Slashdot Mirror
How Scientific Paradigms Relate
Here is a giant chart mapping relationships among scientific paradigms, as published in the journal Nature. This map was constructed by sorting roughly 800,000 published papers into 776 different scientific paradigms (shown as pale circular nodes) based on how often the papers were cited together by authors of other papers. Information Esthetics, an organization founded by map co-creator W. Bradford Paley, is giving away 25" x 24" prints of the Map of Science (you pay postage and handling via PayPal). There are also links to a 3000+ pixel wide jpg of the chart. It would be all one long spectrum except for Computer Science, which makes the connection (via AI) between the hard sciences and the soft sciences.
Geek porn
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Social Science is next door neighbor to Computer Science?? Give me a break! Somebody jumped the April Fool's gun.
If you post it, they will read.
That show a problem with the way people think about science. Read E. O. Wilson's Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge on why we should apply the scientific method to all field, even humanities, and why we should try to speak about all fields with a common language.
For instance, an example of applying science to humanities, would be writing about history in a scientific way. May not seem important if you view the people on Earth in as the only society, but if you were trying to compare the history of peoples on many different planets, then it would be very important.
People with a computer science background should know the importance of having a common language to speak, or speaking in the simplest terms. If someone throws acronyms at you, they likely don't know what they are talking about. All field, psychology, history, and cs are related. They should use common terms, or so Wilson would have you believe.
A truly liberal education would show you that all fields relate, and depend on one another.
it'll probably show up in 6 months time and I'll be like "what the fuck is this?"
Look good on my wall though.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Their "Computer Science" grouping is odd - one of the "paradigms" is "multiple antenna, selective fading, smart antenna,..." which are not computer science topics, they're EE/wireless communications topics.
Some aspects of Computer Science and EE are definitely closely related, but this is kind of weird. Engineering seems under-represented - if there were a lot of engineering disciplines included (EE, Computer, mechanical, aerospace, etc.) but not under any sort of "engineering" heading, why is "applied physics" so small?
Cool chart nonetheless. This was a huge amount of info to sort through and graphically represent.
"Physics is to math what sex is to masturbation." - Richard Feynman
I guess it's only natural that they would have podcasts
What?
That poster looks like Edward Tufte got sick after trying to make sense of all that information.
Joke aside, it's gorgeous in the pure organic feel of it, but not particularly informative other than illustrative.
[
That says "you are here"? Is it supported by any of the GPS devices being sold?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Everyone knows that UFO science led by the work at Area 52 (51 is a decoy) is what has propelled the US Economy for decades. Where is it on the charts?
the flying spaghetti monster exists!!!
By the way, what *is* paradigm anyway?
At the last GECCO conference I saw a paper presented on the use of a genetic algorithm to speed up the simulation of certain chemical reactions:
linky
Google cache because the link is to a power point...
Basically, a multiobjective GA was used to find parameter sets for chemical simulation equations that increased the speed of those simulations by a factor of 10x-103x. (And were more accurate, to boot.) That enables the reaction models to be more complex and, as the presentation stated, "lead potentially to new drugs, new materials, fundamental understanding of complex chemical phenomena."
Cool stuff.
Now circle the whole thing and label it 'philosophy.'
and it could probably be colorized that way....
I can just imagine a UFO abductee seeing a similar chart of knowledge or biology or something on the wall of the starship, and think it was a map of the home nebula/star cluster.
Could be useful as some sort of directory if the interface were appropriately interactive.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
...I overlay the map of the Internet on top of the map of science, will I end up with a flow-chart of Windows?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
To closely quote Wikipedia, a paradigm is the set of practices that define a scientific discipline during a particular period of time. A paradigm is defined by science historian Thomas Kuhn to comprise the following:
It looks to me as if this chart does not show connectedness among "paradigms". It simply shows connectedness among various areas of study (as measured in terms of clusterings of bibliography citations).
A paradigm change is something that happens within a single area of study, such as geology or linguistics. To look at connectedness among "paradigms", you'd have to look at the history of single fields, not the current interconnectedness among different fields.
I just tried to order a few of these.
It took 3 tries to make the quantity and price function correctly.
