Academia then had a custom that it didn’t really like interdisciplinary departments but it tried to organize itself into nonoverlapping departments.
I could imagine some good reasons for doing so. Sometimes scientists who are experts in one field become crackpots in another field, and it may be dificult for the new colleagues to argue against them if the crackpot can euler them by using the arguments from their old field.
On the other hand, there is the saying that a map is not the territory, and this seems like suggesting that the existing maps can be modified in the middle, but the boundaries are fixed. But we have already seen e.g. computer science appearing at the boundary of mathematics; biochemistry appearing on the border between biology and chemistry; or game theory somewhere at the intersection of mathematics, economy, and psychology.
My argument is primarily about whether that historical development was good or bad. It was that there are reasons why certain memes won over others that aren’t directly about the merit of the memes. Additionally I make the prognosis that those reasons are less likely to hold in the next 40 years the way they did in the last 40.
But we have already seen e.g. computer science appearing at the boundary of mathematics
Today computer science is very much a subfield of math. Heinz von Foerster had a psychatrist in his Biological Computer Laboratory. He wanted to study computing, system theory, cybernetics or whatever word you want to use broadly.
The Biological Computer Laboratory was shut down when the military came to the point of deciding that funding it doesn’t produce militarily useful results.
But we have already seen e.g. computer science appearing at the boundary of mathematics; biochemistry appearing on the border between biology and chemistry; or game theory somewhere at the intersection of mathematics, economy, and psychology.
As far as I know we don’t have professors for game theory as a discipline. We have economic professors who study game theory, mathematics professors who study it and psychology professors who study it.
We don’t have departments of game theory.
I could imagine some good reasons for doing so. Sometimes scientists who are experts in one field become crackpots in another field, and it may be dificult for the new colleagues to argue against them if the crackpot can euler them by using the arguments from their old field.
On the other hand, there is the saying that a map is not the territory, and this seems like suggesting that the existing maps can be modified in the middle, but the boundaries are fixed. But we have already seen e.g. computer science appearing at the boundary of mathematics; biochemistry appearing on the border between biology and chemistry; or game theory somewhere at the intersection of mathematics, economy, and psychology.
My argument is primarily about whether that historical development was good or bad. It was that there are reasons why certain memes won over others that aren’t directly about the merit of the memes. Additionally I make the prognosis that those reasons are less likely to hold in the next 40 years the way they did in the last 40.
Today computer science is very much a subfield of math. Heinz von Foerster had a psychatrist in his Biological Computer Laboratory. He wanted to study computing, system theory, cybernetics or whatever word you want to use broadly.
The Biological Computer Laboratory was shut down when the military came to the point of deciding that funding it doesn’t produce militarily useful results.
As far as I know we don’t have professors for game theory as a discipline. We have economic professors who study game theory, mathematics professors who study it and psychology professors who study it. We don’t have departments of game theory.