolescu (1999)} stated that the transdisciplinary theory was based on three pillars: the levels of reality, the logic of the included third and the complexity, which determined the methodology of transdisciplinary research and supported the epistemic-methodological principle of transdisciplinarity. It represented a severe blow to the classical view of the world, because it was obvious that, in order to understand something that presents itself as complex, it would be mandatory to have a complex and transdisciplinary epistemology⁷.

The first pillar: levels of reality

The first pillar of transdisciplinarity shows that reality is constituted by different levels, such as the material level and the virtual level. This presupposes that it is necessary to take into account that the biophysical and cultural reality is multidimensional and that it is a mistake to consider it in a simple and linear way based on a one-dimensional perception. Reality is multidimensional in its constitution.

According to ^{Nicolescu (1999)}, a level of reality is a fold of the set of levels of perception and a level of perception is a fold of the set of levels of reality. The real is a fold of the imaginary and the imaginary is a fold of the real. And this perception of the different levels of reality produces and enables different levels of understanding.

Transdisciplinarity is complementary to disciplinary approaches and arises from new data, facts and interactions. ^{Nicolescu (2008)} says that the theory is marked by the presence of different levels of reality, in which not only the space between the disciplines involved in a problematization is full of information, emphasizing a methodological cross-border. Thus, the theory of transdisciplinarity refers to the transgression of boundaries between disciplines (^{Nowotny, 2006}) for the integration of different forms of knowledge, practice and research, and leads to a better preparation to face the always complex socio-environmental crises recognized and announced by ^{Leff (2006)} which are explored synthetically in the text of ^{Martins and Araujo (2021)}.

The consideration of the levels of reality is a fundamental input for the applicability of transdisciplinarity in science and everyday life and is its main ontological foundation. In transdisciplinary theory, reality is different from something to be experienced individually, spatially or temporally in the physical world, according to a single point of view. Levels of reality are analytical categories that must be discussed together based on the experience shared by all agents. Thus, the transdisciplinary ontology respects the complex and dynamic relationships between these different realities organized into three levels of reality:

Figure 2 below adapts to the research model of the Anthropocene and points to the dimensions derived from the conceptual Anthropocene, signaling transdisciplinarization.

Source: Adapted by the author from McGregor (2011b).

Figure 2 Synoptic diagram of the dynamics between the transdisciplinary levels of reality 

Non-Resistance Zones⁸

In this shared space, which I regard as a shared Anthropocene, people would lose resistance to truth informed by other realities and join those realities. There are transdisciplinary research challenges on transcendent themes of the Anthropocene that span the sciences of religion, music (^{Andrade Júnior, 2018}), fine arts, theology, philosophy, quantum physics with metaphysics – and why not include deep ecologists to discuss the earth system, autopoiesis and self-regulation and the meaning of creation or evolution in the face of the imminent human responsibility that the Anthropocene presents?

Other issues are equally important, usually much more scandalous and remarkably undertheorized and which can be transdisciplinarized. Some questions would still require a rejection of appeals to epistemology and maintain an analytical focus in research on the production of ignorance (intentional or not) in the Anthropocene as the probable uncertainty of the finiteness of the Earth or simply on the realities of an ignominious Anthropocene.

It is a challenge that presents itself because even philosophy, art and politics as disciplines fully conform to the intrinsic resistance of a level of reality, says ^{Nicolescu (1999)}, creator of transdisciplinary theory. Even the “metaphors of God” insofar as they are integrated into a theology can correspond to a level of reality: theology is, after all, a human science like the others. However, religious experience and the experience of inspiration are difficult to assimilate into a single level of reality. They correspond much more to the crossing of different levels of reality through the “zone of non-resistance” (^{Nicolescu, 2012a}). There are realities in this intuitive zone of non-resistance underlying culture and art, religions and spiritualities. The three levels of reality together would form the transdisciplinary ontology (^{McGregor, 2011a}).

^{McGregor (2011a)} provides an exemplified summary of the dynamics of transdisciplinarity. Each of the 10 realities exemplified on the three levels is characterized by its incompleteness. When these realities come together, they generate a new and infinite knowledge (^{Nicolescu, 2006}). Transdisciplinary ontology would deal with the mediated flow of internal consciousness (perceptions) and technical information from different realities that lead to a meeting of minds from the zone of non-resistance – called the “hidden third” in the transdisciplinary model (^{Nicolescu, 2012b}).

The second pillar: the logic of the included third

The second pillar, the logic of the third included, is manifested in the transdisciplinary understanding that is directly linked to the perception of the different levels of reality. In the reading of classical logic, the axiom of identity and the principle of non-contradiction do not allow the possibility of an included third party. Classical logic works explaining in binary form and not in connective perception and perspective of the third included.

