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April 07, 2004
"Take a left at Cognitive Neuroscience, and bear right until you hit Quantum Electrodynamics"
Hot on the heels of yesterday's page-turner about pure math, we've got another item of strongly parochial "interest." In the most recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, leading scientists from various fields discuss the prospects for a new "map of science," to be taken literally as a graphic representation of the myriad avenues of scientific inquiry and their mutual interrelations. This might be the best idea ever, considering how fluid the boundaries between the sciences are becoming, with ideas from Nonlinear Physics taking root in physiology and neuroscience (and everywhere else), and Biological theories inspiring new directions in Physics and Computer Science. If careful study can effectively map the relations between all of these disciplines, it will give researchers a better idea of who to consult if they think their theories have implications or corollaries in other branches of inquiry.
Of course, this exercise in intellectual cartography will undoubtedly pique the interest of postmodern science warriors, who will see this as an admission that scientific inquiry is just as context-dependent as literary interpretation or whatever it is that those people think. Clearly, however, such lines of argument will be wholly misguided, since the function of the map will be purely heuristic, and will not show any conceptual dependence of one discipline on another.
Anyhoo, we think all of this is just peachy. If we were feeling sanguine, we'd say that it represents the potential for a new era of intellectual unity and consilience. But then, were we feeling cynical, we'd just say that science is entirely too compartmentalized, and scientists entirely too closed-minded, to let something like this get off the ground. Fortunately, it feels like Spring today, so we're inclined towards the former. Don't worry though, once thet refuse to put Philosophy on there, we'll switch right back to the latter.
"Scientists seek 'map of science'" (BBC)
Posted by matt at April 7, 2004 01:18 PM
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