Scientific Disciplines, History of

Rudolf Stichweh, Universitt Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany

Abstract

The scientic discipline, as the primary unit of internal differentiation of science, is an invention of nineteenth century
society. There exists a long semantic prehistory of disciplina as a term for the ordering of knowledge for purposes of instruction
in schools and universities. But only the nineteenth century established real disciplinary communication systems. They are
based on specialization of scientists, role differentiation in the organizations of science, the emergence of standard forms of
scientic publication, and the rise of the research imperative which demands an incessant search for novelties. All these
structural changes coalesce in the disciplinary community as a new type of communication system in science. After that the
discipline functions as unit of structure formation in the social system of science, in systems of higher education, as a subject
domain for teaching and learning in schools, and nally, as a designation of occupational and professional roles. Although
the processes of differentiation in science have been going on ever since, the scientic discipline as a basic unit of structure
formation is stabilized by these plural roles in different functional contexts of modern society. Finally, the individual
discipline is embedded in an internal environment of other disciplines. The continuous mutual observation and interaction
of these disciplines is the most important factor in the dynamics of modern science.

The scientic discipline as the primary unit of internal One can still nd the same understandings of doctrina and
differentiation of science is an invention of nineteenth disciplina in the literature of the eighteenth century. But what
century society. There exists a long semantic prehistory of changed since the Renaissance is that these two terms no
disciplina as a term for the ordering of knowledge for the longer refer to very small particles of knowledge. They point
purposes of instruction in schools and universities. But only instead to entire systems of knowledge (Ong, 1958). This goes
the nineteenth century established real disciplinary commu- along with the ever more extensive use by early modern
nication systems. Since then the discipline has functioned as Europe of classications of knowledge and encyclopedic
a unit of structure formation in the social system of science, in compilations of knowledge in which disciplines function as
systems of higher education, as a subject domain for teaching unit divisions of knowledge. The background to this is the
and learning in schools, and nally as the designation of growth of knowledge related to developments such as the
occupational and professional roles. Although the processes invention of printing, the intensied contacts with other world
of differentiation in science are going on all the time, the regions, economic growth and its correlates such as mining
scientic discipline as a basic unit of structure formation is and building activities. But in these early modern develop-
stabilized by these plural roles in different functional contexts ments there still dominates the archival function of disciplines.
in modern society. The discipline is a place where one deposits knowledge after
having found it out, but it is not an active system for the
production of knowledge.
Unit Divisions of Knowledge

Disciplina is derived from the Latin discere (learning), and it Disciplines as Communication Systems
has often been used since late Antiquity and the early Middle
Ages as one side of the distinction disciplina vs. doctrina A rst premise for the rise of disciplines as production and
(Marrou, 1934). Both terms meant ways of ordering knowl- communication systems in science is the specialization of
edge for purposes of teaching and learning. Often they were scientists and the role differentiation attendant on it (Stichweh,
used synonymously. In other usages doctrina is more intel- 1984, 1992). Specialization is rst of all an intellectual orien-
lectual and disciplina more pedagogical, more focused on tation. It depends on a decision to concentrate on a relatively
methods of inculcating knowledge. A somewhat later devel- small eld of scientic activity, and, as is the case for any such
opment among the church fathers adds to disciplina implica- decision, one needs a social context supporting it, that is, other
tions such as admonition, correction, and even punishment persons taking the same decision. Such decisions are rare
for mistakes. This concurs with recent interpretations of around 1750 when encyclopedic orientations dominated
discipline, especially in the wake of Michel Foucault, making among professional and amateur scientists alike, but they
use of the ambiguity of discipline as a term always pointing to gained in prominence in the last decades of the eighteenth
knowledge and disciplinary power at the same time (cf. century. Second, specialization as role differentiation points to
Hoskin in Messer-Davidow et al., 1993). Finally, there is the the educational system, which is almost the only place in which
role differentiation of teaching and learning and the distinc- such specialized roles can be institutionalized as occupational
tion doctrina/disciplina is obviously correlated with it roles. From this results a close coupling of the emerging disci-
(Swoboda, 1979). plinary structures in science and the role structures of

