Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
All scientific disciplines go through periods of self-analysis. However, this analysis often takes place as if inside a closed arena, from which it is difficult to gain a long view. Instead, in hopes of identifying the properties that define it, each discipline examines its own features in a mirror that it holds up to itself.
Yet there are other times, perhaps less frequent, when these self-evaluations are accompanied by an inquiry into the extent to which the discipline's intellectual characteristics are shaped by its relationship to other disciplines.