Science in Context 5, 1 (1992), pp.

3-15

RUDOLF STICHWEH

The Sociology of Scientific

Disciplines: On the Genesis and
Stability of the Disciplinary
Structure of Modern Science

The Argument

This essay attempts to show the decisive importance of the "scientific discipline" for
any historical or sociological analysis of modern science. There are two reasons for
this:
1. A discontinuity can be observed at the beginning of modern science: the
"discipline," which up until that time had been a classificatorily generated unit of the
ordering of knowledge for purposes of instruction in schools and universities, develops
into a genuine and concrete social system of scientific communication. Scientific
disciplines as concrete systems (Realsysteme) arise as a result of (a) the communicative
stabilization of "scientific communities" at the end of the eighteenth century and the
formation of "appropriate" roles and organizational structures (in universities); (b)
the structural differentiation of the new scientific disciplines from the established
professions (law, theology, medicine) in Europe; (c) the formation of scientific
communication in the standardized form of scientific publication; the distinction of
the separate action-type "scientific research" and the differentiation of these two
elementary acts of all future scientific endeavor in relation to each other.
2. The scientific discipline as primary unit of the internal differentiation of science
has, since its genesis, been stabilized by two conditions: (a) The fact of a science
differentiated into a plurality of (competing, mutually stimulating) disciplinary
perspectives becomes the chief causal factor underlying the developmental dynamism
of modern science; (b) Similar to the way in which the discipline functions as a
cognitive address within the system of science, science also links the discipline up as a
structural unit (utilized in both systems) with curricular structures in the system of
education — i.e., it is stabilized by the central system/environment relation of science.

* Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Paris, 31 March
1987, and at the Vakgroep Wijsbegeerte of the Rijksuniversiteit Limburg, Maastricht, 22 February 1988.
** Translated by Jurgen Hausler and Susan Wylegala-Hausler.
 RUDOLF STICHWEH

1. Alternative Forms of Scientific Order

This paper attempts to identify some relevant aspects of the history and sociology of
scientific disciplines. The assumption is that disciplines are not a merely trivial
structural aspect of modern science, useful only for librarians'classifications. Instead,
disciplines are considered to be the primary unit of internal differentiation of the
modern system of science and, as such, vital to any analysis — historical or systematic
— of scientific developments.
Scientific disciplines are an "invention" of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries. Like most inventions, they are not the result of a lucky moment, a singular
event, a founding impulse, or an institutional innovation. They represent the
cumulative and unforeseeable result of a large number of innovations and changes. It
is therefore necessary to survey a relatively long period — from the beginning of the
eighteenth century to the second half of the nineteenth century — when attempting to
understand the genesis of scientific disciplines.
To begin with, it seems necessary to mention that what we are concerned with here is
not preconditions for the establishment of a scientific discipline in the context of other,
previously established disciplines. Studies on the development of disciplines are usually
concerned with exactly this question. They assume an environment of differentiated
disciplines and attempt to explain how and why a new discipline — biochemistry, for
example — emerges (see Kohler 1982). In this paper interest is focused on the
preconditions for the establishment of scientific disciplines per se, at a moment in
history when it is unknown that a representative universal social form (the scientific
discipline) — within which all processes of scientific communication will take place in
the future — is coming into being. The following example may serve to illustrate the
uncertainty resulting from these conditions. In 1771, in the opening section of one of
the early physiocratic treatises, Nicolas Baudeaux attempted to define the status of the
"Economistes," whom he perceived as representing a very distinct intellectual
perspective. The only term he could come up with was "philosophical school," and for
comparison he cited the philosophical schools of Zenon, Pythagoras, and Confucius
(Baudeaux 1771, pp. 4-5 of the separately paginated "Avis au lecteur").
The term "discipline," deriving from the Latin discere, was of course already known
in the early Middle Ages (Marrou 1934; cf. Evans 1980, 96-97). Until the eighteenth
century, the history of the term disciplina was closely linked to the history of the term
doctrina. In fact, the terms are frequently indistinguishable. Characteristically, they
are used in the context of teaching and instruction, and refer to a systematic entirety of
doctrines with which a student is presented in the context of instruction. If the two
terms are to be differentiated, then doctrina refers to the teacher's side of instruction
and disciplina to the student's side. Thus Johann Christian Lange (1706, 10) defined
doctrina as teaching being

