Time was when three scientific disciplines sufficed, says Russ Swan. They’ve multiplied, to say the least.
There’s nothing like the discovery of a new fact to cheer up the day, especially one that is a sort of metafact about science. This could also make a decent pub quiz question: how many different scientific disciplines are there?
Go on, have a guess.
I’m old school enough (I’m old, I went to school, it was a long time ago) to still reduce the question to the science curriculum of the 20th century – remember that? No, of course you don’t.
Back in t’old days when I were a nipper, there were only three subjects. Physics, chemistry and biology. Rather like the opening gambit in a game of 20 Questions (look it up), in which all things must qualify as either animal, mineral or vegetable, any scientific endeavour fell within the remit of those three sciences. And only brainy kids got to study them all.
It’s worth noting that the three branches of science are now said to be physical science, earth science and life science. You know this is more modern because all the labels are longer, and if I’ve noticed anything in my time on this planet it is that short and succinct names inevitably get longer and more cumbersome.
I blame the Americans, who culturally adore the addition of redundant words. A Brit might go riding, while an American would go horseback riding. But let’s not start an international incident with our transatlantic friends and cousins over a spot of equestrian terminology.
The number of scientific disciplines, according to the internet, is both impossibly large and surprisingly small, which makes me think it must be right. That number is 174.
The 175th will be the study of the growth in the number of scientific disciplines, and I’m going to call it Disciplinary Nomenclature Volumeology
There can’t possibly be 174 distinct disciplines in science, can there? Thirty or 40, tops, surely? But think about the title of any PhD thesis you’ve ever come across, and notice how it explores a highly specialised niche within a niche within something you might have heard about but aren’t quite sure.
I recall a friend who, after finally handing in their thesis (late, of course, and only tangentially connected to the topic originally intended), sighed wearily and observed that their years of effort had resulted only in them “throwing one further atom of knowledge onto the mountain of scientific fact”.
And when you think about it this way, 174 is hopelessly small. Does it include, say, biomedical micropaleontology? What about geophysical mesospheric chromatography? Simply combining any two of the 174 at random gives over 30,000 two-discipline specialisms, or if you go bonkers and aim for the factorial of 174, well, you quickly need many new universes just to write them all down.
Anyway, I want to make a contribution, and up the number to 175. The 175th will be the study of the growth in the number of scientific disciplines, and I’m going to call it Disciplinary Nomenclature Volumeology. It’s a title worthy of an American, and I’m cool with that.
It seems a suitably meta area of research, especially given the meta nature of the question that first prompted it. There will of course be a dedicated journal and a prestigious international conference, held somewhere warm and welcoming in February. And that’s a fact.
