Discipline (Patton-Al-Zayadi-2021)

This is a definition of Discipline that states "A discipline is characterized by (1) a non-empty set of core questions Q and (2) the delineating theory stating that Q are the core questions of the discipline."

This definition of Discipline was formulated by Paul Patton and Cyrus Al-Zayadi in 2021.1 It is currently accepted by Scientonomy community as the best available definition of the term.

Scientonomic History

Acceptance Record

Here is the complete acceptance record of this definition:

Community	Accepted From	Acceptance Indicators	Still Accepted	Accepted Until	Rejection Indicators
Scientonomy	21 February 2024	The definition became accepted as a result of the acceptance of the respective modification.	Yes

Suggestions To Accept

Here are all the modifications where the acceptance of this definition has been suggested:

Modification	Community	Date Suggested	Summary	Verdict	Verdict Rationale	Date Assessed
Sciento-2021-0006	Scientonomy	1 August 2021	Accept new definitions of subquestion, core question, core theory, discipline, delineating theory, subdiscipline, and discipline acceptance.	Accepted	Prior to the 2024 workshop, Hakob Barseghyan commented on the encyclopedia indicating his support for accepting this modification and noted its potential to underpin further work on discipline dynamics. In fact, a significant amount of observational scientonomy work has been carried out in the past few years (including the paper on the rejection of alchemy by Friesen and Patton (2023),2 as well as some more recent papers) that presupposes the acceptance of these definitions, despite the fact that the modification containing them formally remains open. There was very little discussion about the modification, beyond raising points for the community to look forward to in the future, like a brief discussion between Jamie Shaw and Paul Patton about the need for more research on the difference between disciplines and disciplinary communities. The modification was accepted unanimously with 18 votes.	21 February 2024

Question Answered

Discipline (Patton-Al-Zayadi-2021) is an attempt to answer the following question: What is discipline? How should it be defined?

See Discipline for more details.

Description

A discipline A is characterized by a non-empty set of core questions Q_CA and a delineating theory stating that Q_CA are the core questions of the discipline.1

The scientific mosaic consists of theories and questions.3456 As a whole, a discipline A consists of a set of accepted questions Q_A, and the theories which provide answers to those questions, or which those questions presuppose. 1 Questions form hierarchies, with more specific questions being subquestions of more general questions. Theories find a place in these hierarchies, since each theory is an attempt to answer a certain question, and each question presupposes certain theories. Because of such hierarchical relations, it is possible to characterize a discipline by identifying a set of core questions, Q_CA. These core questions are judged by some agent to be related to one another, essential to a discipline, and definitive of its boundaries. The other questions of a discipline are subquestions of its core questions.

A set, as such, can't be part of a scientific mosaic consisting of theories and questions. We, therefore, take a discipline to be defined by a delineating theory that identifies the set of core questions Q_CA characterizing that discipline.

Reasons

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Questions About This Definition

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