seen from the teacher's perspective, purposefully applied with a reasonable

individual in mind, capable of teaching or being able to be instructed through
 The Sociology of Scientific Disciplines

teaching. And since teaching is necessarily related to learning: if used with the
student in mind who is subjected to^the instruction, it may be called disciplina.'
The systematic whole of a discipline/ doctrine is not necessarily a scientific knowledge
system, at least not in the sense of the term as used today. Walter Ong (1958,166) noted
that whenever Pierre Ramee explained the character of a scientific discipline in detail,
he preferred to speak of grammar; although in principle, he too saw geometry as
representing the ideal scientific discipline. This demonstrates the degree to which the
normative orientation of any theory of science on teaching turns thefact of the order of
doctrines (rules)for instructional purposes into the criterion deciding on the unity of a
scientific discpline (ibid., 166,306). From this perspective, scientific disciplines cannot
be observed and described as natural organisms existing in their own right. Rather,
they are the result of deliberate activities oriented toward order and specific purposes.
This may be illustrated by a typical contemporaneous list of such purposes, as follows.
In 1747, Christoph August Crusius ([1747] 1965, 35-38) discussed the reasons that
legitimize combining a multitude of truths into the whole of a scientific discipline.
First, it had to be possible to list all truths under a common term — that is, all segments
of the discipline had to represent means toward a common goal. Crusius then specified
the rules determining whether the cognitive basis thereby derived was also "adequate
and rational." Four such rules were defined: (1) the volume (body of knowledge) of the
scientific discipline had to be sufficiently large; (2) "those truths that should be thought
of in combination in an attempt to achieve useful purposes were to be combined"
(ibid., 36-37; emphasis added); (3) unnecessary deviations from existing distinctions
were to be avoided; (4) if as a consequence of the third rule "a noticeable class of truths
were not noticed to a satisfactory degree, or if truths were otherwise confused, then it
was sensible to follow the purpose of thoroughness and the nature of things more than
habit in defining scientific discplines" (ibid., 37).
On reflection, it is clear that these criteria reflect the perspective of an author of a
compendium. Therefore, volume is emphasized. The unity of a scientific discipline is
only got sight of in the writing of a textbook. Additionally, usefulness and the
preservation of existing distinctions are valued.2 Even Crusius realized that problems
remained in spite of his attempts to establish order. But he added reassuringly:
"Enough subjects will remain for singular treatises." To that end, "truths serving a
specific purpose are combined for which the reasons already exist dispersed among the
sciences" (ibid., 38). These singular treatises do not represent research in the modern
sense but rather the gathering of existing truths for specific and supposedly useful
purposes.

1
"Nehmlich in Ansehung eines lehrenden/ und in Absicht auf ein vernunfftiges Subjectum, welches der
Lehre fahig ist/ oder durch lehren erudiert werden kann. Und weil die Lehre eine notwendige relation und
Absicht hat aufs Lernen: so pfleget sie in Ansehung eines lernenden/ der sich der Lehre untergiebt/ auch
Disciplina genennet zu werden." It is interesting to note that the teacher is also referred to as being in need of
instruction. The distinction between teaching and learning refers primarily to a division of responsibilities
and does not necessarily imply superior competence on the teacher's side.
2
See Stichweh 1990, 1991 a, for the relevance of the criteria of preservation in early modern sciences.
 RUDOLF STICHWEH

