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Article 34283ization. Not until I heard Rev. Snyder’s talk did I realize that some key components had not beenincluded in that discussion!As I read Professor Tannen’s book, I recalled serving on the College of Arts and Sciences Tenureand Promotion Committee at the request of the dean. Each committee member was assigned severalcandidates, but none from the department that we represented. One of the candidates I wasassigned to review was a physicist who seldom was a sole author on a scientific paper. Moreover,on some of the key papers, six to eight authors were listed. In addition, the candidate was seldomlisted as the first author. As part of my assignment, I called friends in the physics departments ofseveral prestigious and nationally ranked universities. To my surprise, even though the telephonecall had undoubtedly caught them unawares, they could not only identify the candidate’s contributionto the team effort, but also all the other co-authors’ contributions as well. That happenedroughly a decade ago, but, in retrospect, it seems similar to male communication within a club(i.e. persons of very similar but not identical interests) and, unlike female communication, whereconnections and community are paramount. If this is true, it does not falsify the hypothesis that, oninterdisciplinary teams, the purpose of communication is to be understood, and in the reductionistorienteddisciplines it is to establish status.THE SECURITY OF SPECIALIZATIONOne of the facts noted in the Tannen interview 2 is that men generally do not stop to ask for directionsand women to [SIC]. For women, asking for directions means a fleeting connection with astranger. As Tannen 2 notes, “That’s a positive thing. You don’t lose anything. But for a man, itmeans you’re putting yourself ‘one down’ to a stranger, and that’s very uncomfortable.” As anextension of this, men often assume that if the person being asked does not know the answer thatthey person will answer incorrectly since admitting ignorance would put him ‘one down’. Womenassume that if the person does not know that she will simply say so.A fascinating article by Jared Diamond 4 on the relationship between soft and hard sciences isparticularly persuasive because some of his research is soft and some hard. Similarly, I have theadvantage (or disadvantage) of having a lifetime of both research in a strictly reductionist disciplinarymode and a slightly less lengthy (but nevertheless considerable) period of working in the interdisciplinarymode. In fact, I often switch from one to the other, sometimes several times, in thecourse of a single day. The contrast is startling. In the disciplinary reductionist mode, I decidewhich problems to address, the boundary conditions (how much is manageable and how muchseems unmanageable), and the time frame in which the project will be carried out. I do this with thecertain knowledge that, if the timing proves to be poorly estimated, I can reschedule the variousactivities to suit my convenience. There is no compelling need to ask colleagues with a similar areaof specialization for advice. However, if I choose to ask for assistance, it is not within a ‘one up’ or‘one down’ situation as it would be if I were asking directions from a local inhabitant of a town whoknow much more about the town than I did. It is instead a situation similar to that of two explorersin territory unknown to either, deciding which of several routes would prove most satisfactory. If anyof their judgments proved to be inaccurate, the explorers, if they survived, could choose whetherto tell others about the mistake. Most importantly, since they are both specialists in the same field,they would have a variety of means for checking each other’s judgment. Finally, if a mistake ismade on the part of one explorer, the error in judgment is more likely to be forgiven by the otherexplorer, who knows the complexities and uncertainties leading to the judgment and is thus morelikely to be sympathetic when error occurs.