Talk:Outline of academic disciplines

Computer science

The recent move of the entire computer-science portion of the list from "mathematics and computer science" to "professions and applied sciences" seems totally unjustified to me, and the edit comments don't really help me understand why it was done. It is true that software engineering and related practical fields are sometimes taught as subdisciplines of engineering or applied CS, but there is a huge amount of academic research in CS which does not seem to fit very well under "applied sciences" at all, let alone "professions." I want to see a lot more justification (documented with sources, please, not just opinion) for this move before we do it. -- Rbellin|Talk 17:10, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

As an addendum, note that UNESCO's classification places computer science (48) under "science" alongside life sciences, physical sciences, and mathematics. -- Rbellin|Talk 17:49, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Asterisk

None of the disciplines are labeled with an asterisk (*), suggesting that there is no field whose status is debated. If that's actually the case, the sentence discussing the asterisk should be removed. If that's not the case, someone may want to go around with an asterisk pen. Antelan ^talk 21:21, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Concept of disciplines?

There doesn't seem to be much commentary on the concept of disciplines in this article. I added a couple lines at the beginning. I hope, at some point, to add something from Discipline and Punish. Any suggestions? Fokion 18:46, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Also, I think that Science Studies should go somewhere. But where? It's interdisciplinary, but also a part of science, history, anthro, critical theory, philosophy... any suggestions? Fokion 18:50, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

"personal service professions"

User:Catdude added a section of "personal service professions" including things like cosmetology and nannying. It seems to me patently ridiculous to call these "academic disciplines," and I think the section should be removed immediately, but I'd like to solicit other opinions and evidence first. Can Catdude or soemone else give some serious sources for including them? I don't see how it will be possible to provide documentation showing these to be academic disciplines or fields of serious research. Perhaps some vocational colleges instruct students in some of these areas, but I can't imagine what research or study in something like nannying would even mean. -- Rbellin|Talk 17:43, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing the aforementioned concern on the Talk page, RBellin. I perfectly understand your concern. For the "personal service professions" area, I was careful to only list fields that, from my observations, do receive attention in four-year college/university programs as opposed to just Associate/Foundation degree (two-year) programs or just certificate programs. Some of these fields (such as nannying) do have some overlap, or outgrowth, from Home Economics (aka Consumer and Family Sciences or Human Ecology). (Many professional nannies have four-year degrees in Home Economics or an allied area; the specific degree is oftentimes in, or closely related to, Early Childhood Development.) Others personal-service fields in question (such as mortuary science; travel, tourism and concierge services; and secretarial science) do not generally have such an overlap, but can be found taught in four-year institutions. (You can Google these terms and find evidence of four-year programs for them.) I was careful to leave out fields that seem to be, at this time, purely fields that would be just taught in two-year or certificate programs. (Such omitted fields would include areas such as carpentry, welding, and plumbing.) I was just trying to make the total list as "holistic" as possible, and again, do see how some people could be (in good faith) surprised or disagreeing with my inclusion of the aforementioned "personal service professions" area. Further comments, if any, are very welcome :) —Respectfully, Catdude 18:54, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Can you provide some credible evidence that there exist a significant number of university departments, scholarly journals or publications, and/or learned societies in these fields, then? As the article's lead sentence states, these are some reasonable indicators of whether a subject is an academic field -- which (n.b.) implies something more than that a course is occasionally taught about the subject. -- Rbellin|Talk 19:08, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

That's a fair and scholarly question, Rbellin; please allow me just a few days to get back to this question. At that time, I'll provide a substantive answer to your question (URLs, journals, etc.). —Respectfully, Catdude 22:41, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm just a normal reader, but I agree with Rbellin. It's absurd to put biology and life coaching together. When I saw the additions I laughed--they're just silly! Nothing personal Catdude, but I hope it gets cut soon. Good luck. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.104.25.25 (talk) 04:43, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I have taken a small interest in this matter and have found that, while some primarily four-year colleges do offer degrees in cosmetology and mortuary science, none of them are four-year. Also, I found that no four-year schools offer degrees in life coaching, but there is an academic journal dealing with: The International Journal of Coaching in Organizations. I hope this helps. Zrallo (talk) 00:45, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Rename to reflect content