What is the macro order of science existing above the compendia of the disciplines?
In early modern times such macro-orders were described in a multitude of
classifications of the sciences. They were completely developed — although not yet
alphabetically ordered — in encyclopedias. In both cases hierarchy was ordained the
ordering rule. A passage from Lange serves to illustrate this point. He refers to a
hierarchical order of purposes in the realm of human behavior that warrants the
cooperation of all human beings "towards a general main purpose" (Lange 1706,656).
In this purposeful ordering of human behavior in general, and supported by the
encyclopedia as the foundation of the system of doctrines, a scholarly arrangement of
disciplines and faculties was introduced. The most respectable and recognized discipline
was the one "most closely connected to the true main purpose of human life" (ibid.,
676; also 656-57, 675 ff.).
Similar to the history of the congregations of believers in the Roman Catholic
church, where the transition to an alphabetical listing of members indicated the
neutralization or decline of the hierarchical order of estates,3 one can say that in the
history of the encyclopedias, the transition to an alphabetical listing of the materials
included was a manifestation of the decreasing integrative power of hierarchical
systems of order. A long transition period is observable of course. For example, the
encyclopedia of D'Alembert and Diderot combined an alphabetical listing of articles
with a programmatic orientation toward the threefold Baconian hierarchy of cognitive
faculties: memory, reason, imagination.4
A completely new understanding of encyclopedias emerged only at the beginning of
the nineteenth century. The quality of encyclopedias no longer resided in the fact that
singular scientific truths obtained their place in science only by being positioned in
such publications. Rather, encyclopedias became reflexive; they described themselves
as the science of science — which presupposed that science existed independently of
encyclopedias. The latter thereby became an institution for observing science.5
Simultaneously, there was an increase in the use of organic metaphors to describe
specific sciences and the connections among them (see Stichweh 1991b). There is here
an obvious tendency to perceive a science in a new sense, as a living organism
independent of external interventions aimed at bringing about order. At the same time
the existence of organic connections among all the sciences rendered implausible all
attempts to press them into a rigid hierarchical order. A drastically new perception of

3
Chatellier 1987, chap. 11, esp. p. 227, using the example of the congregations of Mary. It is noteworthy
that this change is linked to the application of the "Pactum Marianum" — i.e., that it emerges at a time when
the consternation caused by death becomes the true subject of the congregations of Mary.
4
Alphabetical ordering seems to have established itself earlier in the tradition that led to the universal
encyclopedia than it did in the true scientific encyclopedias. This implies a growing discrepancy between the
bourgeois demand for information and the way in which science itself described its structure. See Becker
1927,94-95.
5
In Germany, encyclopedia and methodology were differentiated for several decades, the latter, as a
university subject, also being called Hodegeiik. Gildemeister (1783, 10) describes the difference between
encyclopedia and methodology/ Hodegetik as follows: "The first describes the sciences as they are in
themselves; the latter is immediately concerned with the classifications and arrangements that exist or need
to be applied for instructional purposes only."
 The Sociology of Scientific Disciplines

scientific disciplines was developing. Scientific disciplines now represented real systems
organizing themselves. The order among the disciplines could thus be thought of only
as a horizontal coexistence. Disciplines now came to represent cognitive systems of
equal standing, although concerned with different aspects of reality. Their
interrelationships needed to be defined more precisely but were surely not of such a
kind that the insights of one represented the means for the others' purposes. At the very
most, such relationships existed insofar as they described the relationship of each one
with all the others, thereby securing complete equality among the disciplines.

2. A Transformation of Cognitive Identity: Defining Disciplines by Problem

Constellations Rather Than by Subject Areas

The phenomenon of modern scientific disciplines sketched so far needs now to be

defined more precisely. It seems helpful to begin by asking what really constitutes the
cognitive identity of a scientific discipline. By cognitive identity is meant that which
precedes the specific individual theories or methods that a discipline works with.
Classifications of science in the eighteenth century assume as a rule that the
classification of the spheres of the physical world and the classification of the individual
sciences are analogous.6 Consider, for example, the three kingdoms of nature: animal,
plant, and mineral, and the respective cognitive systems: zoology, botany, and
mineralogy. The use of classifications of this type made it difficult to define, for
example, physics, since physics could elaborate upon some very general attributes of
all bodies (impenetrability, gravity) but shared these bodies as objects with other
scientific disciplines; as such, it did not have an object of its own (Stichweh 1984,
chap. 2, provides an extensive treatment of this problem).
There were obvious limits to the division of scientific disciplines according to such
distinctions. Science was linked to a perception of the real world that was not guided
by any scientific knowledge system. It was, therefore, nonscientific. No metascience
existed that could, in line with the progress in the individual scientific disciplines,
continuously renew the conception of the physical world and refer the modified objects
back go the disciplines. The emerging sciences were no longer content with what
tradition had to offer or with assisting in the ordering of traditional knowledge. These
disciplines, then, had to be left free to design their own objects. And nothing could
guarantee that the plurality of designs would be in any way coordinated or would
result in an orderly distribution of the world among systems of knowledge production.
This problem resulted in one of the radical discontinuities, on the threshold of the
development of modern scientific disciplines; and it legitimated the perception of