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288 Scientific Disciplines, History of

institutions of higher education. This coupling is realized for exercised pressure on the scientic production process (i.e., on
the rst time in the reformed German universities of the rst research) and were thereby able to integrate disciplines as
half of the nineteenth century and afterwards quickly spreads social systems.
from there to other countries. Third, role differentiation in This reorganization of the scientic production process adheres
institutions of higher education depends on conditions of to one new imperative: the search for novelties. The history of
organizational growth and organizational pluralization. There early modern Europe was already characterized by a slow shift
has to be a sufcient number of organizations which must be in the accompanying semantics associated with scientic truth,
big enough for having differentiated roles and these organiza- from an imperative to preserve the truth to an interest in the
tions must be interrelated in an ongoing continuity of novelty of an invention. The success achieved in organizing
interactions. traditional knowledge, as well as tendencies towards empirical
The emergence of communities of specialists is a further rele- methods and increased use of scientic instruments, worked
vant circumstance. In this respect the rise of disciplines is toward this end. In this dimension, a further discontinuity can
synonymous with the emergence of scientic communities be observed in the genesis of the term research in the years after
theorized about since Thomas Kuhn (Kuhn, 1970). Scientic 1790. In early modern times the transition from the preserva-
communities rest on the intensication of interaction, shared tion to the enlargement of knowledge could only be perceived
expertise, a certain commonality of values, and the orientation as a continual process. In contrast, research from about 1800
of community members towards problem constellations refers to a fundamental, and at any time realizable, questioning
constitutive of the respective discipline. Modern science is not of the entire body of knowledge until then considered as true.
based on the achievements of extraordinary individuals but on Competent scientic communication then had to be based on
the epistemic force of disciplinary communities. research in this sense. What was communicated might be
Scientic communities are communication systems. In this a small particle of knowledge, as long as it was a new particle of
respect the emergence of the scientic discipline is equivalent knowledge. Scientic disciplines then became research disci-
to the invention of new communication forms specic of plines based on the incessant production of novelties.
disciplinary communities. First of all one may think here of The link between scientic disciplines and organizations of
new forms of scientic publications. In the eighteenth century higher education is mediated by two more organizational
a wide spectrum of publication forms existed; they were not, structures. The rst of these are disciplinary careers. Specialized
however, specialized in any way. There were instructional scientists as members of disciplinary communities do not need
handbooks at the university level, journals of a general scien- only specialized occupational roles. Additionally there may be
tic nature for a regional public interested in utility, and a need for careers in terms of these specialized roles. This again
academy journals aiming at an international public, each is a condition which sharply distinguishes eighteenth from
covering a wide subject area but with rather limited commu- nineteenth century universities. Around 1750 you still nd,
nicative effects. It was only after 1780 that in France, in even in German universities, hierarchical career patterns which
Germany, and nally, in England, nationwide journals with implied that there was a hierarchical succession of chairs inside
a specic orientation on such subjects as chemistry, physics, of faculties and a hierarchical sequence of faculties by which
mineralogy, and philology appeared. In contrast to isolated a university career was dened as a progression of steps through
precursors in previous decades, these journals were able to exist these hierarchized chairs. One could, for example, rise from
for longer periods exactly because they brought together a chair in the philosophical faculty to an (intellectually unre-
a community of authors. These authors accepted the specializa- lated) chair in the medical faculty. The reorganization of
tion chosen by the journal; but at the same time they contin- universities since early nineteenth century completely dis-
ually modied this specialization by the cumulative effect of continued this pattern. Instead of a succession of chairs in one
their published articles. Thus the status of the scientic publi- and the same university, a scientic career meant a progression
cation changed. It now represented the only communicative through positions inside a discipline, which normally demands
form by which, at the macrolevel of the system of science a career migration between universities. This presupposes
dened originally by national but later by supranational intensied interactions and competitive relations among
networks communication complexes specialized along universities which compete for qualied personnel and quickly
disciplinary lines could be bound together and persist in the take up new specializations introduced elsewhere. In Germany
long run (Stichweh, 1984, Chap. 6, Bazerman, 1988). such regularized career paths through the national university
At the same time the scientic publication became a formal system were especially to be observed from around 1850.
principle interfering in every scientic production process. This pattern is again closely related to disciplinary curricula,
Increasingly restrictive conditions were dened regarding what meaning that one follows ones disciplinary agenda not only in
type of communication was acceptable for publication. These ones research practice and personal career, but furthermore
conditions included the requirement of identifying the that there exist institutional structures favoring teaching along
problem tackled in the article, the sequential presentation of lines close to current disciplinary core developments. The unity
the argument, a description of the methods used, presentation of teaching and research is one famous formula for this, but
of empirical evidence, restrictions on the complexity of the this formula does not yet prescribe disciplinary curricular
argument accepted within an individual publication, linkage structures which would demand that there should be
with earlier communications by other scientists using cita- a complete organization of academic studies close to the
tions and other techniques and the admissibility of present- current intellectual problem situation and systematics of
ing speculative thoughts. In a kind of feedback loop, a scientic discipline. Only if this is the case does there arise
publications, as the ultimate form of scientic communication, a professionalization of a scientic discipline, which means that
 Scientific Disciplines, History of 289

