[X] My Assistant

[ustrax]

"This map was constructed by sorting roughly 800,000 published papers into 776 different scientific paradigms (shown as pale circular nodes) based on how often the papers were cited together by authors of other papers".

From here.

Just see the new branches of the tree of knowledge expanding...
Very interesting and quite a beautiful work of art!

[edstrick]

I'd *LOVE* to see a similar map of pseudoscience nonsense... Where would phrenology, numerology, homeopathy, visiting space aliens, cattle mutilations, and bigfoot plot?

Oh.. and the we-never-went-to-the-moon morons.

[nprev]

I'd *LOVE* to see a similar map of pseudoscience nonsense... Where would phrenology, numerology, homeopathy, visiting space aliens, cattle mutilations, and bigfoot plot?

Oh.. and the we-never-went-to-the-moon morons.

I suspect that the map would be far less orderly, if there were any real connections at all. Perhaps that fact serves as a good discriminator between science & pseudoscience. Science advances & diversifies based on proven facts obtained by critical examination and testing of alternative theories, while pseudoscience generally embraces a single hypothesis regardless of alternatives and thus becomes quite narrow.

However, what's kind of interesting (and revealing) is that you could superimpose the pseudos over actual scientific disciplines & draw connections. Some of these 'disciplines' were ancestral to real sciences, like astrology was to astronomy. Remember, we've only had some actual idea of how things in the Universe really work for a pitifully small fraction of human history, and before that everything was <clinking> magic...no wonder the pseudos still have such a powerful grip on a significant fraction of the world population.