6
Naturally, along with the classifications of individual sciences, more fundamental distinctions of
cognitive forms exist that refer not to subject areas but to formal characteristics of human cognition or to
classifications of human cognitive capacities. See Stichweh 1984, 14-31; Stichweh 1991b. Wundt (1889,
6-14) provides an overview of the principles of distinction.
8 RUDOLF STICHWEH

autonomous individual scientific disciplines as being uncontrollable by outside forces.

From this point on, disciplines can be defined by guiding research questions rather
than by subject areas. This radical transformation renders it difficult to conceive of the
development of a discipline any longer as the cumulation of knowledge about its
subject area. Such guiding research questions as "How is social order possible?" (see
Luhmann 1981) or "How is the transmission/propagation of physical effects in space
conceivable?" (see Stichweh 1984, 162-68) to a certain degree resist any attempt to
answer them definitively. The emergence of a discipline may be perceived, then, as a
sequence of tentative answers. Ultimately, the formulation of new problems at the
disciplinary boundaries calls for the establishment of new subdisciplines or disciplines
— hence the cumulative nature of the development of science.7

3. Disciplines as Systems of Communication: "Scientific Communities" and the

Organizational and Role-Specific Infrastructure of Disciplines

Turning to the sociostructural level, it now becomes important to ask what kinds of
social complexes are actually constituted by scientific disciplines. Obviously, scientific
disciplines will no longer be integrated by tradition or the safeguarding and preserving
of stocks of truths. As long as this was the case, science could be thought of as existing
in metaphors such as a book, a library, or an archive. A scientific discipline could, in
other words, for a long period of time continue to exist only latently until someone
resumed a discontinued line of tradition. Naturally, the latter is not completely
impossible today. It is, however, no longer the prevailing form in which science exists.
Modern scientific disciplines constitute relatively precariously constructed networks
dependent on communications (conceptually) linked to other communications, and
on third parties observing this process. In turn, if these third parties want to convey
messages, they must be prepared to provide communications that also use such
(conceptual) links. As complexes of communications, scientific disciplines are based
on events. They change from one moment to the next, from one event to the next, and
they also may — as was shown by Charles S. Fisher (1967), using the example of the
mathematical invariant theory — cease at any moment to exist. This happens not
because something said is falsified, but because nobody has felt the need to establish
connections to a previous communication.
This first form of description, which — choosing one level of social reality — refers
to the differentiation of science as a functional system in relation to other functional
systems within modern society, should be complemented by two or three additional
forms of description that also identify levels of social reality.
The first such level is constituted by "scientific communities." Since the end of the
eighteenth century, tight networks of specialists considerable enough not to be

7
McCain (1986, 267-69) distinguishes linear disciplinary developments (for example, macroeconomics)
and radial center-periphery developments.
 The Sociology of Scientific Disciplines

threatened in their existence by the withdrawal of two or three principal contributors