^{Nicolescu (1999)} would explain this classical logic that is transgressed by the transdisciplinary approach:

In these axioms classical logic admits a single level of reality, since axiom number 3 excludes the possibility of articulation. Quantum logic introduces innovations, defining the inclusion of a third term. There is a third term T, which at the same time is A and non-A. The third term included always leads to another level of reality, unlike the previous level of non-contradiction, opening the possibility to a new vision (perspective) of reality (^{Nicolescu, 1999}; ²⁰⁰⁸; ^2012a).

The logic of the included third presupposes the appearance of other elements opposed to any level of reality and to any truth expressed by an agent of reality, in a single point of view. It’s a never-ending process. In this sense, there is no ultimate and absolute truth. There will always be relative truths that are subject to change over time. Transdisciplinarity would imply transgressing the logic of non-contradiction, articulating subject and object, subjectivity and objectivity, matter and consciousness, simplicity and complexity, unity and diversity. Binary pairs (using the logic of the third term included) elevate the understanding of reality, assuming a broader meaning and always open to new processes (^{Nicolescu, 1999}; ²⁰⁰⁸; ^2012a).

The third pillar: complexity

The third pillar that of complexity is undoubtedly the broadest and the one that reveals, with greater vigor, the need for a transdisciplinary vision so that we can dialogue with the real. Without transdisciplinary perception and vision there is no complex knowledge, because the complex means that everything has to do with everything, everything is woven together, interwoven and interconnected (^{Morin, 1991}). The paths that lead to an understanding of the present, biophysical and cultural world presuppose a perception and understanding from the cognitive principles of complexity theory. Now, if reality is complex and multidimensional, we need to make use of cognitive principles that allow us to produce pertinent knowledge to access and understand the complexity and multidimensionality of this reality. One cannot exclude the idea of the simple with the complexity nor can one exclude the idea of the complex with the simple, for complexity is the union of the simple with the complex.

Transdisciplinarity, in addition to relying on these pillars that go beyond and surpass some of the principles of classical science that produces the fragmentation of knowledge, replaces in the scientific scenario other models of knowledge that come from tradition, emotion, sensitivity and the imaginary, highlighting its importance and its role in the construction of knowledge. It criticizes the advances of an increasingly encyclopedic, cumulative knowledge, produced at the expense of the growing impoverishment of being and the increase of inequality between those who possess it and those who are and are deprived of it. ^{Morin (2002, p. 18)}, in making this criticism, places as imperative the formation of “[...] spirits capable of organizing their knowledge instead of storing it by an accumulation of knowledge”, which opens the door to the constitution of a complex knowledge capable of situating any information in its context (^{Martinazzo, 2020}).

In practice, the problematization of the different disciplinary dimensions of the Anthropocene is permanently accompanied by the methodology of transdisciplinary research, a reason for a programmed encounter between several for a common future: people of academic formation and members of organized society (or not) meet to reflect on a complex problem. These problematic reflections prevent the establishment of a clear dividing line between pure science and disseminated science, creating a hybrid cultural space between science and society, in which scientific expertise is built together. Local debates have shown that there are no “right answers” and no single application of science in applied decision-making. Answers will depend on a local assessment of risks and benefits, in the context of ethical sensitivities and varied information from different sources, where the credibility of the actors is as important as their knowledge (^{Lencastre, 2008}).

Real connections between themes related to the Anthropocene with many narratives contributing to the densification of history are allowed in deep abstract considerations. The ontology of the Earth System or life in it and how the anthropos behaves in its relationship to nature can also be discussed in multiple realities. Transcendental discussions about the tremendous polarization in normal science with impacts on generational educational references (^{Moore, 2005}), such as creationism and intelligent design (^{Pennock, 2003}; ^{Numbers, 2006}) vs evolutionism (^{Sanderson, 1997}; ^{Claessen, 2006}), are also allowed in a transdisciplinary approach to the Anthropocene model, in which classical logic makes no sense.

Towards transdisciplinarization: a few touches

We have seen that the transdisciplinary theory presents, in fact, the proposal of transformation and an alternative education in the Anthropocene capable of reporting the different areas of knowledge, and of leading to respect for differences, through solidarity and integration with Nature.

It is noted that transdisciplinary solutions are already sought and this facilitates the organization of issues for the Anthropocene. Transdisciplinary practice shortens the boundaries between disciplines and considers the multiple faces of understanding the world in the joint construction of a wisely elaborated knowledge (^{Andrade Júnior; Andrade, 2020}).

But sometimes the doubt predominates about what is transdisciplinarity and whether what is intended is really transdisciplinary. I consider it important to quickly emphasize certain distinctive elements that will facilitate transdisciplinary discernment on the intersecting themes of the Anthropocene, which are origin, description, binary pairs, and what goes beyond them. Such an understanding allows us to expand the disciplinary frontier in the search for knowledge.

