PubMed Health⌕ Search
Home/Archive/PubMed

PubMed · 15991447

Rethinking scientific specialization.

K Brad Wray
View original source ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

My aim in this paper is to re-examine specialization in science. I argue that we need to acknowledge the role that conceptual changes can play in the creation of new specialties. Whereas earlier sociological accounts focus on social and instrumental changes as the cause of the creation of new specialties, I argue that conceptual changes play an important role in the creation of some scientific specialties. Specifically, I argue that conceptual developments played an important role in the creation of both endocrinology and virology.

Explore related subjects

History, 19th CenturyHistory, 20th CenturyScienceSpecializationVirologyHistorical ArticleJournal Article

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

K Brad Wray. 2005. Rethinking scientific specialization.. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312705045811

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related citations

PubMed2007

Schizophrenia as split personality/Jekyll and Hyde: the origins of the informal usage in the English language.

The entry into the English language of the informal usage of schizophrenia as split personality/Jekyll and Hyde is traced and commented upon. The metaphor of split personality is followed from Eugene Bleuler via his translators and the wider psychiatric community into the present day. It, and to a lesser extent the Jekyll-Hyde personality, is found to be as much a product of the psychological professions as a product of lay misinterpretation. The informal definition of schizophrenia as split personality has outlived the scientific theory with which it was initially associated.

History, 19th Century↗
PubMed2007

["Hypermetamorphosis". Heinrich Neumann's (1814-1884) legacy].

The term "hypermetamorphosis" was originally coined in 1859 by an almost forgotten psychiatrist from Breslau, now Wroclaw in Poland, Heinrich Wilhelm Neumann. The 1906 textbook of his assistant Wernicke transmitted the concept to Klüver and Bucy, who understood it as the "excessive tendency to take notice of and to attend and react to every visual stimulus" in their syndrome description of bitemporal lobectomy in the monkey (1937-1939). Hypermetamorphosis so far has not been properly operationalized, and the concept appears outdated. Components such as "compulsive manipulation", "magnet reaction/groping", "compulsive grasping/grasp reflex", "utilization behavior", and "environmental dependency syndrome" can be better delineated and are commonly seen in frontal rather than temporal lesions. They may occur with frontal contusion, anterior cerebral artery infarction, in diseases of the Pick complex, and basal ganglia neurodegeneration.

History, 19th Century↗