[ Text Version of "Introduction" ]

Introduction

Ten years have passed since the precursor of CERTEC published its first project “Raise and Lower", which was also the first project to receive the support of The Council for Health and Medical Care Research in Southern Sweden.

Ingvar Jönsson of the Rehabilitation Department at Lund Hospital and I carried out the work on “Raise and Lower". Later, he became one of my first colleagues at CERTEC. He died two years ago. He was a friend of people and a friend of things. His only formal education was 6 years of elementary school, but he was one of the greatest geniuses and one of the best people I have had the pleasure of working with.

At about the same time (although there was no connection) as CERTEC began its work, Peter Anderberg began studying at the Lund Institute of Technology. He tried to succeed in his studies and to be just like other students despite a serious disability. It did not work out very well. Or rather: it did not work at all. One of the reasons was that, at the time, the Lund Institute of Technology was not accessible to people with disabilities. It still is not completely accessible.

Peter's report on accessibility for people with disabilities at the Lund Institute of Technology, from 1986.

In the USA, where Peter is now, the Americans with Disabilities Act applies, making physical accessibility mandatory. It is taken for granted that all public areas at Santa Clara (California), the university Peter is currently attending, should be accessible to people with disabilities. It was also taken for granted that special adjustments to his immediate environment had to be made almost immediately when Peter began his studies at the university in the fall of 1996.

Back to Sweden and the Lund Institute of Technology. Ten years ago there was nothing at all to indicate that a decision would be taken about CERTEC: there were no premises, no equipment, no grants or any intellectual infrastructure for the field of Rehabilitation Engineering. Thus, what exists today has been built in less than a decade (initially at a very slow pace, currently at a very fast pace). During this time CERTEC has:

• provided education in the field of rehabilitation engineering to a large number of future scientists, engineers and occupational therapists, as well as to people working in health care, care services, education and rehabilitation;
• published scientific reports, books, Internet presentations and lectures, and videos;
• participated in three EU projects;
• been consulted at a review level and participated in major official events at a national and international level;
• created a number of forums for ideas and knowledge for the benefit of people working in health care, care services, education and rehabilitation;
• contributed to radical improvement, sometimes revolution, in a number of people's lives.

But all along we have been haunted by and we have been haunting ourselves with the question: what in this is research? The results may be good, but in what way do they represent truly new knowledge? And how do you get at it?

A diagrammatic picture of CERTEC's dilemma. We are being pulled in one direction by the wish (held by others and ourselves) that CERTEC should carry on purely scientific research, and in the other by the wish to provide help and be short term problem-solvers.

If two forces, one to the right and one to the left as in the picture, are of equal strength, the net force is zero, physics tells us. But to the person who is being subjected to the tearing-apart it does not feel that way. The above picture is a good symbol of the tension CERTEC has to live under. This text tries to analyze the tension itself and not only make it possible to live with, but constructive as well.

During the past decade the attitude to interdisciplinary research has changed considerably. Ten years ago university circles mostly looked at interdisciplinary studies with suspicion (if it was looked at all). Now, in principle, much is made of it and it is written up everywhere. However, those of us who have, in practice, been carrying on interdisciplinary studies for a long period of time know that the change in attitude has not changed the basic premise: interdisciplinary studies are difficult. Perhaps as impossible as it is essential? There are no interdisciplinary methods, no interdisciplinary language or interdisciplinary concepts. It is one thing for different sciences to serve as inspiration for one another, to approach the same problem from different angles. But if one is to pursue scientific studies, interdisciplinary, popular or not 3, it must be explicitly possible to practise preservation of knowledge and to work on theories and language. This is even more important when an interdisciplinary, rather than an intra-disciplinary, approach is used.

Introduction

References