Source. The origin of disciplinarization must be pointed out because multi-interdisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity derive from physics and the classical sciences. Conversely, transdisciplinarity derives from quantum physics and quantum cosmology, as well as chaos theory, living systems theory, the sciences of consciousness and religion, and other humanities (^{Nicolescu, 2010}; ^2012a). Its rationale is that the laws that govern the behavior of quantum entities differ from those that govern entities in the classical macrophysical world (^{Cole, 2006}).

Description. Multidisciplinarity is a process in which knowledge is produced by combining different disciplines, but knowledge remains within the boundaries of these areas and is designed separately to solve a problem. In interdisciplinarity, knowledge is produced through the analysis, synthesis and connection of many disciplines into a coordinated and coherent whole. Through interdisciplinarity, new approaches and new methods can emerge as possible outcomes. In transdisciplinarity, knowledge is produced by bringing together the understanding of the natural, social and governance domains, in a way that transcends each of its traditional boundaries (^{Choi; Pak, 2006}) and so it was identified as an epistemological field and essential methodological framework of the Anthropocene. Each domain must literally “wear the shirt of the others.” Thus, transdisciplinarity invites everyone to bring a new paradigm to solve the complex problems of the world (^{van Breda, 2008}; ^{McGregor, 2011a}).

Binary pairs. It is accustomed to dealing intellectually with dialectical contradictions in social science research and we commonly associate the difference between subject and object to seek explanations, but this space is reduced to a microscopic level in the trans [+] disciplinary view, in which the difference simply disappears.

The words three and trans have the same etymological root: three means the transgression of the two, which goes beyond two. Transdisciplinarity is the transgression of duality that opposes binary pairs: subject/object, subjectivity/objectivity, matter/consciousness, nature/divine, simplicity/complexity, reductionism/holism, diversity/unity. As ^{Nicolescu said (2012a, p. 61)}: “This duality is transgressed by the open unity that surrounds the Universe and the human being. In the transdisciplinary view, complex plurality and open unity are two facets of the same reality”.

The fusion of these binary particles that are concepts or elements points to the fact that the announced Anthropocene goes through a period of transdisciplinarization of knowledge, in which different levels of hidden realities can be revealed. A contextual explanation for this would be that the planetary crisis causes a profound mutation in our relationship with the world and requires new forms of belonging to the nature and a new image of humanity (^{Latour, 2017}). The transdisciplinary debate at all levels represents the emergence of a problematization that questions the entire system of modernity.

Each time we perceive more additions and neologisms derived from the search for meaning or the ontology of the Anthropocene, the explanatory complexity about this system of modernity increases. An attempt is made to explain within each discipline the specificities it knows. When one does not know, one tends to one of two attitudes: (i) recognition that the probable conceptual void depends on new concepts that did not matter and that it is necessary to add new realities or (ii) negation, in which one remains in the conceptual and dimensional cloister resulting from disciplinary limitations.

Progressively in the process of transdisciplinarization to deal with these disciplinary limitations, the disciplinary status passes from multi [+] disciplinary to inter [+] disciplinary, in which episodes of conceptual and methodological aggregation occur from the disciplines that are led to work together in projects, characterizing a more synthetic exchange of formation and unification of concepts and methodologies of interdisciplinary research. Later in the process already in the transdisciplinary phase there is another fusion between the disciplines gathered that realize the integrality that was missing for the problematization demanded together. The methodology corroborates the integration of all of them, operating with questions, concepts, and methods not present in a specific discipline (^{Huutoniemi et al., 2009}).

Research and Action transdisciplinary

Let’s look at part of the process working in practice. ^{Oldfield et al. (2013)} proposed more transdisciplinary research in the epistemological effort of the Anthropocene. However, the desire to approach and respond to the appeal depends on each discipline, since each one has its primary competencies, with methodologies and forms of approach peculiar to face the socio-environmental problems.

In response to the appeal of ^{Oldfield et al. (2013)}, ^{Toivanen et al. (2017)} proposed four approaches as branches of the Anthropocene: the anthropocene [+] geological and the anthropocene [+] biological in the disciplinary competence of the natural sciences; the anthropocene [+] social of the disciplinary competence of the social sciences and the anthropocene [+] cultural of the humanities. This would signal what I call an attempt at transdisciplinarization with the aggregation of the derived particle [+] to the term anthropocene.

That’s an important step. With categories of disciplinary thought brought together, one would no longer be confronting the natural and human sciences, but constructing a megadimension of analysis that allows one to include the hidden third, and then we will actually be aligned with the transdisciplinary research of the Anthropocene. In a projected abstraction, the missing knowledge through this differentiated and transdisciplinary approach would finally be revealed, being useful for efforts against the planetary crisis. Thus, with a consolidated process of transdisciplinarization, it would be inappropriate to include the humanities in the control of the Anthropocene cultural vector and leave them out of the social vector, as suggested by ^{Toivanen et al. (2017)}.

