Examples
A good example would be Big history, which is an effort to reexamine human history within the context of the wider history of the universe, applying diverse fields of knowledge to paint a picture which is wider in scope, and relies on much information generally outside of the discipline of history (anthropology, systems theory, geology, biology, sociology, cosmology). Intellectual synthesis is most apparent in fields which blur the lines of existing disciplines (for example, history has been regarded as a social science, but is dependent upon anthropology, sociology, political science, economics, military theory, climatology, etc., and some such as Jared Diamond have proposed establishing human history as one of the historical sciences).
World History is another example—as typically historians specialize on particular periods or regions or nations—with a new synthesis occurring of the histories of the world's diverse societies being brought together to tell a unified picture of the course of world history.
The goal of intellectual synthesis is to bring together all of the related transdisciplinary knowledge into a single, cohesive whole to provide for a more complete and comprehensive understanding and potentially lead to new theories, perspectives, and interpretations.
Many new and emerging fields involve intellectual synthesis:
- Big history
- World History
- Sociobiology
- Geographical determinism
- Environmental Determinism
- Technological Determinism
Read more about this topic: Intellectual Synthesis
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—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
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—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)