Over the last decade, the fact that novel perspectives on various aspects of soils have remained strongly controversial long after they emerged, without any kind of consensus being reached about them, raises question about the underlying reasons for this phenomenon. The on‐going debate on the usefulness of aggregates to describe the functions of soils illustrates some of the key aspects of that question. Similar debates on other soil‐related issues also appear stalled, or have been for a long time and are only now moving forward. This might suggest a fundamental aversion to change, which when it gets overcome, only does so slowly. However, at the same time, somewhat surprisingly, researchers appear willing to quickly seize opportunities provided by new idea or novel perspectives on other topics. In that context, the objective of the present article is to analyse in detail what may cause such contrasting reactions to novelty. We consider, then ultimately dismiss, explanations based on how strongly or not novel perspectives have been actively promoted, on how access to suitable technology may impede or only slow down perspective shifts and on whether a recent theory of the ‘slowed canonical progress in large fields of science’ applies to the relatively small soil science community. Then, taking soil aggregates as a case in point, we come to realize that it is the extent to which a novel perspective mandates an interdisciplinary approach that determines whether or not it is adopted quickly. From that standpoint, we envisage a number of practical actions that could be taken to facilitate in the future the emergence in soil science of interdisciplinary research efforts, which we argue are absolutely essential to successfully tackle the enormous complexity of soils and to come up with satisfactory answers to the daunting environmental and food security problems we currently face in their management.

中文翻译：

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“换档并不容易”：土壤科学观点转变的学科阻力以及如何向前发展


在过去的十年中，关于土壤各个方面的新观点在出现后很长一段时间内仍然存在强烈争议，而没有就它们达成任何共识，这一事实引发了对这种现象的根本原因的质疑。关于骨料在描述土壤功能方面的有用性的持续争论说明了这个问题的一些关键方面。关于其他土壤相关问题的类似辩论也似乎停滞不前，或者已经停滞了很长时间，直到现在才开始向前发展。这可能表明人们对变革的根本厌恶，而当变革被克服时，变革只会缓慢地进行。然而，与此同时，有点令人惊讶的是，研究人员似乎愿意迅速抓住其他主题的新想法或新观点所提供的机会。在这种背景下，本文的目的是详细分析是什么可能导致对新奇事物产生如此截然不同的反应。我们考虑并最终驳回基于新观点被积极推广的程度、获得合适技术如何阻碍或仅减缓视角转变以及最近关于“大科学领域规范进展缓慢”的理论是否适用于相对较小的土壤科学界。然后，以土壤团聚体为例，我们开始意识到，新视角在多大程度上需要一种跨学科的方法，这决定了它是否被迅速采用。 从这个角度来看，我们设想了一些可以采取的实际行动，以促进未来土壤科学中出现跨学科研究工作，我们认为这对于成功解决土壤的巨大复杂性和为我们目前在土壤管理中面临的令人生畏的环境和粮食安全问题提出令人满意的答案是绝对必要的。