Imaginary magnitude

In November (I’ve only just now discovered the blog in question), there was an entry on mamamusing on the definition of ‘our emerging academic discipline’ - IT, to which people come from a variety of fields, such as CS, Library Science, Philosophy &c. Students learn both practice and theory.

It seems the field, or at least the department where Elizabeth Lane Lawley teach, is in a discussion about ‘the nature of our emerging academic discipline’. They agree about a defining moment for the field: when ‘internetworking reached the desktop and the graphical web was born’. The discipline’s identity is coupled to a common technology/practice.

This is interesting and reminds me of a couple of examples from the history of science in the 20th century. (In general, I think work in the history of science or the broader field of science and technology studies can be of use for the discipline-confused academic of today. A way to gain perspective of what’s going on.)

Peter L. Galison describes physics as subdivided in books like Image and logic: A material culture of microphysics. The wide discipline of physics is divided into subdisciplines where groups of physicists share a practice and a language. A shared practice - the complicated detector technologies employed in microphysics, for example - is one defining part of the culture of such a subdiscipline. One could also look at the way Robert Kohler describes geneticists working with fruit flies in the inter-war period in Lords of the fly: Drosophila genetics and the experimental life.