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Hewitt describes the study of disasters and their impact as truly interdisciplinary. He takes the geographical point of view because he is a geographer, and he looks at disasters in a very scientific manner. Bergman, on the other hand, looks at disasters in a social aspect. Disasters have profound scientific and social implications, so looking at the subject from either style of study is completely valid. Bergman says the the disciplines that focus on natural disasters include “geography, anthropology, ecology, meteorology, psychology, sociology, and, more recently, history” (Bergman, Disaster: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis, 935). This claim properly explains the interdisciplinary nature of the study of disasters. The impact of disasters go beyond one or even two related fields.
Because people examine disasters from these many different fields of study, the definition of a disaster is hard to realize. I think it is easier to look at disasters at a case by case basis because not every disaster encompasses all of the aforementioned disciplines. Taking one disaster and using the disciplines it encompasses is easier than trying to define disaster in order to satisfy all of them. A meteorologist can learn more about the impacts of a hurricane as a disaster when s/he sees the ecological impact; a historian can learn more about the impacts of the same disaster when s/he sees the sociological impact. It’s practically impossible to know all of the causes and effects of disasters, but we can gain more understanding about each one by looking at it from many different points of view.