Does a chart exist that explains the relationship between most of the sciences?
Asked by
Vortico (
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October 10th, 2010
A tree diagram would be ideal if the chart was organized by each item’s “level of fundamentality”. That is, the most fundamental sciences (logic, set theory) should be located at the bottom while the arts be near the top.
If something like this has never been created (though I’m sure it has), I will keep a personal list and someday make one myself.
For example, a single chain of sciences could be written like the following. However, a more complete chart with possibly hundreds of sciences is what I’m searching for.
Logic -> Mathematics -> Physics -> Chemistry -> Biology -> Cognitive Neuroscience -> Art, etc . . .
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22 Answers
This is a humorous answer, but I think it still is a response to your question (funny but also very true and insightful), so I’m going to risk posting it in the General Section anyways: Fields arranged by purity
@hannahsugs Haha, I remember reading that a few months ago. I didn’t think of that when I asked this question. Also, I love the tooltip on the image. :)
@Dan337 & @YARNLADY: Wow! I had no idea that many fields of science existed!! This will definitely come in handy if I decide to do create this myself.
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Here is a vry cool one of scientists rather than sciences.
Tut tut. You’ve neglect to address the relationship between the sciences as they apply to Mad Science.
Scientists have also applied to the Drake equation to generate the probability of finding a girlfriend. They are a charty mathematical bunch.
It’s basically a Venn diagram where all of the circles overlap each other.
@fundevogel I’m wondering if there are relatively fewer “mad chemists” because when chemistry goes bad it tends to go bad very quickly, a sudden fire or, before you can even get “Oops” or “Oh, shit!” out of your mouth, the toxic gases or the explosion have killed you. In other disciplines the dreadful and evil “unforeseen consequences” that arise from messing with nature, the bread and butter of mad scientist lore, tend to play out over a longer time. Just speculating.
@Dan337: The Propædia Outline of Knowledge isn’t organized exactly the way I had in mind, but it gives some great new ideas on organizing the sciences. I thought the “Technology of Energy Conversion and Utilization” item was a nice way of generalizing most of our mechanical engineering technology. I would have put it under Physics -> Applied, but that works too.
@lillycoyote Could be, though not all bad chemistry decisions have immediate consequences. Mercury poisoning was often chronic and it actually made people go crazy. I suppose that accounts for why chemistry was big with mad scientists early on and tapered off once alchemy faded out. Chemistry was making them mad.
Is logic a ‘science’? Maths?
Hmm….
I would put sociology above neuroscience. I am not quite sure where art stands in all of this. There are some abstract artists who might argue that they belong closer to the mathematics end.
It is an interesting idea that you have, but I suspect that your tree is going to be much wider than it is high. For example,would biophysics be before biochemistry or along side it?
@LostInParadise I don’t think you need to worry about where art fits into science, it rarely follows scientific protocol.
The last part of my example was a stretch, but hopefully you can kinda see where I was going.
@LostInParadise True, but the width isn’t a huge problem as long as it accurately represents the relations.
@fundevogel Not saying the theory doesn’t have a lot of holes in it. It’s just one my many half-baked, swiss cheese theories. :-)
@lillycoyote I’m glad you shared it. Perhaps like the nature vs nurture folks our seemingly contradictory theories are actually complementary.
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