constituted the primary infrastructure of a discipline. In contrast to a pure
communication network, a scientific community shows additional characteristic
features: the existence of common values, degrees of personal acquaintance, tacit
knowledge of problem-solving techniques that can be transferred only interactionally
from one person to another, and tacit divisions of labor or competitive relationships
that are possible because each knows the problems being researched by others. The
distance between the levels of disciplinary communication and of scientific
communities increased during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At the outset of
science as differentiated along disciplinary lines, almost every scientific discipline
could be described completely by identifying its respective — originally national —
scientific community.
Following from the above are obvious questions of interest to sociology in general
that can be only briefly mentioned here. The autonomization of scientific
communication raises the general question as to the conditions facilitating the
development of functional systems in modern society. Similarly, the existence of
scientific communities raises the question as to the societal and structural preconditions
of such "free associations" — which rapidly became internationalized (see Parsons
1971) — since these are not even integrated by formal rules of membership, let alone by
forms of legal and corporative institutionalization.
The third and fourth forms of description, formal organizations and specialized
roles within them, should reasonably be dealt with together. The disciplinary
differentiation of science is based on the organizational growth and the organizational
pluralization of science. In Germany, the first country to witness disciplinary
differentiation, organizational growth appears to have been the more relevant causal
condition. In the eighteenth century, the University of Gottingen was the first instance
in which considerable growth in the provision of organizational roles, in particular in
the philosophy faculty, was accompanied by a readiness to accept increasingly
specialized descriptions of professorial chairs. The university reforms and extensions
of the nineteenth century represented in many ways a continuation of these trends. It is
worth noting that the situation in the eighteenth century was to a certain degree
marked by a contrast between cosmopolitan Gottingen (this characterization applied
temporarily also to Halle and Leipzig) and universities with a much stronger regional
orientation. In the event it was Gottingen's primarily cosmopolitan orientation in
intellectual and scientific matters that in the nineteenth century came to a large degree
to characterize the internal milieu of the Germany university system as a whole.
Additionally, the growth of other organizations — mining academies, scientific
academies (as in Berlin and Munich), scientific societies, observatories (astronomical
and meteorological) not connected to universities, technical schools and colleges, and
some of the high schools (Gymnasien) of the nineteenth century — was observable.
These new institutions and the accompanying phenomenon of organizational
pluralization were important, since they made possible the further specialization of
roles. In Germany, however, only the university could provide the critical mass of
10 RUDOLF STICHWEH

institutional infrastructure necessary to a multitude of coexisting disciplinary

communicative networks.

4. Disciplines and Professions

What is the connection between the development of specialized scientific disciplines

and the faculties and professions of the old Europe? Do disciplines follow a comparable
sociostructural pattern, so that a professionalization of science is observable?
It has to be remembered that as late as the eighteenth century scholarly and scientific
activities were primarily the domain of the three professions of early modern Europe
— theology, law, and medicine. Only these three faculties provided a professional
education. And it was primarily these three that provided the leisure and knowledge
for secondary scholarly activities. In the nineteenth century, scientific disciplines
developed for the first time exclusively with their own personnel and separated
themselves completely from the traditions of the three preexisting faculties as far as
their knowledge base and methodology was concerned. Above all, they were in no way
"professional." Actually, the classical professions, after the turn of the nineteenth
century, represented not scholarly knowledge systems but action systems specializing
in contacts between members of the profession and clients. Their respective knowledge
bases were activated primarily for that purpose. Increasingly they developed a dogmatic
— that is, action-stabilizing — character.8 In contrast, the disciplines represented
closed communication complexes in which colleagues were seen as the disciplinary
audience and clients were not known. A difference developed between internal closure
and exclusive concentration on elaborating scientific truths on the one hand, and
reorientation toward action and application of knowledge in the contact between
professional and client on the other.9 This difference is an indication of the increasing
distance between scientific disciplines and professional action systems, not of the
professionalization of science.
Additionally, there is a reversal of asymmetries. In the eighteenth century,
instructional complexes within the philosophy faculties that later became scientific
disciplines were seen as merely propaedeutics for studies in the higher faculties. In the
8
Grimm ([1849] 1864,245-46) formulates a characteristic point of view: theology, law, and medicine are
not to be considered academic sciences because, "left just with what does not already belong to other sciences
they retain a stable unmovable statute that in spite of its high value lacks any scientific content. If
ecclesiastical history, Oriental and classical language studies, and ethics were all taken away from theology
because they are already part of history, philology, and philosophy, or if jurisprudence lost its abundant
history of law, . . . the theologian would be left with his dogma and the jurist with his code; both are
interested in enforcing them, and both require instruction and not infinite research."
9
It is interesting how early practical physicians, as distinguished from university professors of medicine,
stopped doing scholarly work and producing scholarly publications. Turner (1987, 74) notes that this
occurred in Germany as early as around 1770 — that is, at a time when other professions — such as
pharmacists, teachers at technical schools, and civil servants (who later withdrew again) — were just
beginning to publish more intensively. It can be assumed that in medicine the concentration on the pivotal
professional role and the accompanying work load, probably characteristic of all modern professions, took
place relatively early and before the scientification of medicine.
 The Sociology of Scientific Disciplines 11

nineteenth century, in contrast, the sciences, as a result of the rapid progress of

research within scientific disciplines, questioned the dogmatic knowledge bases of the
professions. The latter began to have to learn from the disciplines, and suddenly
appeared to be subordinate and applied.

