Connectionism

Connectionism is a recently coined term that refers to a set of approaches to the interdisciplinary blending of many fields such as artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind in order to model mental and behavioral phenomena in the context of interconnected networks rather than as discrete fields.

This connectionism draws together common threads of thought, action, and desired outcomes from these many fields. In the human mind connectionism refers to the ability to make intellectual connections between different, and sometimes seemingly unconnected, areas of knowledge. This is referred to as neural networking.

For instance, a public health official finding connections between a farmer's water supply in rural south America and a food poisoning outbreak in the U.S.