:Analogies for Sustainable Development/Scientific disciplines and theories as languages


Overview

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Analogy Map

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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

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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


Quote Bank

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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

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References

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  1. Wilson, D. S. (2015). Does Altruism exist? Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others. New Haven, CT, USA: Yale University Press.