Epistemological reflection on industrial heritage: from multidisciplinarity to interdisciplinarity

This article offers a philosophical reflection on industrial heritage, an area that has developed in France since the middle of 1970s. After a brief overview of the orientation of the field over the last four decades, we will examine the influence of this history on the current situation of the research in the domain. We use the approach of the Austrian art historian Alois Riegl to reassess the values implicit in the different orientations towards industrial heritage. As an extension of this axiological approach and in relation with the cultural evolution associated with contemporary challenges, we identify two new values : political and environmental. These values encourage us to renew the field with the aid of an interdisciplinary approach combining the historical and the engineering sciences. Indeed, the context of a double transition - ecological and digital - makes it necessary and interesting to develop such interdisciplinary research, deploying new research tools and new research methods.