Then two more tries later, I had different people's names and addresses instead of my own.
Then, I finally got to PayPal with my information, did the PayPal bit successfully, and then it told me "access denied" on returning to the merchant.
*confused*
Where on that map do I find papers published by the Creationism/Intelligent Design kooks? Oh right, it's not science.
Trolling is a art,
The server is just asking to be Slashdotted, with a 5.3MB file, so here's a torrent.
I've been investigating a similar mapping technique to the one these people used, nearly identical in fact, as applied to social networks. I've modelled people as antigravitationally interacting points, with friendships represented as springs.
You can see an early render (deviantart.org), or one using the same data but with a slightly more sophisticated physics simulation (deviantart.org).
This story is a little old ; but relevant none the less.
Slashdot's write up neglects to link to the social sciences network chart with an interactive display featuring temporary user-based input nodes and a simple web-gui connection and filtering algorithm. This network model lets you view the original chart, referenced in the article, and then get a feel for the mapping algorithm by submitting your own input on social networks.
It also has an explanation of the hierarchal design employed by wikipedia as explained using the exact same networking algorithm.
---
Mod Parent Up!
Ace
I was about to buy 3 of these, but when I actually looked closely at the graph I realised how biased it is toward the biomedical/health sciences. Math is a puny cluster of small dots, there's no area labeled Engineering and Chemistry looks like it has more lines than all the hard sciences put together.
Their site actually lets you highlight the portions that they consider Engineering, and the result is pretty weird: you get computer science, math, a lot of astrophysics, fluid mechanics, materials, applied physics and some physical chemistry. Most of these don't even qualify as engineering, and there's a lot of stuff that isn't featured (topics published by the IEEE would make a good start).
I suppose this is appropriate considering it was published in Nature, but to me it's a let down. It's a pretty poster, but it neglects the areas I enjoy the most. At least it has astrophysics.
What's really weird is that I can't seem to find Kevin Bacon anywhere on that map.
When you get your print, turn it over - they put everything you need to know about creation science on the other side.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
wot no geography?
So I'd love to see a similar chart with 100 categories - then one could conceivably try to read a book about each of them!
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
If you squint just right, ignore the dots and just look at the lines of text... ... it kinda looks like a face... ... it kinda looks like THE FACE OF GOD!!!! ... or maybe Hemmingway. Or Einstein. I'm not really sure.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
So an algorithm generates this map from journal articles, then lays it out as a network - and I see people on here arguing about whether the categories are biased. What more proof do you need?
Or, take a close look at social science - there's economics in there. I see asset allocation; I'm sure game theory is there too (Prisoner's Dilemma, Tragedy of the Commons, public goods theory).
What's really surprising here is not the strength of the connection between computer science and the social sciences; it's the scarcity of connections elsewhere. Where are the connections between ecology and social science, ecology and computer science? I see infectious diseases - where are the links to network theory? What about the social and communication basis for physics and the other hard sciences?
Habermas has a fascinating analysis of this. He argues that science depends on a prior consensus about how the validity of evidence is evaluated. That consensus cannot itself be scientific. In other words, scientists can't agree about the value of each other's work until they first achieve a certain level of agreement on a social and communicative level.
If that sounds suspect to you, remember that the use of the word "paradigm" debated elswhere in this discussion originates from Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scienticific Revolutions, which is about the (significantly nonrational) process by which science is conducted, and is grounded in philosophy, history, and social science.
Perhaps the biggest missing links here are philosophy (including mathematics) and history. But then, they aren't sciences. At least not now: there have been scientific theories of history; science itself was once a branch of philosophy. Hurrah for computer science closing the circle, but the circle shouldn't be in need of closing.
A paradigm... A paradigm makes, um, twenty cents, no?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Forget the server. I need a mouse with a sideways scroll wheel, as well as the up and down one.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Why is science shaped like a donut made out of bubbles and string?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I have the linked graphic set as my wallpaper. Though, at 1280x1024 resolution, it looks more like the last few minutes of the 203rd Annual Interdimensional Jellyfish Convention.
Karma police, arrest this man. He talks in math. He buzzes like a fridge. He's like a detuned radio.
Your parents seem to have done the same 9 months plus twelve years ago.
