Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 December 29

= December 29 =

Relation between the social sciences
''Earth (Earth science) is a planet in our solar system (Astronomy) which can sustain life (Biology), in particular humans (Human physiology/anatomy). All these study objects, regardless of their relevant lengthscale, are constituted of matter (Chemistry) and, like all matter, subjected to some universal laws (Physics).''

I am attempting to understand the basics of all fields of human knowledge, and in particular how they are related. Where this is a relatively clear task for the exact sciences (brief outline above), it seems more difficult for the social sciences/humanities.

Could you try to give a concise outline like above, connecting studies like psychology-antropology-sociology-economics-political science-education-law-linguistics-history-geography-management-finance-literature-art-religion-philosophy-technology-etc., or at least those that you consider the most important ones?

I looked for their definitions and scope and methods, so that is not the question. Rather, given the chance to start over, would we still divide the social sciences and humanities like this—many of them seems to be overlapping? Are some more fundamental than others?

Gnorkel (talk) 13:48, 29 December 2017 (UTC)


 * I believe there have historically been several attempts to define what I might call a taxonomy of knowledge. You might want to start with reading Epistemology and then explore some of the articles linked in its See also section. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.2130.195} 90.199.208.241 (talk) 15:58, 29 December 2017 (UTC)


 * There are a variety of articles to start your research: Tree of knowledge system (and the xkcd version), unity of science, consilience (and the excellent book by E. O. Wilson. For the historical foundation, see also great chain of being. Matt Deres (talk) 16:31, 29 December 2017 (UTC)


 * I already started research for this question and came across many of those links, so maybe I should be a bit more specific. My question only concerns the social sciences. The natural sciences can pretty well be divided based on their field of study (e.g. space, earth, life) but I am looking for unifying concepts and/or ways to divide social sciences (which all study society). The article on consilience say for example "Sociology, economics, and anthropology are each, in turn, studies of properties emergent from the interaction of countless individual humans." I find this sentence very promising but I don't seem to find a lot of literature that goes beyond this general idea.


 * One way to divide the social sciences might be micro (modeling behavior of and interactions between individual agents; which should be the same for all social sciences) and macro (emergent phenomena like markets, the state or stratification). These macro fields could be divided based on the type of interaction (cooperative -> economics; conflict -> politics). Sociology would study the emerging inequality, which is reflected in the state of the agents.


 * Sorry for such an open question. Hopefully the example above might give you a better idea of what I am after. --Gnorkel (talk) 17:34, 29 December 2017 (UTC)


 * At a certain scale, the development and classifications of the sciences are historical accidents of human history and our method of cognition. There's no necessary reason, for example, why we should understand the nature of fossils before or after we have achieved powered flight.  That's why a great medical doctor can be a horrible litigator or art critic, and why one can study a foreign language before or after or while learning algebra.  One must learn addition before multiplication, and algebra before calculus; just as one must learn grammar and vocabulary, before one studies composition and literature.  But French and Mathematics are separate edifices, and they can be built at different times, although one can't construct their respective "upper floors" before securing their foundations.


 * The sciences develop according to the vagaries of the human mind and human history. Reality is what it is, regardless of our classifications, which are mental tools, not Platonic Ideals. See history of science and Scientific Progress at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. μηδείς (talk) 17:00, 29 December 2017 (UTC)


 * I agree that such classification is a mental tool, but some tools are better than others. I also know that the classification of the social sciences is mostly by "historical accident", so my question now is whether we would order them in a more useful way given the chance to do so again—using this new classification as a better mental tool. There are so many overlaps within the social sciences and humanities (e.g. behavioral economics, geopolitics, cultural history, sociology and anthropology converging towards the same thing, etc.) that I wonder whether or not we can draw the boundaries of such fields in a more useful way. --Gnorkel (talk) 20:17, 29 December 2017 (UTC)


 * The reference desk can't really handle speculative questions like this. At best someone can link you to someone else's proposed classifications of knowledge. -165.234.252.11 (talk) 20:28, 29 December 2017 (UTC)


 * That would be wonderful :-) When I said "I wonder whether or not we can draw the boundaries of such fields in a more useful way" I was actually hoping that someone else tried exactly this. The book consilience was a good pointer, but I would expect there to be more actual classification schemes based on content rather than academic institutes (which are historical accidents as pointed out by another user). --Gnorkel (talk) 22:57, 29 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Well, the question has been addressed at length by many thinkers. One view is that concepts are tools that allow us to arrange our knowledge hierarchically, and that the proper definition of a concept (read classificatory scheme) is contextual.  That is, while "living being that converses" might be a useful (and most-likely implicit) definition of human for a child, the general definition for adults in general should be "rational animal" (rationality being the essential characteristic that defines our ability to use language and do most other things only humans can do) while "ape of the genus Homo" might be best for biologists, and "animal that uses tools to make tools" might be good for an anthropologist.  None of these definitions contradict each other, or do so only in borderline cases which can be treated ad hoc.  For example, a child will not think a person in an irreversible coma has become a monkey, but a judge may decide he is brain dead, based on other evidence.


