"Physics exists not simply because cabals of power-hungry academics were able to get the grant funding to go their way over decades. It exists because it maintains a phenomenally potent lens through which to analyze problems in the world."
I think viewing fields as "lenses," not subject matter, is a pretty nice insight here. George Whitesides (Harvard Chemistry professor, highest h-index of any living scientist in 2011) has a paper out advocating for "physical organic chemistry" as a way of thinking that's actually not specific to chemistry at all, but as a "a strategy for studying complex problems, where the focus is
on isolating one type of variation (usually a variation in the structure of the components), and on
correlating that variation with some property or function of interest."
Another legendary piece in this field is Yuri Lazebnik's "Can a biologist fix a radio?" - https://www.cell.com/cancer-cell/pdf/S1535-6108(02)00133-2.pdf The author's pessimistic conclusion is that the language/worldview of biology, as it presently exists, renders it incapable of understanding an object as complex as a transistor radio - the language and schematics of biology have adapted in such a way that makes them poorly suited to complex quantitative analysis.
There is certainly a realist view that fields are primarily about power, in a way strongly analogous to realism in international relations. That knowledge is a proxy for prestige, funding, and the stability of an identity over time. That it's the maintenance of the labor cartel by those at its center. To offer another pragmatist metaphor, "field" is more ecological. The subject of research, the raw material, is differently distributed like various regions on Earth have different climates and nutrient loads. Some approaches thrive better in different fields than others. And zooming back, we can see many of the same ecotypes as successful research approaches flourish, and less robust ones wither away.
"Physics exists not simply because cabals of power-hungry academics were able to get the grant funding to go their way over decades. It exists because it maintains a phenomenally potent lens through which to analyze problems in the world."
I think viewing fields as "lenses," not subject matter, is a pretty nice insight here. George Whitesides (Harvard Chemistry professor, highest h-index of any living scientist in 2011) has a paper out advocating for "physical organic chemistry" as a way of thinking that's actually not specific to chemistry at all, but as a "a strategy for studying complex problems, where the focus is
on isolating one type of variation (usually a variation in the structure of the components), and on
correlating that variation with some property or function of interest."
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/29914188/Phys_Org_Whitesides_Revised_Final_10.13.15.pdf
Another legendary piece in this field is Yuri Lazebnik's "Can a biologist fix a radio?" - https://www.cell.com/cancer-cell/pdf/S1535-6108(02)00133-2.pdf The author's pessimistic conclusion is that the language/worldview of biology, as it presently exists, renders it incapable of understanding an object as complex as a transistor radio - the language and schematics of biology have adapted in such a way that makes them poorly suited to complex quantitative analysis.
I love ontological surgery. One framework which really shaped my thoughts is Jerry Jacob's In Defense of Disciplines (review link: https://medium.com/mbf-data-science/2023-in-books-9450e131475a).
There is certainly a realist view that fields are primarily about power, in a way strongly analogous to realism in international relations. That knowledge is a proxy for prestige, funding, and the stability of an identity over time. That it's the maintenance of the labor cartel by those at its center. To offer another pragmatist metaphor, "field" is more ecological. The subject of research, the raw material, is differently distributed like various regions on Earth have different climates and nutrient loads. Some approaches thrive better in different fields than others. And zooming back, we can see many of the same ecotypes as successful research approaches flourish, and less robust ones wither away.