Interdisciplinary research fields thrive on narrow era-specific focus to reach critical mass.

Evidence

Cross-disciplinary research tends to be an exciting participatory sport, but it is a young person’s game, drawing few spectators and fewer participants from the parent disciplines’ established leaders who tend to be preoccupied by the traditional topics with which the discipline has become fairly comfortable. Because workers at interdisciplinary borders are relatively few, their focusing narrowly in any one era as regards topics, theories, and methods may be necessary if they are to attain a critical mass of mutually stimulating work. Such withinera narrowness tends to be corrected by sizable shifts of focus from one era to the next. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 355

Categorization

• XREF: Complements the scientific-collaborator literature (e.g., what makes fields reach critical mass) and invisible-college theory.