Since my attempt to cull the content of this page to what the title suggests it is about was quickly reverted I propose that this page be moved to List of fields of employment or suchlike. -- Alan Liefting talk 22:37, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I assume you're referring to this edit -- which was a massive deletion not justified by any prior discussion, with an edit summary that didn't explain why you proposed to delete such a large portion of the current list. Can you please explain what you want to happen, and why, in more detail, and provide some justification for your proposal? -- Rbellin|Talk 23:08, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

There is no need to discuss what are good faith and appropriate edits on a talk page As editors we can be bold. Why I deleted info should be obvious - the links I deleted are way beyond the bounds of acedemia.

I have seen other lists that have a similar slow creep of irrelevant links. For example:

• List of conservation topics - I have culled this one
• List of environment topics - this is good example since it is very bad i.e.. a huge number of extremely tenuously linked articles.
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of environmental protection and restoration topics - deleted
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of environment-theme lists of topics - deleted

The article is heading towards what is contained in List of occupations and there is no need for the overlap that is happening. A list is only useful if it has a tight focus. -- Alan Liefting talk 23:40, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

As a look through the previous discussions on this Talk page will amply demonstrate, opinions on what is "obviously" academic or non-academic vary widely. I do agree that creeping overexpansion is a danger that Wikipedia lists face in general, but I don't see the links you mass-deleted as necessarily examples of that -- many seem to me like they are rather obviously academic fields. So, again, can you please explain what particular things you think do not belong in the list, and give some justification or cite sources that support your opinion? -- Rbellin|Talk 04:08, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

FYI

To all concerned, I've been doing some library research to try to be as fair-minded as possible about what constitutes an applied-art-and-science-type profession; I should have the substantive response I promised posted by Mon., 9/10/2007 (or early Tues., depending on your time zone). I appreciate the recent dialogue on the Talk page to help clarify what should or shouldn't "count" as a profession. I think the debate is healthy, as it will collaboratively help us produce the best possible product. Thanks for your patience. —Respectfully, Catdude 02:24, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

As a courtesy update, I've fielded questions related to this discussion area to a couple of university research librarians and also to a couple of academic deans in university environments. It appears they do need 2-3 more days to come up with some research results, so please kindly bear with me while I await them. However, I can say that, at this point, in retrospect to my own research, the fields in dispute could probably all be listed as "craft-professions" as well as "emerging professions." There does seem to be plenty of evidence that there are people employed in all the disputed professions who do have a bachelor's degree or perhaps higher, with the bachelor's degree earned in the field of dispute or something closely allied to it. However, there is also that broader philosophical debate on what should/can count as an "academic discipline." I'll post something late Thursday (perhaps early Friday in your time zone) to put some finality to my research on this subject. My inclination (POV?) is that it would still make sense to recognize "personal service professions" in some way as an emerging academic discipline, albeit with a few asterisks as an editor has already provided (and maybe even a footnote as well). Relatedly, the Wikipedia community as a whole will have the ultimate chance to edit things and make changes as desired. Thanks again for your continued patience. —Respectfully, Catdude 23:06, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Some folks who are aiding my research are still putting just a few finishing touches on helping me; I hope to complete my findings in about a day or so. However, I do have some things to kindly share at this time:

1) In the fields that I listed in "personal service professions," a majority of the fields listed do not appear to have dedicated academic journals, although articles about the subjects can be found about them in other sources. For example, with concierge, the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly contains significant articles pertaining to concierge. However, a notable exception is with mortuary science; many journals in the field exist. (Please see http://www.kckcc.cc.ks.us/college-support-services/information-services/library/morgue/journals ). In the life-coaching area, there is the journal International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring (please see http://www.brookes.ac.uk/schools/education/ijebcm/vol2-no1-bookreview.html ).