 * As regards the humanities specifically, again we are hampered by the fact that many people claim sociology is not a science at all, while psychology is largely in a transitional state, with grand theories like Freudianism and Behaviorism only recently being discredited, definitions of "phenomena" such as Autism and Schizophrenia in flux, and many treatments at the hit-or-miss state with doctors prescribing all sorts of drugs not knowing their efficacy or even their mechanism. How a university might want to classify the humanities in their departments and course catalogs might differ greatly from the opinions of philosophers of science or statisticians or biologists.


 * So the purpose of the classification will determine which classification is best in that context. There is no single correct answer for all people in all circumstances.  Pitfalls to avoid are a priori rationalism, in the Platonic sense of beginning with an abstract premise or theory, and trying to shoehorn reality into it; unnecessary multiplication of concepts (there's no need for a general English word for a buxom blonde of a certain age and measurements--but a casting agent might have the concept of a "Monroe"); and frozen concepts where we use terms like "gay" (a cultural term of the 20th century) to apply to much broader phenomena such as opportunistic homosexuality in prisons or the military, cultural pedophilia in ancient Greece, Rome, and in other indigenous societies, and people who identify with their birth gender yet prefer homosexual sex versus people who identify with the opposite gender, and see themselves as having been born into the wrong type body.


 * Two recommended works that address definition and classification or conceptualization in depth are the monograph Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology by Ayn Rand and the rather encyclopedic Introduction To Logic, By H.W.B. Joseph, Oxord (here, in public domain). μηδείς (talk) 22:07, 29 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Thank you for answering so thoroughly. You give good arguments on why classification schemes are necessarily contextual. And although I agree, I am more looking for actual ways to classify social sciences rather than meta arguments on the existence of such classifications. --Gnorkel (talk) 22:57, 29 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Not to sound flippant, but you might start with a premade system like the Library of Congress Catalog or Dewey Decimal System or the course catalog of a university. Can you give an actual intellectual school or a definite context you want, or do you want a list of such classifications?  (There's even the trivium and the quadrivium, although those are just a bit outdated. :)) μηδείς (talk) 23:00, 29 December 2017 (UTC)


 * I admit that my question can be interpreted in many ways (but hey if I knew exactly what I was asking for, I would use google instead of the reference desk!). Some context. As a 'hobby', I am making an outline / map / poster of all human knowledge. This includes the major fields of natural and social sciences and the humanities, their main concepts and insights, and how they are related (e.g. biology and chemistry are next to each other with biochemistry on the interface). I am quite happy with how I ordered the natural sciences and technology, but the social sciences and humanities are giving me a headache. I am looking for some way to structure them on a 2D poster that makes sense to "the average scientifically minded person" (a vague definition I know :-))


 * To give you an idea of what I am after:
 * https://i.imgur.com/IRvDWJj.jpg (maybe too simple and not really a map but still nice)
 * http://nada.kth.se/~axelhu/mapthematics.pdf (more complete and with related field close to eachother)


 * A classification system like Dewey's lacks information on how the categories/subcategories are related. A university curriculum reflects too much historical academic structures like you mentioned, whereas I would like to order things based on content. I am not sure if there have been attempts for a 'graphical classification' or 'graphical outline' of the social sciences that I am after. Or if there is any unifying idea to present their main ideas in an organized fashion rather than as a series of overlapping blobs. If there is, I would be delighted to find out. --Gnorkel (talk) 23:56, 29 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Oh, well, then although it's not what you are asking for, you will love this to set as your wallpaper. I originally saw that at Big Think's Strange Maps Blog. μηδείς (talk) 01:13, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I wonder if a graphical representation of Wikipedia's own internal wikilinks, arranged by Portals, would be useful (though biased). I have no notion of how to do that, unfortunately. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.199.208.241 (talk) 12:02, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
 * That would be interesting for sure. I know something similar has been done for journal articles and citations (eigenfactor.org/map/images/fig3.png). Which portals exist and which don't is rather accidental; maybe it would also be interesting to release some clustering algorithm on all wikipedia articles to see what would be a good way to divide them into categories.--Gnorkel (talk) 23:30, 1 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I'd love to see a comparable map of, say, Twitter followings. (Leave out the arrows and the clustering is still of potential interest.) How many dimensions are useful? —Tamfang (talk) 01:18, 3 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I found this 1958 article named "Towards a classification for social science literature": http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.5090090303/abstract. You have to pay to read the entire thing, but you might find it for free in the collection of a local university. OldTimeNESter (talk) 19:00, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I had a look at it. It is a funny reminder on how the organization of knowledge (books) was such a problem before computers came along. Not sure though if life is easier now with such an avalanche of data around us. Thanks everyone for helping! --Gnorkel (talk) 23:30, 1 January 2018 (UTC)