Some of that is NOT science. What a fraud
A very good point. Engineering is, in a very real sense, not a field of its own. It is a component of scientific disciplines. Chemical engineering, software engineering, structural engineering, and basically anything where you need to actually USE your science to produce something in the real world. If anything, many of the problems that are experienced in the world are directly the result of NOT applying engineering methodologies to a domain where they are needed (or not even applying scientific principles in the first place).
It has been noted already that there are problems with the actual content (not entirely unjustified complaints of bias and such), but has anyone noticed that the layout sucks?
They got through all this trouble sorting through their data, and then they don't bother to clean up their squiggly lines of text - such a shame.
Warning: their checkout is buggy. Upon confirmation, it gave me the info of someone in India... Don't order until they iron out the bugs !
Non-Linux Penguins ?
> It would be all one long spectrum except for Computer Science, which makes
> the connection (via AI) between the hard sciences and the soft sciences.
Neuroscience makes a connection between the hard science and soft sciences without even considering AI's existence. From the genetics of biochemical brain function through species specific behaviors to rational and irrational human cognition and behavior to social psychology. In fact, neuroscience differs from cognitive science specifically because it does ignore computer science, especially AI.
Philosophy should be in there. While not a science itself, philosophy is what defines science, and therefore what's hard and soft. It's supposed to be the reason for the Ph in PhD (though far fewer science PhDs these days require any sort of knowledge of the philosophy of science, especially in the US).
This map is far more a measure of cross-disciplinary referencing than anything else. The small size of theoretical physics is evidence of that.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
... the connection (via AI) between the hard sciences and the soft sciences.
Did someone go and invent a working artificial intelligence and not tell anyone? This link might make sense when we actually have AI.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
What about Wierd Science? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090305/
Do you really think our neolithic ancesters studied mechanics, climatology, geology, zoology and botany for the pure pursuit of knowledge?
It's much more plausible that they did it so they could eat.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
Rather ironic, the whole thing is an application of a branch of mathematics : graph theory, and yet seems to suggest that mathematics makes very little contribution to the whole thing. It really isn't believable that maths could have so few connections, this just proves that people don't see it when it is everywhere.
Not commenting on any particular Idea... But, the curious point of this graph is who relies on which type of thinking and why. Take a look at the almost absent connection between the life sciences (biology medicine etc) and the Physics and Chemistry side. There seems to be only a few people talking or connecting here. Note that the earth sciences like geology are a common link between the life sciences and the physics/ chemistry side.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
I received my degree in philosophy and one of things that I did in my younger years was to map out the various fields of study to guess at how they inter-related. This is what I came up with:
-- Physics -- Chemistry -- Biology -- Neurology -- Psychology -- Sociology/Political Science -- Economics -- Engineering -- (loops back to Physics).
I drew it in the form of a wheel. Now, granted, this isn't anything to base a thesis on and was just meant to be a silly piece of musing, but if you push it, it does make you consider where other fields would fit in and that just goes to show how few things work really alone within their fields. Art can be imagined along a line between Engineering and perhaps Psychology. History would link between Engineering and Sociology. Sport would link between Biology and Sociology. Philosophy, as I imagined it when I pulled this out of thin air, would be at the center of this wheel having to account for all disciplines and be disciplined by them at the same time, the hub around which this wheel turned.
It's interesting to compare this picture to what I imagined as an undergrad.
For that matter, it would appear that organic chemists only talk to other organic chemists.
Big surprise, eh?
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
If you read the article you'll see that the picture was made by simulating a bunch of dots that repel each other connected by rubber bands where there's a link. When you have a load of things that repel each other you will tend to get a roughly spherical (circular in this case because the simulation was only done in two dimensions) pattern - this is the shape where every part is as far away as it can be from every other part. The rubber bands kept it from shooting off forever, and clump the individual subjects together, but aren't strong enough to collapse it all into a point - which is what you get when you have only attractive forces.
OK, it was done by aggregating journal citations.... Just goes to show you how Math gets short shrift. Mathematicians should ask for proper attribution when their ideas are used in other fields (of course the reverse applies as well ;-).
