The Intertwining of Disciplinary Concepts between Health Sciences and Economics

This paper focuses on the cross usage of terminology originating in one discipline but used in another, using economics and health sciences as our example. We highlight the use by economists of such terms as the brain, depression, and exhaustion whereas currency, elasticity, equilibrium, and optimality are all central notions in economics now being used in health sciences. We suggest that the dual usage occurs in ways where the original use and meaning of terms is not fully mirrored in their use in the other discipline. In part, this may reflect the pressures on researchers in all disciplines to be novel and innovative, and hence the incentive to adopt out of discipline terminology without full appreciation of its full meaning elsewhere. We discuss possible explanations for this characteristic of cross disciplinary use of terminology.