Porous Epistemic Frontiers: An Ontology of Transdisciplinary Research and the Constitution of the Knowledge in the Age of Complexity

Abstract

The increasing complexity of contemporary epistemic challenges demands an ontological reconceptualization of disciplinary boundaries as porous structures that allow the emergence of innovative forms of knowledge. This article develops a philosophy of transdisciplinary research based on Husserl's phenomenology, Heidegger's ontology of being-in-the-world, and Morin's complex epistemology. It is argued that "porous epistemic boundaries" constitute liminal spaces where scientific intersubjectivity generates new modalities of being-knowing that transcend the limitations of modern disciplinary rationality. Through a phenomenological-hermeneutical analysis of paradigmatic cases, it is demonstrated that disruptive innovation emerges from the dialectical synthesis between apparently incommensurable horizons of understanding. A new ontology of scientific knowledge based on relationality, emergence and complexity is proposed as foundations for a post-disciplinary epistemology that responds to the crisis of modern instrumental rationality.