5. Publications and Scientific Research

.*"
Disciplines are communication complexes that can, in a way, be operationalized as
scientific communities. How do these communication complexes develop, and what
form of communication do they exhibit?
Scientific publications specialized along disciplinary lines are of special interest as
causal factors in the development of scientific disciplines. In the eighteenth century a
wide spectrum of publication forms existed; they were not, however, specialized in any
way and were organized only on a regional level. There were instructional handbooks
at the university level, journals of a general scientific nature for a regional public
interested in utility, and academy journals each covering a wide subject area but with
rather limited communicative effects. It was"only after 1780 that in France, in Germany,
and finally in England, nationwide journals with a specific orientation on such subjects
as chemistry, physics, mineralogy, and philology appeared. In contrast to isolated
precursors in previous decades, they were able to exist for longer periods exactly
because they brought together a "community" of authors who published in these
journals. These authors accepted the specialization chosen by the journal; but at the
same time they continually modified this specialization by the cumulative effect of
their published articles. Thus the status of the scientific publication changed. It now
represented the only form by which, at the macro-level of the system of science —
defined originally by national but later by supranational networks — communication
complexes specialized along disciplinary lines could be bound together and persist in
the long run. At the same time the scientific publication became a formal principle
interfering in every scientific production process. Increasingly restrictive conditions
were defined regarding what communication was acceptable for publication. These
conditions included the requirement of identifying the problem tackled in the article,
sequential presentation of the argument, description of the methods used, presentation
of empirical evidence, restrictions on the complexity of the argument accepted within
an individual publication, linkage with earlier communications of other authors —
using citations and other techniques, — and the admissibility of presenting speculative
thoughts (for the latter see Brandt and MacDonald 1987). In a kind of feedback loop,
publications, as the ultimate form of scientific communication, exercised pressure on
the scientific production process (research) and were thereby able to integrate
disciplines as social systems.
But how does one recognize something that should be communicated to one's
colleagues? The development described above became possible only because parallel
to it the scientific production process was reorganized, adhering to a new imperative.
12 RUDOLF STICHWEH

The history of early modern Europe was already characterized by a slow shift in the
accompanying semantics associated with scientific truth, from an imperative to
preserve the truth to an interest in the novelty of an invention. The success achieved in
organizing traditional knowledge, as well as tendencies toward empirical methods and
increased use of scientific instruments, worked toward this end. In this dimension,
another discontinuity can be observed in the genesis of the term "research" around the
year 1800. In early modern times the transition from the preservation to the
enlargement of knowledge could as a matter of principle be perceived only as a
continual process. In contrast, "research" from about the year 1800 refers to a
fundamental and at any time realizable questioning of the entire body of knowledge
until then considered probably true. From this point in time, competent scientific
communication had to be based on research in the sense just described. What was
communicated might be a small particle of knowledge, as long as it was a new particle
of knowledge. Both the scientific working process and the means of communicating its
results at the macro-level have worked toward decomposing science into elementary
units. This occurred in such a way that on the one hand communications could count
on rapid and precise reactions, and on the other hand these communications always
contained a particle of difference that simultaneously (as a difference) provided the
process with a new impulse of energy.

6. Internal Differentiation as the Basis for the Dynamics of Modern Science

In the previous sections I have described, to a degree, emerging scientific disciplines as

systems that, following their differentiation, existed completely separated from one
another. That is not naturally the case. One of the most interesting features of modern
science is exactly that it gains an almost unlimited capacity for self-activation through
its internal differentiation. All disciplinary research and communication now proceeds
in an environment composed of other disciplinary systems of communication.
Although it is legitimate to concentrate for a long time on the activities within one's
own discipline, something might at any time happen in another discipline that may be
of great importance for one's own discipline and result in far-reaching cognitive
innovations. This is able to happen because events in other disciplines are completely
autonomous in establishing their internal connections. Differentiation along
disciplinary lines has the great advantage of viewing reality from radically different
angles. The risks that the one-sidedness of each perspective entails are thus avoided.
Concurrently, by implication, modern science as a whole is forced to learn from
insights gained in different places by the application of different means.
Interdisciplinarity is therefore only a term for something that always happens. It must
not itself, however, develop into an institution, since its true effect lies in the surprising
contacts among different perspectives, which are differentiated in the form of new
disciplinary or subdisciplinary perspectives and thus create room for new occurrences
of scientific self-activation.
 The Sociology of Scientific Disciplines 13

