Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-fqc5m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T16:21:42.371Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Understanding the nineteenth century origins of disciplines: lessons for astrobiology today?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 August 2009

William J. Brazelton*
Affiliation:
Center for Astrobiology and Early Evolution, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA School of Oceanography, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA
Woodruff T. Sullivan III
Affiliation:
Center for Astrobiology and Early Evolution, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA Department of Astronomy, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA

Abstract

Astrobiology's goal of promoting interdisciplinary research is an attempt to reverse a trend that began two centuries ago with the formation of the first specialized scientific disciplines. We have examined this era of discipline formation in order to make a comparison with the situation today in astrobiology. Will astrobiology remain interdisciplinary or is it becoming yet another specialty?

As a case study, we have investigated effects on the scientific literature when a specialized community is formed by analyzing the citations within papers published during 1802–1856 in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (Phil. Trans.), the most important ‘generalist’ journal of its day, and Transactions of the Geological Society of London (Trans. Geol. Soc.), the first important disciplinary journal in the sciences. We find that these two journals rarely cited each other, and papers published in Trans. Geol. Soc. cited fewer interdisciplinary sources than did geology papers in Phil. Trans. After geology had become established as a successful specialized discipline, geologists returned to publishing papers in Phil. Trans., but they wrote in the new, highly specialized style developed in Trans. Geol. Soc. They had succeeded in not only creating a new scientific discipline, but also a new way of doing science with its own modes of research and communication.

A similar citation analysis was applied to papers published over the period 2001–2008 in the contemporary journals Astrobiology and the International Journal of Astrobiology to test the hypothesis that astrobiologists are in the early stages of creating their own specialized community. Although still too early to reliably detect any but the largest trends, there is no evidence yet that astrobiologists are drifting into their own isolated discipline. Instead, to date they appear to remain interdisciplinary.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, D.E. (1979). The lost limb: geology and natural history. In Images of the Earth: essays in the history of the environmental sciences, ed. Jordanova, L.J. & Porter, R.S., pp. 200212. British Society for the History of Science, Chalfont St. Giles.Google Scholar
Allen, B., Qin, J. & Lancaster, F.W. (1994). Soc. Stud. Sci. 24, 279310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cunningham, A. & Williams, P. (1993). Br. J. Hist. Sci. 26, 407432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Des Marais, D.J. et al. (2008). Astrobiology 8, 715730.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Edge, D. (1979). Hist. Sci. 17, 102134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edge, D. & Mulkay, M.J. (1976). Astronomy Transformed: The Emergence of Radio Astronomy in Britain. Wiley-Interscience, New York.Google Scholar
George, P. (1952). Ann. Sci. 8, 302322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, M.B. (1984). All Scientists Now: the Royal Society in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Lyons, H.G. (1944). The Royal Society, 1660–1940, a History of its Administration under its Charters. The University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Mix, L.J. et al. (2006). Astrobiology 6, 735813.Google Scholar
Morrell, J. (1976). Br. J. Hist. Sci. 9, 132146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morrell, J. & Thackray, A. (1981). Early Years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Oxford University Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Qin, J. (1994). Scientometrics 29, 219238.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rudwick, M.J.S. (1963). Br. J. Hist. Sci. 1, 324355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rudwick, M.J.S. (1976). Hist. Sci. 14, 149195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rudwick, M.J.S. (1985). The Great Devonian Controversy: The Shaping of Scientific Knowledge among Gentlemanly Specialists. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rudwick, M.J.S. (2005). Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Staley, J.T. (2003). Curr. Opin. Biotechnol. 14, 347354.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sullivan, W.T. & Baross, J.A., (eds) (2007). Planets and Life: The Emerging Science of Astrobiology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodward, H.B. (1907). The history of the Geological Society of London. Geological Society, London.Google Scholar