2) Mortuary science has strong evidence of bachelor's degrees offered in the field. Travel and tourism has relatively strong evidence of this. The other fields I listed in "personal service professions" have strong evidence of many degree holders having closely-allied four-year or higher degrees (e.g., a professional working in nannying/butlery sometimes having a bachelor's degree in home economics; a life-coaching specialist frequently having a bachelor's or higher degree in psychology; a wardrobe-coordination specialist sometimes having a four-year degree in Fashion Merchandising or Textile Design).

3) There does appear to be strong evidence of professional associations for most of the aforementioned personal-service-profession fields. For example, for Concierge, there is the Clef D'Or assocation in several countries (see the Concierge article for links); for nannies, there is the International Nanny Association ( http://www.nanny.org ). For the fields that I intentionally left out of the "personal services professions" list (such as welding, plumbing, and truck/lorry driving), there mostly don't seem to be the same types of professional associations which have an important "education emphasis" as a subcomponent, as found in the fields that I did include in the list.

I'll stop by shortly again to add anything else that is revealed to me which is significant. Thanks again for your patience. —Catdude 18:42, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate the effort you're putting into this research, but I have to say that a lot of the things you're citing seem borderline irrelevant to me. Neither the existence of professional associations for various jobs, nor the presence in those jobs of people who studied somehow related topics while they were in college, supports the argument that these jobs are properly described as academic disciplines. The granting of bachelor's degrees is relevant, but seems to me to fall short of justification, as there are certainly some bachelor's degrees best described as vocational. And the absence of academic journals (alongside the fact that you haven't addressed the existence of learned societies, research, or university departments) in these fields, all seem like conclusive evidence on the side of removing these fields to me. -- Rbellin|Talk 20:44, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Rbellin, for the educated feedback in regards to this issue. To cut to the chase in a way I think you'll like, I wouldn't be opposed to taking out the area of dispute, and tasking myself to seeing how it could form the genesis of a new list. (I know that Wikipedia can tend to also suffer from list overexpansion in regards to the number of lists out there, but I think that such a new list can evolve quickly into something appropriate and encyclopedic.) I will mention that mortuary science does seem to have an abundance of professional journals out there, and there is even a department of mortuary science in the University of Minnesota's medical college. Travel and tourism management arguably has some of the accoutrements of an applied academic discipline as well, as measured by professional associations, journal articles, and some other elements. The other fields I listed don't meet such standards as well. I'll likely leave it to other Wikipedians, such as you, to judge whether those two fields have merit as part of the list of academic disciplines. In the meantime, I'll work on the aforementioned new list, and will try to add "meat" to it to illustrate how the fields in the new list perhaps are "emerging professions" based on key elements, but may not meet the standards, among many people, of "academic disciplines" at this time. Thanks again for all the feedback and for trying to make this as relevant of a list as possible. —Regards, Catdude 01:05, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

the correct term is Indology, not dharmic religions

First of all the term dharmic religions is a very unusual term when compared to the alternative term Indian religions. The number of google scholar results for "Indian religions"+"Indian religion" is (45.600 + 84.200) while it is only (492+475) for "dharmic religions" +"dharmic religion". So if we are to choose between the two then it should be Indian religions. Secondly the correct term of the academic field is Indology, not Indian religions, let alone the obscure neologism dharmic religions. See Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2007_September_8. Andries 19:43, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I've changed it to Indian religions because it clearly is the better term in the context. I don't know enough about Indology to justify making that change myself. --Mrwojo 01:26, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Drawing

Is drawing not an academic disciplines. —Preceding unsigned comment added by The Tramp (talk • contribs) 22:43, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Computer & Video Games

I believe that Computer & Video games should be listed as a recognized academic discipline (as, for example, film and radio are included). There are now several dedicated degree-level courses covering various facets of the discipline (e.g. tools & technology, software engineering, 3D art & animation, design, production management) and a growing body of academic literature and journals. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.69.23.39 (talk) 26 December 2007