a systematic organization of academic studies prepares for philosophy was a higher form of knowledge than history, and
a non-academic occupational role which is close to the philosophy was in its turn subordinated to faculty studies such
knowledge system of the discipline. Besides professionalization as law and theology). In modern society no such limit to the
there is then the effect that the discipline educates its own number of disciplines can be valid. New disciplines incessantly
future research practitioners in terms of the methods and arise, some old ones even disappear or become inactive as
theories constitutive of the discipline. A discipline doing this is communication systems. There is no center and no hierarchy to
not only closed on the level of the disciplinary communication this system of the sciences. Nothing allows us to say that
processes, it is also closed on the level of socialization practices philosophy is more important than natural history or physics
and the attendant recruitment of future practitioners (on the more scientic than geology. Of course, there are asymmetries
operational closure of modern science see Luhmann, 1990; in inuence processes between disciplines, but no permanent
Stichweh, 1990). or stable hierarchy can be derived from this.
The modern system of scientic disciplines is a global
system. This makes a relevant difference from the situation of
The Modern System of Scientific Disciplines the early nineteenth century, in which the rise of the scientic
discipline seemed to go along with a strengthening of national
It is not sufcient to analyze disciplines as individual knowl- communities of science (Crawford et al., 1993; Stichweh,
edge producing systems. One has to take into account that the 1996). This nationalization effect, which may have had to do
invention of the scientic discipline brings about rst a limited with a meaningful restriction of communicative space in
number, then many scientic disciplines which interact with newly constituted communities, has since proved to be
one another. Therefore it makes sense to speak of a modern only a temporary phenomenon, and the ongoing dynamics of
system of scientic disciplines (Parsons, 1977, p. 300ff., (sub-) disciplinary differentiation in science seems to be the
Stichweh, 1984) which is one of the truly innovative social main reason why national communication contexts are no
structures of the modern world. longer sufcient infrastructures for a rapidly growing number
First of all, the modern system of scientic disciplines of disciplines and subdisciplines.
denes an internal environment (milieu interne in the sense of
Claude Bernard) for any scientic activity whatsoever. What-
ever goes on in elds such as physics, sociology, or neuro- The Future of the Scientific Discipline
physiology, there exists an internal environment of other
scientic disciplines which compete with that discipline, The preponderance of subdisciplinary differentiation in the late
somehow comment on it, and offer ideas, methods, and twentieth century is the reason most often cited for the
concepts. There is normal science in a Kuhnian sense, always presumed demise of scientic discipline postulated by
involved with problems to which solutions seem to be at a number of authors. But one may object to this hypothesis on
hand in the disciplinary tradition itself; but normal science is the ground that a change from disciplinary to subdisciplinary
always commented upon by a parallel level of interdisci- differentiation processes does not at all affect the drivers of
plinary science which arises from the conicts, provocations internal differentiation in modern science: the relevance of an
and stimulations generated by other disciplines and their internal environment as decisive stimulus for scientic varia-
intellectual careers. tions, the openness of the system to disciplinary innovations,
In this rst approximation it is already to be seen that the the nonhierarchical structure of the system. Even if one points
modern system of scientic disciplines is a very dynamic to an increasing importance of interdisciplinary ventures (and
system in which the dynamism results from the intensication to problem-driven interdisciplinary research) which one
of the interactions between ever more disciplines. Dynamism should expect as a consequence of the argument on the internal
implies, among other things, ever changing disciplinary environment of science, this does not change the fact that
boundaries. It is exactly the close coupling of a cognitively disciplines and subdisciplines function as the form of consol-
dened discipline and a disciplinary community which motivates idating interdisciplinary innovations. And, nally, there are the
this community to try an expansionary strategy in which the interrelations with the external environments of science
discipline attacks and takes over parts of the domain of other (economic, political, etc.), which in twentieth and twenty-rst
disciplines (Westman, 1980, pp. 105106). This was wholly century society are plural environments based on the principle
different in the disciplinary order of early modern Europe, in of functional differentiation. Systems in the external environ-
which a classicatory generation of disciplinary boundaries ment of science are dependent on sufciently stable addresses
meant that the attribution of problem domains to disciplines in science if they want to articulate their needs for inputs from
was invariable. If one decided to do some work in another science. This is true for the educational environment of science
domain, one had to accept that a change over to another which has to organize school and higher education curricula in
discipline would be necessary to do this. disciplinary or interdisciplinary terms, for role structures as
Closely coupled to this internally generated and self- occupational structures in the economic environment of
reinforcing dynamics of the modern system of scientic disci- science, and for many other demands for scientic expertise
plines is the openness of this system to new disciplines. Here and research knowledge which always must be able to specify
again arises a sharp difference to early modern circumstances. the subsystem in science from which the respective expertise
In early modern Europe there existed a closed and nite cata- may be legitimately expected. These interrelations based on
logue of scientic disciplines (Hoskin, 1993, p. 274) which was structures of internal differentiation in science which have to
related to a hierarchical order of these disciplines (for example be identiable for outside observers are one of the core
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