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.

Cool

[pembo13 (770295)]

Geek porn

Uh oh...

[Null Nihils (965047)]

There are also links to a 3000+ pixel wide jpg of the chart.

Soon to be links to a 3000+ degree lump of molten webserver. :)

So sad...

[Slipgrid (938571)]

That show a problem with the way people think about science. 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.

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.

I bought one..

[QuantumG (50515)]

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.

Re:

[behindthewall (231520)]

Argh! In the original summary -- actual useful information. PayPal. Ok.

Not only am I tired, I am blind. A good, good sign to go home before I erase Alaska here, or something.

Re:I bought one..

[wbpaley2 (1078263)]

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

Engineering & Computer Science

[negative3 (836451)]

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.

Re:Engineering & Computer Science

[QuantumG (50515)]

Here's a hint: it's a science chart.

You might as well be complaining that they didn't include snowboarding.

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[maxume (22995)]

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'".

Tufte

[Speare (84249)]

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.

Where is the icon?

[140Mandak262Jamuna (970587)]

That says "you are here"? Is it supported by any of the GPS devices being sold?

sounds like a totally new paradigm to me.

[porky_pig_jr (129948)]

By the way, what *is* paradigm anyway?

Paradigm != field of study

[kurisuto (165784)]

I think that this is a misuse of the word "paradigm."

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:

• what is to be observed and scrutinized,
• the kind of questions that are supposed to be asked and probed for answers in relation to this subject,
• how these questions are to be structured,
• how the results of scientific investigations should be interpreted.

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.

Kevin Bacon

[Feileung (1078225)]

What's really weird is that I can't seem to find Kevin Bacon anywhere on that map.

If you squint just right...

[TrebleJunkie (208060)]

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.

Rather useful...

[PeterPiper (167721)]

I am thinking that this chart could be extremely useful for someone planning the layout for a university campus.

Re:

[i kan reed (749298)]

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.

Re:

[be-fan (61476)]

There are lots of links. For example, there are lots of connections between the development of syntax and grammers in linguistics and the work on syntax and grammer in computer languages.

Map is itself an example of CS & social scienc

[Geof (153857)]

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.

Re:Where's Creationism?

[adisakp (705706)]

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.

Oh, that's easy.

[jpellino (202698)]

When you get your print, turn it over - they put everything you need to know about creation science on the other side.

Re:

[morner (1078219)]

It's just generated directly from what's been published. It's not biased; this is just what people are working on.

Re:It's terribly biased

[TapeCutter (624760)]

"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.

Re:

[Goldsmith (561202)]

If I remember the original Nature article correctly, it's based primarily on what journal research is published in. Thus if a journal claims to be focused on engineering, then articles published in that journal are in the subject of engineering. Links were made by citations between journal articles. They do say what journals they look at. They're selected by Thomson Scientific, who runs Web of Science, and I know they include IEEE journals.

I always laugh at people who try to re-define other people's pro

Re:

[timeOday (582209)]

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.

What are your expectations based on? The chart is based on scientific publications, and IME it is representative. Federal research budget [usatoday.com] in 2004:

Life Sciences: 54%
Engineering: 17%
Physical Sciences: 10%