Philosophy of Mind

Shouldn't the philosophy of mind be listed under metaphysics, rather than applied philosophy? Descartes was hardly doing applied philosophy. The closest applied thing I can think of is maybe Cognitive Science or Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, maybe? Llamabr (talk) 19:53, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Certainly, and absolutely, and with support from the Stanford Enclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphysics/#ProAboMenPhy) --Palaeovia^talk 08:25, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Religion/spirituality/divinity; Hum/SocEc

I made a good-faith restoration of the subsection "Religious and spiritual leadership / Divinity" due to my feeling that this area represents a bona fide "application" of religion/spirituality, but I wasn't sure that it belonged where the "pure arts and sciences" are pretty much listed in the article. Additionally, Divinity/Applied Theology is taught at many prominent universities such as Harvard and Oxford, which is why I respectfully felt it had a place as a sub-list in the article. However, I do notice that some "applied arts/humanities" such as Architecture and Studio Art are listed in the Humanities section, when they are in fact more of an "application thing". Perhaps a new section for "Applied Arts" or some such thing could be used to house Architecture, Studio Art, Divinity, etc. (I know that you then have the challenge of deciding if, say, Art History should be "separated" from Studio Art, etc., but we all can probably find a "good way" to deal with this issue later on :) ).

After I got done making the addition of the new "Human ecology and allied social ecology" subsection (which was good-faith-removed by another editor), I admit that the section did seem to contain, well, "a lot" in it, and admittedly after all the work I did on that subsection, I was too tired to start wikification on it right away :) That Hum/SocEc subsection was honestly the very last field that I could think of which, IMHO, I felt was an "academic field" that would be good to slip into the article list. However, I will not restore the sub-list at this time, and I will "put on my thinking cap" as to how this sub-list, or some sort of "re-processing" of it, could better "mesh" with the article and thus contribute better to it.

Thanks, all, who have made positive suggestions/critiques to me (and others) in the quest to improve this article! —Best regards, Catdude (talk) 01:45, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Protection

I have protected this List for 24 hours, to put a halt to a potential edit war. Bearian (talk) 23:20, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Military sciences

I have reverted the removal for several reasons.

Firstly what I have done is to change what was a seemingly random collection of existing and non-existent military articles into a list. This list is organised, and explains what each of the list items represent.

The deletion of my edits based on them being "expository" and therefore not appropriate, is somewhat hard to understand. A list is not supposed to be an accumulation of wikilinks alone! In a reference work it is supposed to also inform.

The particular problem with military sciences is that they are not a part of the more widely known spheres of research, development and study, and do not easily fall into the "ologies" that the other disciplines represent. A different taxonomic grouping was required.

I would really appreciate if editors discussed reverts of what was a substantial bit of time invested on my part as a matter of courtesy if not actual policy--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 23:24, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi. This page is a bit of an exception to normal practices, because it is originally part of the set of Contents pages, and is linked right at the top of Portal:Contents (which is the second link in the site's sidebar).

Also, for sheer length considerations, it would become necessary to split it into subarticles if each section was transformed into exposition.

For those reasons, I would strongly recommend that we leave it in pure list format. Some more sourcing for the lede wouldn't hurt though...

[Tangentially/contextually: There have been many prior discussions about moving it (alone or as part of the whole Content's group) into Wikipedia or Portal namespace.]

I Hope that helps explain the situation here :) See Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle for the preferred method of dispute resolution. Thanks. -- Quiddity (talk) 04:16, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Ok, fair enough. What I'll do is try to reduce the current instalment I made into something more linkish to look like the rest of the list. I would appreciate if it was left in place for now while I do a bit more figuring out, because Military Science as I explained above is a bit unusual as a subject--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 06:22, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

A few thoughts:

Were you planning on something other than a basic hierarchical-list? The whole page has a fairly consistent structure throughout, except for the block of prose you've added..

Maybe you could work on your proposed replacement in a sandbox? (Not that I want to contribute to your sandbox addictioncollection!)

