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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
Here's a hint: it's a science chart.
You might as well be complaining that they didn't include snowboarding.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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.
Where on that map do I find papers published by the Creationism/Intelligent Design
The entire map itself implies Creationism and Intelligent Design. Did anyone notice how much the graph with the flowing lines for labels looks suprisingly like the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Even as we search to explain the world with science his very form appears every from within the heart of cold scientific diagrams to a nice Italian dinner.
What's really weird is that I can't seem to find Kevin Bacon anywhere on that map.
"Their bad categorization of Engineering reinforces my belief that there really is a bias."
Engineering is not science, so yes it is biased against engineering in the same way as it is biased against architecture, sport, art, politics, and everything else that it is not trying to map.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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.
I apologise profoundly for this. (I was one of the co-creators of the poster, and the Information Esthetics organization distributing the print is my responsibility.)
We are using a standard Drupal shopping module and I have received two reports of this. I am sure others have seen the problem and not reported it.
We have a Drupal guru looking at that code, and hundreds of orders have cleard fine, but for now I suggest people do exactly what gammaxy did: if someone else's information show up, wait until tomorrow.
I will remain personally responsible for any mis-charged or undelivered prints. You may find me by Google-ing "Brad Paley": e-mail addresses are available on my various Web sites.
Thank you for the interest! Sorry about the glitch.
Kind Regards, Brad