7. Conditions for the Present Stability of the Disciplinary Form

Why do disciplines continue to exist? The impression often prevails that all scientific
activities occur on the level of subdisciplines or sub-subdisciplines. This does not
constitute a contradiction of what has been said so far, since the preceding observations
are indifferent to the level at which the internal differentiation of science takes place, as
long as systems building of the same kind can be observed.
It seems that a form of continued existence, or stability, especially of the large
classical disciplines — such as physics, chemistry, or history — can be observed. What
the conditions for the stabilization of these classical disciplinary units are is an
interesting question.
By way of an answer, five presumptions are presented: (1) After the intertwinement
between the disciplines and the classical professions as knowledge systems and action
systems had definitely collapsed, a secondary professionalization occurred in some
disciplines based on their own stocks of knowledge. The reference here is to the
development of a category within the discipline based on occupational roles, as
demanded by the economy and by society — the chemist and later the physicist are
representative examples. This has happened in a number of disciplines in the last
hundred years. In turn, the disciplines in their classical form have become stabilized by
the system of occupational roles. This means that the stability of a complicated
subdisciplinary structure may, in principle, depend on the ability of a discipline to
provide simultaneously a more general orientation beyond the subdisciplinary level.
Consequently, education in this respect may be considered to provide for an
acknowledged profession (Stichweh 1987,257-60). (2) A second condition for stability
is related to the school-college-university sequence within the educational system.
Some of the new disciplines emerging in the nineteenth century were also established as
instructional areas in schools or as "majors"in U.S. colleges. However, the openness of
these institutions to new subjects seems, in comparison with the universities, severely
limited.l0 It can therefore be assumed that the interrelation between these instructional
institutions (in terms of, for example, teacher training, role interdependencies between
colleges and universities, the transfer of knowledge, and the production of instructional
books) did not inhibit differentiation into subdisciplines; but it did counteract any
tendency for the identity of the classical disciplines to disappear. (3) The third condition
for stability is related to the specific connections that exist between the scientific
system and the educational system in the universities. Within the university system a
discipline only to a limited extent constitutes the self-sufficient system it ostensibly
represents; in fact, it exists as a subsidiary for many other subjects, just as these other
subjects in turn exist primarily as subsidiaries for other subjects. In reference to this
network structure, it again becomes evident that giving up a compact disciplinary
identity can be very risky. (4) The three previous presumptions may be generalized to a

'» Veysey( 1973,44-50) observes that between 1905-lOand 1960-70, the number of"majors"in the large
(undergraduate) colleges remained relatively constant, at twenty-five to forty.
14 RUDOLF STICHWEH

general conclusion covering other cases of contact between system and environment.
From many viewpoints, then, a discipline functions as an "address" which is used with
the expectation that an internal distribution system exists. If such an address no longer
existed, otherwise possible communication might not take place. (5) Finally, inquiries
repeatedly confirm that scientists continue to believe in the cognitive rationality of an
overarching disciplinary identity (see for example, Becher 1981). This evaluation is
most likely related to a phenomenon that has continuously manifested itself in the
history of German science: the conviction that scientific world views founded on
disciplinary knowledge systems do exist. In this respect, disciplines resemble functional
systems within modern society. They cultivate universal perspectives that are naturally
perspectives but that are at the same time able to conceive of all real phenomena in
their terms. Abandoning classical disciplinary systems would endanger especially
those radically universal perspectives that act as a counterweight to extreme
specialization. Were historical science, for example, to accept the separation of the
subfields "history of science" and "family history," it would lose more than those two
specialized areas, it would surrender its universal view of the world.

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