{"id":3664,"date":"2011-01-04T03:18:56","date_gmt":"2011-01-04T03:18:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3664"},"modified":"2011-01-04T04:31:48","modified_gmt":"2011-01-04T04:31:48","slug":"an-iridology-of-the-sciences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3664","title":{"rendered":"An Iridology of the Sciences?"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> ]<\/p>\n

I for one am delighted to know that we can now play around with the iridology of the sciences<\/strong>, using the software available on the Science-Metrix<\/strong> Ontology Explorer<\/a> site to view which fields have journals which cross-link to journals in other fields…<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Seriously — that lower image is of the Field Citation Wheel<\/strong> that you can find, suitably enlarged for easy viewing, on that site<\/a>.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

And it’s heartening for me to know, for instance — taking a closer look at the segment of that image that’s roughly east north-east — that scientific journals do have some links on their pages to works of theology or philosophy<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


\nEngineering<\/strong>, you’ll notice, has more links than history, philosophy, theology, the social sciences<\/strong> (even counting them twice), economics, business, the arts and humanities combined<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

My own field, theology<\/strong>, has to share its thin segment with philosophy<\/strong>, and you can guess how small the number of links to articles on Islamic apocalyptic<\/strong> probably are\u2026<\/p>\n

Which is, in part, why I wonder whether a project like the ETH’s Living Earth Simulator<\/a> will really manage to map such things as, well, a possible outbreak of global jihadist Mahdism<\/strong> and its consequences.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

But then I look at another gorgeous graphic<\/strong> from the same source<\/a>, focusing in on a part of the network of knowledge that interests me, and I can just faintly make out, lower left, entirely isolated, the field of music<\/strong>\u2026<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What splendid isolation! That’s all of Bach, mind you \u2013 and all the Beatles, too.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Seriously, though:<\/p>\n

\n
    \n
  • It’s fascinating to be able to see how the various branches of knowledge cross-reference<\/strong> each other.<\/li>\n
  • Visual data representation is a gorgeous, fantastic<\/strong>, field.<\/li>\n
  • Mapping the all-of-everything is an irresistable lure for keen minds<\/strong><\/li>\n
  • I’m betting the humanities will prove to be at least as good at it<\/strong> as the sciences.<\/li>\n
  • And I recall, not without a pang of regret, the time when my beloved Theology<\/strong> was Queen of the Sciences<\/strong>, and one might converse with Abelard on the streets of Paris…<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    [ by Charles Cameron ] I for one am delighted to know that we can now play around with the iridology of the sciences, using the software available on the Science-Metrix Ontology Explorer site to view which fields have journals which cross-link to journals in other fields… Seriously — that lower image is of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216,12,46,191,384,487,526,24,9,346,33,471,332,51,78,23,319,462,480,376,218,436,491,32,558,31,523,13,1,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-analogy","category-analytic","category-anthropology","category-art","category-brain","category-charles-cameron","category-cognition","category-complexity","category-connectivity","category-consilience","category-cultural-intelligence","category-economics","category-history","category-ideas","category-insight","category-map","category-metacognition","category-music","category-network-theory","category-philosophy","category-psychology","category-rambling","category-science","category-social-science","category-synthesis","category-theology","category-theory","category-uncategorized","category-visualization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3664\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}