In recent years, the idea of interdisciplinary education has become almost a mantra in universities. And the argument is certainly appealing: The world’s most complex problems, like climate change, artificial intelligence, and sustainable energy, certainly cannot be solved from within a single disciplinary boundary. The call for interdisciplinary learning, therefore, arises from a genuine need to integrate insights across fields. Yet, I find myself cautious about the enthusiasm that surrounds this movement. While I value the spirit of intellectual openness that interdisciplinarity represents, I believe that true integration of knowledge is only possible after one has acquired real depth in at least one discipline. Without that foundation, what passes for interdisciplinarity often becomes a superficial collage rather than a synthesis of understanding.AdvertisementEvery discipline carries its own intellectual grammar, the concepts, tools, and methods that structure how questions are asked and how answers are validated. A physicist learns to think in terms of conservation laws and mathematical models, a historian, in terms of sources, contexts, and interpretive frameworks. Mastery in one domain is not just about accumulating information but about internalising a way of thinking. It trains the mind to move from vague intuition to structured analysis. When students rush too quickly into cross-disciplinary work without this grounding, they often end up with a vocabulary of buzzwords rather than a grasp of substance. To integrate knowledge meaningfully, one must first have knowledge worth integrating.I think much of the rhetoric around interdisciplinarity tends to overlook the fact that great breakthroughs at the intersections of fields were made by people who first achieved depth before reaching outward. Consider Claude Shannon: Before founding information theory, he trained rigorously in electrical engineering and mathematics, and it was from that solid base that he could see the analogy between Boolean logic and circuit design. Similarly, the field of molecular biology arose from physicists like Francis Crick, who had mastered the conceptual and quantitative rigour of physics before applying it to biology. They were not generalists dabbling across domains, but were specialists who carried the precision of one field into another, and in doing so, transformed both the fields.Exactly the same principle is visible today in mega-science projects in India. The India LIGO project demands exquisite mastery in vacuum engineering, advanced photonics, seismic isolation, control theory, and mathematical relativity, none of which can be done by a “jack of all trades”. The National Quantum Mission will require deep experts in quantum optics, cryogenics, materials science, microwave engineering, quantum algorithms, and semiconductor fabrication. These projects are multidisciplinary not because participants know “a little of everything”, but because each researcher brings depth in something very specific, and only then can the larger integration work.AdvertisementThe analogy with language learning is helpful. One cannot translate between languages without first mastering at least one. A person who knows fragments of many tongues but is fluent in none can neither understand nor communicate with nuance. Likewise, interdisciplinarity without disciplinary depth reduces the act of synthesis to shallow comparison. The intellectual discipline acquired through deep study is what allows one to approach other fields with both curiosity and discernment. Without this rigour, the conversation between disciplines becomes noise rather than dialogue.This is not an argument for isolation or narrow specialisation. On the contrary, I think interdisciplinarity is most fruitful when it grows out of mastery. Once a student or researcher has internalised the logic of one field, they are better equipped to see parallels, contradictions, and bridges to others. The proper sequence is disciplinary depth first, interdisciplinary exploration next, and integration last. Only when one has a home discipline can one genuinely travel beyond it. Otherwise, the exploration remains aimless.most readOne of the dangers in current educational reforms is the tendency to equate interdisciplinarity with flexibility or breadth of exposure. Undergraduate programmes increasingly emphasise projects that combine science, technology, art, and design, sometimes at the expense of teaching rigorous fundamentals. The result is often a kind of intellectual eclecticism that feels modern but lacks staying power. When students are introduced to multiple frameworks before they have learned to reason deeply within any, they acquire breadth without coherence. The ability to connect ideas presupposes that one has first learned how ideas are formed, tested, and refined within a particular domain.Moreover, disciplinary mastery gives confidence and identity. It provides a lens through which one can engage the unfamiliar. When a physicist encounters biological systems, they bring with them a sense of structure, symmetry, and modelling; when a sociologist studies technology, they bring sensitivity to context and power relations. These identities enrich the interdisciplinary encounter precisely because they are well-defined.Interdisciplinary education, at its best, requires not less rigour but more. As the culture of higher education continues to evolve, it is important to resist the false dichotomy between depth and breadth. The choice is not between specialisation and openness, but between superficial synthesis and grounded integration. The goal of education should be to produce thinkers who can move fluently between contexts because they understand at least one deeply. In the end, interdisciplinary education is indispensable, but only if it stands on the foundation of disciplinary mastery.The writer is associate professor at BITS Pilani