Maybe you could add the prose component at Military science instead? and then copy a concise list-summary-version to here and Topic outline of military science and technology (formerly "list of basic topics in ...").

Thanks. :) -- Quiddity (talk) 02:06, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually I thought that the current list is a sandbox :) I think lists should not be bare wikilinks, but actually offer at least a rudimentary description of each entry, and a section introduction.

What happened with my sandboxes is that as I begun what was going to be primarily Eastern Front (WW2) period articles, I discovered that many peripheral articles were just not there. If you look at the Military science article introduction I wrote, you will see lots of redlinks, and you will see many in my to do list. The problem is that it is pointless to author and edit article that use terminology the reader will not understand, so I have had to expand the range of foundational articles I have had to write. Military science is one of them since it impacts on how one understands the behaviour of the belligerents.

Yes, I will copy the prose for the most part to the Military science article, but need to work on that article a bit more also. The other thing I need to incorporate is the Military art (Military science) article--mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 02:28, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

See also the other pages in Template:Contents pages (footer box), particularly List of Dewey Decimal classes. They've been this way for years, and don't change much (glance through some random diffs from the years of history!). As Palaeovia explains below, they're meant more as a browsing instrument (hence the recurrent namespace-pagemove arguments, that I mentioned earlier (lists of lists are a thorny issue, but there are good reasons for keeping them in mainspace)).

I'm going to revert to the last by Palaeovia, and copy a link for you to easily get your text out (old diff of section #Military sciences).

This is actually a fairly high traffic page, being permanently 2 clicks away from anywhere. Feel free to update the actual sublist that you were editing, but please keep it in the same simple format as the rest of the page. Let us know if we can be of anymore help. Thanks again. -- Quiddity (talk) 07:27, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

In support of Quiddity's suggestion above and the current orientation of this page as a simple list of wikilinks, I give here my view of the purposes of this list:

Firstly, the list presents a coherent and elegant overview of the world of academia, and its coverage by Wikipedia. ("Browse" function)

Secondly, the list directs the user efficiently to a Wikipedia article on an academic discipline, or sub-discipline, for further exposition. ("Index" function)

The proper place for exposition is the relevant articles (where any controversial issues can be critically examined), and not here.--Palaeovia^talk 02:51, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Maybe eliminate indenting in categorizing engineering disciplines

Maybe it would be better not to suggest here that one type of engineering in a branch of any other.

I rearranged some of the items in the engineering categories. For sure, Automobile Engineering isn't a branch of Naval Engineering, as indicated by this page as I found it. I thought Automotive Engineering was a branch of Mechanical Engineering, but the Automobile Engineering article says that it is a branch of Vehicle Engineering.

I moved the mention of Software Engineering to be a branch of Computer Engineering. The article on Computer Engineering says that software engineering is one of the "core knowledge areas of computer engineering".

Someone within a particular field may take exception to the notion that their profession is a "branch" of any other. I suggest putting the list of disciplines in alphabetical order and eliminating the indentation to avoid disputes over whose discipline is a branch of someone else's. - Ac44ck (talk) 04:22, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I prefer a hierarchical organization, however tentative, of an academic discipline, to an alphabetical list, since organizing human knowledge helps us to grasp the scope and depth (and gaps) of the current state of human kwowledge. It is a natural intellectual pursuit. And I would like to know how scholars in a field of knowledge view its structure.

There is no single correct way to organize any field, and we should all acknowledge that, and seek reasonable compromise. However, a structured view is always preferable to a surrender to chaos.--Palaeovia^talk 07:22, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Top level grouping of academic disciplines

The breaking up of "Professions and Applied sciences" in this version into the current form is messy. I propose two options:

1. Break up "Professions and Applied sciences" into "Professions", consisting of the well-established, credentialed professions (medicine, engineering, law, education(?), religious ministry(?)), and "Vocations" (such as beauty therapy).

2. Recert to this version.

To avoid potential debates concerning the distinction between professions and vocations, I favor reverting. Any dissenting views?--Palaeovia^talk 08:19, 7 October 2008 (UTC)