:Analogies for Sustainable Development/Scientific disciplines and theories as languages
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A word cloud of the 100 words making up the Leipzig-Jakarta-List, with weightings (word size) based roughly on the Swadesh list 
Overview[edit | edit source]
Analogy Map[edit | edit source]
| Principle/function | Disciplines/ theories | Languages |
|---|---|---|
| Shared context | Concepts that are represented by all or many disciplines / theories (using different terms) | Concepts that are represented by all or many languages describe (using different words) |
| Specialization in a specific context on different levels | Research focus / study of specific phenomena | Social and natural environment containing specific phenomena |
| Academic fields | Language families | |
| Subjects within fields | Languages | |
| Schools of thought | Dialects | |
| Isolation from other groups | Specific language, frameworks, methods, styles | Specific vocabulary, grammar, styles |
| Need to communicate with other humans in your group | Terms and concepts only develop and survive for phenomena that other scientists in a field see and understand | Words and terms only develop and survive for phenomena that other people in a language community see and understand |
| Increasing need to communicate with humans outside your groupe | Inter- and transdisciplinarity | Being multilingual, dictionaries, translation of important texts into different languages |
Discussion[edit | edit source]
Quote Bank[edit | edit source]
Wilson (2015)[1]:
“The examples of accounting methods, perspectives, and languages make it easy to understand how different configurations of thought can be different but worthy of coexistence, and how they can be, but need not be, incommensurate.”
“Each [theory] can be insightful in the same way as multiple accounting systems, perspectives, and languages outside of science. They therefore deserve to coexist, but for this kind of equivalence to be productive, it is essential for users of the theories to be appropriately multilingual. Otherwise, equivalent paradigms will be pitted pointlessly against each other”
Further Resources[edit | edit source]
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ Wilson, D. S. (2015). Does Altruism exist? Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others. New Haven, CT, USA: Yale University Press.