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How Scientific Paradigms Relate

Posted by kdawson on from the connections dept.

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.

7 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. So sad... by Slipgrid · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:So sad... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I don't know. I think you should be able to explain stuff in simple terms. I'm not promoting COBOL here. I just hear people in high places talk about how complex computers are, when they can only do three basic things (read, write (disk or device), and process). You have to know people try to sound smart by using, often incorrectly, larger words. I've had doctors try to pass their ignorance off on me enough. Anyway, if you can't explain something in simple terms, you don't know what it is. And quizzing someone on an acronym they are unfamiliar with, doesn't help figure out what they really know.

  2. Engineering & Computer Science by negative3 · · Score: 3, Interesting


    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
    1. Re:Engineering & Computer Science by maxume · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I have a theory that some of the best engineers are scientists who think "I could know 'this' if only I could do 'that'", and some of the best scientists are engineers who think "I could do 'that' if only I knew 'this'".

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
  3. Where's Creationism? by grub · · Score: 1, Interesting


    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,
  4. Re:An obvious hoax by i+kan+reed · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Yeah, there's no way there's any overlap in terms of areas like
    1. Information theory(99% of computer science)
    2. psychology(AI)
    3. human response(GUIs)

    Computer science is closer to social sciences than it is to cell biology in terms of what paradigm actually means. Other than mathematics, I can see nothing on that page that better matches computer science in terms of what kind of questions are asked, how they are posed, and how research is interpretted.
  5. In a sliiiightly shameless plug... by morner · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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).