But how would this process of bringing together disciplines of the Anthropocene – by ^{Crutzen and Stoermer (2000)} – and the “anthropocenes” (^{Toivanen et al., 2017}) play out in practice? I bring a transdisciplinary research exercise regarding the perception of integrality that is missing for a version of problematization of sustainability, with the purpose of leading the agents of research to a “shared Anthropocene”.

First, one of the main issues raised by the Anthropocene is sustainability per se. But it is not only the lack of sustainability in practice that worries us. The sustainability model, which is elaborated from different visions of reality, for example, environmental, economic, social, cultural, political, etc. (^{Sachs, 1993}), demonstrates conceptual difficulties and gives the impression of a conceptual void. There are gaps that are hidden by the lack of a transdisciplinary attitude to solve the problems of each representative dimension. The hidden conceptual void did not go through the effort of being included in the appropriate dimensional realities with the support of knowledge, methodology, experience shared by each scientific face, and the scientific mind involved in the process of transferring the levels of reality.

Therefore, the term sustainability, which is still widely used, is poorly explained. It’s misunderstood. There is talk of weak or strong sustainability (^{Ekins et al., 2003}). It seems like a fashion accessory (^{Hasna, 2010}) or common sense for everyone (^{Moldan et al., 2012}), since it brings interpretations and applications inconsistent with high ambiguity of the concept, including an incomplete perception of the problems of poverty, environmental degradation, and therole of economic growth (^{Lélé, 1991}; ^{Mori; Christodoulou, 2012}; ^{Slimane, 2012}; ^{Sartori; Latronic; Campos, 2014}). As the overall world situation has not improved so far, it remains a popular and brilliant slogan (^{Slimane, 2012}), to the disgrace of the Anthropocene.

Secondly, the fusion of the development model with the word sustainable has led to what we now call sustainable development. It has evolved as an integrative concept under an umbrella, under which a set of interrelated issues can be uniquely organized. It is a variable process of change that seeks its own sustainability, but in practice it is inconceivable. There would be a lack of integration and sharing of the levels of reality involved. The concept of sustainable development remains contested due to the different positions adopted in relation to what can be considered fair (^{Todorov; Marinova, 2011}). The mere adherence of the sustainable particle [+] to development already indicates a (probably hidden) effort of transdisciplinarization that is attempted to be resolved through disciplinarization, which results in its failure.

It is also worth mentioning the fragility of the so-called “tripod of sustainability”. ^{Elkington (2018)} had argued, after 25 years of creating the sustainability tripod model, that we should rethink it. He says that the model of sustainable development has been diluted and that – now he admits! – it can be valid if companies adopt radical systems of change, rather than incremental efforts. In practice, sustainable development is nothing more than a paradox and the tripod of sustainability is not a tripod but a trilemma (^{Martine; Alves, 2015}), because it is contradictory and brings three conflicting options. The logic is that the increase in human activities puts more and more pressure on the planet making it difficult to reconcile economic growth, social well-being and environmental sustainability for those who have never had it (^{Martine, 2015}).

In fact, the rupture between the poles of this trilemma is increasing. The more the hegemonic model of production and consumption advances, the greater the global risks of collapse. To achieve sustainability, sustainable development is generally used as an instrument of action (^{Prugh; Assadourian, 2003}). This model perpetuates social inequality and degrades the planet (^{Andrade Júnior, 2020b}). The model is so broad and generally applicable that its vagueness renders it inoperative and open to a conflict of interpretation (^{Dovers; Handmer, 1992}). It does not explicitly cover future thinking, although almost all published definitions of the concept are based on principles of sustainability (^{Moldan; Janouaková; Hák, 2012}) such as, for example, the long-term perspective, the importance of local conditions, and the understanding of the nonlinear evolution of environmental and human systems. However, this sense of the concept of sustainability refers to the existence of environmental conditions necessary to sustain human life at a specific level of well-being over future generations and is, in essence, ecological sustainability and not sustainable development (^{Lélé, 1991}).

Third, “be sustainable” would mean recognizing that reality is a non-linear, continuous and systemic process, in which relations – social, natural and socio-environmental – occur simultaneously as a relationship of interdependence between the beings and resources that live in a given environment. Faced with the crisis announced by the Anthropocene, a transdisciplinary emphasis would be placed on maintaining the system of values, practices and symbols of identity that allows social reproduction and guarantees national integration over time. This includes, for example, the discussion to promote the constitutional rights of minorities and their incorporation into concrete policies of multilingual education, territorial demarcation and autonomy, migration referral, religiosity, security, community health, digital inclusion, etc., through the specific examination of each problematization. If the very propaedeutics of transdisciplinary theory were adopted from the outset and worldviews were respected, experiences shared with scientific humility would precipitate new solutions.