notes-philosophy-academia

theory: activity whose goal is understanding

Discipline

3 meanings of "discipline" (as in, "interdisciplinary"):

• a restriction on behavior (for instance, the discipline of mathematics is to only rely upon proof)
• a subset of potential topics (for instance, geology studies rocks)
• a community of researchers (for instance, there is a (fuzzy?) set of people who are A.I. researchers)

These different meanings sometimes lead to confusion. For instance, some people adopt the third meaning for the word 'interdisciplinary' and praise it (e.g. communities that don't normally communicate too much working together), whereas others adopt the first meaning and denigrate it (e.g. as a synonym for 'undisciplined', because you do not restrict yourself to any one subject's customary discipline; e.g. some allege that some people who claim to be working on the interdisciplinary frontier of physics and math work on things which are validated neither by formal proof nor by experiment).

focusing on the first meaning,

(note: outside of this context, 'discipline' also has connotations of obedience, spartanism/frugality, and punishment)