Prof. Saroj Jayasinghe
Emeritus Professor of Medicine, University of Colombo; Consultant Physician
Complex social problems cannot be adequately understood or resolved through the lens of a single academic discipline. This essay argues that conventional, reductionist approaches to research and policy are fundamentally insufficient for addressing the layered, interconnected challenges that confront contemporary societies, and proposes the Systems-Based Trans-disciplinary Research Approach (STAR) as a more adequate framework. The argument draws on the Indian folk tale of the blind men touching different parts of an elephant to describe the whole animal rendered in verse by John Godfrey Saxe: “Each in his own opinion / Exceeding stiff and strong, / though each was partly in the right, / and all were in the wrong!” This metaphor encapsulates a critical limitation of conventional academic inquiry researchers confined within a single discipline perceive only one dimension of a complex reality, and therefore arrive at incomplete or even counterproductive solutions.
Reductionism and Its Limits
To illustrate the limits of reductionism, consider the case of childhood malnutrition in Sri Lanka. A reductionist approach one that reduces the problem to its most immediate biological or medical dimension would prescribe health education, weaning practices, and nutritional supplements such as Thriposha. While these interventions address a visible symptom, they fail to engage with the deeper structural and systemic forces that produce malnutrition in the first place: rising prices and falling wages, the inability of households to afford food or transport, school absenteeism, and the disruption of Ministry of Health (MOH) nutrition services. Each of these factors is deeply interconnected, and external shocks such as the COVID-19 economic shutdown in 2020, the Aragalaya political crisis of 2022, and more recent scenarios involving the Iran-US war or Cyclone Ditwah displacing populations cascade through this system to worsen malnutrition outcomes in ways that reductionist thinking simply cannot anticipate or address (see figure 1).. This exposes a critical epistemological gap: reductionism, by design, isolates variables rather than tracing the web of relations in which those variables are embedded.
Systems Thinking as a Complementary Approach
Systems thinking offers a more adequate conceptual foundation for research and policy. It involves challenging existing norms, identifying biases, understanding how components fit into larger wholes, recognising dynamic interactions and feedback loops, and examining problems from multiple perspectives. Rather than treating malnutrition as a health problem to be solved within the health sector alone, systems thinking reveals it as a symptom of a worsening societal crisis involving economics, governance, ecology, and global events simultaneously. This shift from linear causality to relational complexity is not merely methodological — it represents a fundamentally different ontological stance towards the nature of social problems and the kind of knowledge needed to address them.
From Mono-disciplinary to Trans-disciplinary
Research practice can be understood along a spectrum of disciplinary integration from mono-disciplinary, through multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary, to trans-disciplinary research (TDR). In the mono-disciplinary mode, a single discipline operates in isolation, setting its own goals and generating knowledge within its own boundaries. Multidisciplinary approaches bring multiple disciplines to bear under one thematic umbrella, such as examining the economic and social determinants of health. Interdisciplinary research crosses disciplinary boundaries to produce integrated knowledge for instance, health economics as a field that models malnutrition at the interface of health and economic analysis. Trans-disciplinary research goes further still: it transcends academia altogether by incorporating non-academic stakeholders, community voices, and practical knowledge into the research process itself.
“Trans-disciplinarity is a collaborative mode of knowledge production in which researchers from multiple disciplines work together with non-academic stakeholders to co-create knowledge, theory, and practical solutions directed toward a shared societal goal” (Kaiser M and Gluckman P, 2023). Solutions are developed in collaboration with multiple stakeholders, and where local knowledge, scientific knowledge, and the knowledge of industries, businesses, and NGOs are collectively enhanced with the sum being greater than any single partner’s contribution alone. Crucially, trans-disciplinary research also minimises the bias inherent in any single disciplinary perspective. TDR connects to a broader family of related intellectual traditions, including participatory research, action research, citizen science, post-normal science a problem-solving framework applicable when facts are uncertain, values are in dispute, stakes are high, and decisions are urgent.
The STAR Framework and Its Application
The STAR (Systems-Based Trans-disciplinary Research Approach) framework integrates systems thinking with the principles of TDR to tackle “wicked problems” which are complex, multi-causal challenges that resist straightforward or discipline-specific solutions. ‘(Senarathne, R, Amaratunga, D, and Nahallage. C. 2026). A key distinction must be drawn between trans-disciplinary and conventional research: while conventional research begins with a research question, identifies relevant disciplines, engages expert knowledge, and moves from research to policy, TDR begins with a wicked problem, moves beyond disciplinary boundaries, actively engages stakeholders, and aims at broader societal change through a cyclical process of framing, doing, and evaluating.
The Sri Lankan Context and the Way Forward
Despite the promise of TDR, Sri Lanka’s existing research culture remains predominantly mono-disciplinary. Universities function as bastions of mono-disciplinarity, with disciplinary appointments, no joint appointments, single-discipline curricula, and research structures that do not facilitate cross-disciplinary collaboration. This institutional rigidity presents a significant barrier to addressing the country’s most complex social, environmental, and public health challenges.
The pathways forward are clear. Universities must introduce trans-disciplinary curricula the Australian National University offers an existing model worth emulating alongside joint appointments, joint research programmes, and problem-based and task-based learning strategies that require students to engage with real-world problems across disciplinary boundaries. At the institutional level, funding bodies such as NSF, NRC, and the University Grants Commission (UGC), as well as professional organisations such as SLAAS and NASSL, must establish dedicated research streams in TDR and actively promote research that addresses Sri Lanka’s wicked problems. UNESCO’s role in shaping general education syllabi towards interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary thinking equally deserves recognition and engagement.
Conclusion
Reductionist thinking systematically fails to account for the complexity of social problems. By articulating a clear conceptual pathway from mono-disciplinary to trans-disciplinary inquiry, and by grounding this argument in the concrete realities of childhood malnutrition and infectious disease surveillance in Sri Lanka, this essay makes the case for structural reform in how universities, funding bodies, and policymakers approach knowledge production. The sum of knowledge generated through genuine trans-disciplinary collaboration will always be greater than what any single discipline can offer alone. Addressing the layered, interconnected challenges facing Sri Lankan society demands precisely this kind of integrative, systems-informed, and community-engaged scholarship.
References
- Senarathne, Ranjith, Dilanthi Amaratunga, and Charmalie Nahallage. 2026. “A Transdisciplinary Systems Approach for Addressing Complex Real-world Issues: A Sri Lankan Perspectives”. Loughborough University. https://hdl.handle.net/2134/31190854.v1.
- Looking at the Future of Transdisciplinary Research. Discussion Paper. Matthias Kaiser and Peter Gluckman. International Science Council. 2023. DOI: 10.24948/2023.05