Global Environmental Change, Vol. 8, No. 3, pp. 177—182, 1998  1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain 0959-3780/98 $19.00#0.00 PII: S0959-3780(98)00020-X Dances with wolves? Interdisciplinary research on the global environment Michael Redclift Epistemologies and cultures Before exploring some of the ways in which social and natural scientists might collaborate over research into sustainability, it is important to be clear about what unites us as scientists, and what divides us. We cannot build bridges to natural scientists unless we are clear about what lies on the other side of the water, and how long the spans of our bridge need to be 2 . The discussion of sustainability has been informed by two very different traditions of thought, and policy. The natural science agenda was manifest in the way that the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was originally conceived — the taxonomy began with scientific ‘processes’ (Working Group One) and led on to ‘impacts’ and then, ‘responses’. The point about this view of science is that it begins with the physical, and takes on a human character some way down the road 2 . There is also, implicit in this view, a line of causation, from the physical to the human. The etiology of climate change (in this example) is given by its physical characteristics. It follows from this perspective that the purpose of exercises like that undertaken by IPCC is ‘ 2 to get the science right’, to ensure that the science is ‘good science’, reliable, rigorous and objective. The forms of investigation that scientists are expected to undertake lend authority to this view of science: science is timeless and placeless, in some sense independent of human intervention, waiting, as it were, to be discovered. Knowledge, according to this view, is a process of gradual accretion, through which we learn ‘more’, on a linear uni-dimensional basis. What we need to know is out there to be learned, to be humanised, and gathered together in the store of knowledge that every scientist is adding to. Viewpoint Over the last seven years or so, papers in this journal have examined the concept of sustainability from various disciplinary per- spectives, and have explored some of the international implications of using sustaina- bility as a tool for the analysis of global envir- onmental change. These papers were written, on the whole, by social scientists, or by natu- ral scientists with considerable experience of policy issues. In this viewpoint I want to con- sider some of the difficulties – and challenges – in confronting the biggest obstacle to the closer collaboration of natural and social scientists. I refer to the fact that while it is physical science perspectives that dominate the policy context of global change, it is the social sciences which provide most of the underlying philosophy of environmental researchers. In addition, of course, the phys- ical sciences dominate both the management and the funding of environmental research. Whether they like it or not, social scientists need to address their brothers and sisters in the natural sciences with some urgency, and to seize the opportunity of new policy chal- lenges, such as global climate change, for the social sciences themselves.  1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Michael Redclift is with the University of Keele, Department of Environmental Social Sciences, Keele, Staffordshire, ST5 5BG United Kingdom. 177