Statement of the Main Argument and Its Limitations

Abstract

The basic research community is divided into a great variety of social groupings. At the most general level it is made up of broad academic disciplines, such as physics, chemistry and mathematics. These disciplines are largely responsible for passing on the body of established knowledge to each new generation of researchers. On the whole this knowledge is transmitted with considerable intellectual rigidity, so that most of those entering a given discipline at one point in time will share a common and largely unquestioned frame of reference. As these new entrants become actively engaged in research, their intellectual concerns become increasingly specialised Consequently, they find that they are members of a specialty within the parent discipline, for example high-energy physics, solid-state physics, steroid chemistry, and so on. Often these scientific specialties have various formal organs, such as conferences, journals, funding committees and possibly specialised training courses and university departments. By means of these organs the members of any specialty are able to exercise some control over the work of their colleagues and to attempt to maintain acceptable levels of conformity to cognitive and technical norms widespread within the specialty.