The Transdisciplinary Carats of Patristic Byzantine Tradition

Abstract

This article presents three samples of transdisciplinary-like  approaches within patristic Byzantine tradition, namely, Chalcedonian Christology (in conversation with Lucian Blaga’s notion of dogma), the multilevel interpretation of Scripture in St. Maximus the Confessor, and the Maximian and Palamite ideas of the rapports between science, technology, theology, and  the spiritual life. The contention of this article is double. First,  it proposes that within Byzantine tradition there can be traced a series of transdisciplinary features,  which up until recently have remained unknown and which, to be rightly appreciated, require a new appraisal through the lens of current transdisciplinary methodology. Second, and related, it contends that contemporary transdisciplinarity has deep roots within the Christian tradition, as exemplified by the Byzantine antecedents analyzed herein, and that in order to understand better the cultural process that led to transdisciplinarity such roots can no longer be ignored.