The Death of Disciplinarity

New work, funded by the National Science Foundation, provides more evidence that traditional disciplinary boundaries in the sciences have become essentially meaningless.

• Robots that have no circuity and no motors
• Programs that are written in DNA molecules, not a computer language
• Chemical reactions that create engineered structures

Biology, chemistry, physics, and engineering have effectively ceased to exist as separate disciplines. How long will it take our schools and colleges to recognize that and respond? Will it be fast enough?