Remarks on the Concepts of Domain and Field

Abstract

Every inquiry, or at least every inquiry that aims at knowledge, has a subject-matter — that which the inquiry is about, which is the object or set of objects studied. Let us, for the sake of brevity, and without further analysis for the present, call the set of things studied in an investigation the domain of the inquiry, and the particular things that make up the domain the items of the domain. (These “items” might, in particular inquiries, be spoken of as “objects,” “processes,” “behavior,” “facts,” or in still other ways [“fields,” “virtual bosons”]; but such ways of speaking involve problems which, being irrelevant to present purposes, I wish to avoid by speaking more generally and neutrally of “items.” Sometimes it is convenient to speak of classes of items as themselves items which are objects of investigation.) The domain of a scientific inquiry generally includes many items, the items studied being considered as examples of types or classes or sets of items.

This paper is an adaptation, for present purposes, of the opening portions of an earlier paper, “The Influence of Knowledge on the Description of Facts” (in F. Suppe and P. Asquith, eds., PSA 1976, East Lansing, Philosophy of Science Association, 1977, Volume II, pp. 281–298. In the present volume, it should be viewed as an introduction to the paper that follows, “Alteration of Goals and Language in the Development of Science.”