;-)
Love to see a similar one which is based upon conceptual relationships in the various fields. Then again, it would be just one big lump for Math, with smaller satellites for everything else. OK maybe three lumps... The second one would be the Simple Harmonic Oscillator, the third - Statistical Mechanics.
"It would be all one long spectrum except for Computer Science, which makes the connection (via AI) between the hard sciences and the soft sciences."
Hmmm...in order for it not to be one long spectrum (and the circle it is instead), doesn't it need to have two connections between the hard sciences and the soft sciences? The first link just stops it from being 2 disjoint groups...
Read E. O. Wilson's Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge [amazon.com] on why we should apply the scientific method to all field, even humanities, and why we should try to speak about all fields with a common language.
What's the definition of "the scientific method"?
More generally, what's the definition of "science"?
Perhaps the biggest missing links here are philosophy (including mathematics) and history. But then, they aren't sciences.
Mathematics is now and always has been considered a branch of science. I'm pretty surprised that mathematics was not included in the graph. Probably someone has confused experimentation with science.
It would be interesting to see the directionality of the links. For example, I would imagine that a fairly large number of fluid mechanics papers reference math papers, while relatively few math papers reference any from fluid mechanics.
"It would be all one long spectrum except for Computer Science, which makes the connection (via AI) between the hard sciences and the soft sciences."
Lets not forget Mathematics. All science, hard or soft, uses math somewhere.
More precisely, Chemistry involves and is involved in numerous other sciences. This is pretty inevitable, when you consider that almost all other sciences relate to atoms and molecules in some way, and of course atoms and molecules clearly involve most of physics.
The reason why Chemistry doesn't live in a disjoint corner of its own is because it's not *really* a science in the pure sense --- it ought to be called Bulk Molecular Engineering Science, and once it has finally accepted molecular nanotechnology as part of its domain, then just plain Molecular Engineering Science will be the correct term.
It's not really an independent science, but a melting pot where numerous other sciences overlap. If you exclude from Chemistry the contribution from other physical sciences, what you have left possesses far more engineering attributes than pure science ones. Chemistry is very empirical by nature, and all its modelling from first principles relies almost entirely on physics and related sciences.
That said, Chemistry does require its own professional niche and its own educational spectrum, because the area is just so *VAST*. Calling it the "central science" is entirely accurate in respect of its importance, and because of the sheer magnitude of its domain.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I am thinking that this chart could be extremely useful for someone planning the layout for a university campus.
Peter
They use the word "paradigm" perfectly well. If you use the actual definition of the word, which is essentially synonymous with exemplar, it works fine.
Kuhn's definition isn't the primary definition, and Wikipedia is far from authoritative. There are authoritative sources, including a selection of dictionaries at onelook.com. This isn't a Kuhninan discussion. They don't mention him, and they aren't talking about change over time. Let's just assume they mean to use the primary definition of the word, say as described in the OED.
It's fun to redfine words to match your ideology, but be careful not to turn into the provincial fool who proves that reading one book doesn't make you literate. You need some perspective; a little respect for the complexity of language, please. Kuhn didn't suddenly erase over five hundred years of usage.
Of course, everyone else who prefers Kuhn's definition will claim his right to redfine the word, but the fact is that the old definition is still perfectly respectable, so you guys are welcome to have your ideological circle jerk. Just don't get any on me.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
looking at the chart, it confirms what I always suspected - that science is in the shape of the country of France, with a vast, unoccupied hinterland. Computer science is on the border with the UK, physics to the north, while the murky waters of the Med lap onto virology and infectious disease.
I have been very impressed with how well E.O.Wilson is able to communicate some rather complex ideas. His style follows well the rules suggested by good old Eric Blair:
/. posters could benefit from applying those 6 simple rules, myself included, sometimes ;)
(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never us a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Another scientist to master of this very effective style was mythologist Joseph Campbell. The best conveyors or knowledge have always managed to say the most with the least effort by keeping it as clean, simple and culturally neutral as possible. I find that most my favorite writers tend to have this in common, Eric Blair himself (AKA George Orwell), Papa Hemingway, Arthur C Clarke, Kurt Vongut, Michio Kaku among others. A lot of journalists, authors, politicians and even
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
Source:
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm - George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946