Scientific Discipline

A scientific discipline is an academic discipline that leads to scientific knowledge by the use of a scientific method (which focuses on reproducible experimentation).

• AKA: Field of Science.
• Context:
  • It can focus on some specific question(s).
  • It can range from being a Theoretical Science to being an Applied Science (e.g. with scientific experiments).
  • It can range from being a Natural Science to being a Formal Science.
  • It can involve:
    • a Scientific Research Task.
    • a Science Education.
    • a Scientific Conference and Scientific Workshops.
    • a Scientific Literature, with scientific documents (in a Scientific Publication Vehicle, such a Scientific Conference Proceedings, a Scientific Journal, ...)
    • a Scientific Society.
• Example(s):
  • Physics Discipline.
  • Chemistry Discipline.
  • Mathematics Discipline, such as a Statistics Discipline, ...
  • Computer Science Discipline, such as a AI Discipline, Data Mining Discipline, Machine Learning Discipline, ....
  • Biomedicine Academic Discipline.
  • …
• Counter-Example(s):
  • a Humanistic Discipline.
  • a History Science Discipline.
• See: Science Paper, History of Science, Science Textbook.

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References

2016

• (Wikipedia, 2016) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/science Retrieved:2016-9-6.
  • Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Contemporary science is typically subdivided into the natural sciences, which study the material universe; the social sciences, which study people and societies; and the formal sciences, such as mathematics. The formal sciences are often excluded as they do not depend on empirical observations. Disciplines which use science like engineering and medicine may also be considered to be applied sciences. During the Middle Ages in the Middle East, foundations for the scientific method were laid by Alhazen in his Book of Optics. From classical antiquity through the 19th century, science as a type of knowledge was more closely linked to philosophy than it is now and, in fact, in the Western world, the term “natural philosophy” encompassed fields of study that are today associated with science, such as astronomy, medicine, and physics. While the classification of the material world by the ancient Indians and Greeks into air, earth, fire and water was more philosophical, medieval Middle Eastern scientists used practical, experimental observation to classify materials. In the 17th and 18th centuries, scientists increasingly sought to formulate knowledge in terms of laws of nature. Over the course of the 19th century, the word "science" became increasingly associated with the scientific method itself, as a disciplined way to study the natural world. It was in the 19th century that scientific disciplines such as biology, chemistry, and physics reached their modern shapes. The same time period also included the origin of the terms “scientist” and “scientific community," the founding of scientific institutions, and increasing significance of the interactions with society and other aspects of culture.

• http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21693904-microeconomists-claims-be-doing-real-science-turn-out-be-true-far?frsc=dg%7Cd
  • QUOTE: SCIENCE works for two reasons. First, its results are based on experiments: extracting Mother Nature’s secrets by asking her directly, rather than by armchair philosophising. And a culture of openness and replication means that scientists are policed by their peers. Scientific papers include sections on methods so that others can repeat the experiments and check that they reach the same conclusions. That, at least, is the theory. In practice, checking old results is much less good for a scientist’s career than publishing exciting new ones. Without such checks, dodgy results sneak into the literature.

2009

• (WordNet, 2009) ⇒ http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=scientific%20discipline
  • # S: (n) science, scientific discipline (a particular branch of scientific knowledge) "the science of genetics"
• (WordNet, 2009) ⇒ http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=science
  • # S: (n) science, scientific discipline (a particular branch of scientific knowledge) "the science of genetics"
  • # S: (n) skill, science (ability to produce solutions in some problem domain) "the skill of a well-trained boxer"; "the sweet science of pugilism"
• (Wikipedia, 2009) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_sciences
  • A formal science is a branch of knowledge that is concerned with formal systems, for instance, logic, mathematics, systems theory and the theoretical aspects of computer science, information theory, microeconomics, decision theory, statistics, and linguistics.
• (Wikipedia, 2009) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_science
  • In Science, the term natural science refers to a naturalistic approach to the study of the universe, which is understood as obeying rules or laws of natural origin. The term natural science is also used to distinguish those fields that use the scientific method to study nature from the social sciences and the humanities, which use the scientific method to study human behavior and society; and from the formal sciences, such as mathematics and logic, which use a different (a priori) methodology.
• (Wikipedia, 2009) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_science
  • Applied science is the application of knowledge from one or more natural scientific fields to solve practical problems. Fields of engineering are closely related to applied sciences. Applied science is important for technology development. Its use in industrial settings is usually referred to as research and development (R&D).

2006

• (Mitchell, 2006) ⇒ Tom M. Mitchell. (2006). “The Discipline of Machine Learning." Machine Learning Department technical report CMU-ML-06-108, Carnegie Mellon University.
  • A scientific field is best defined by the central question it studies. The field of Machine Learning seeks to answer the question “How can we build computer systems that automatically improve with experience, and what are the fundamental laws that govern all learning processes?”

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