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A truly fascinating article.

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One follow up question- do you think scientific branches are normally formed in a catalysed/incubated/engineered sense as in your example? Or is this kind of genesis the exception rather than the rule?

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Hey, Shane! Really glad you liked the piece!

I would say that, for much of scientific history, this has surely been more the exception than the rule. A more common way to push branches into existence -- somewhat but not entirely on accident -- was developed significantly throughout the 1900s in industrial R&D labs. Scientists working on very applied problems can often go a long way in creating branches. Solving problems often resists disciplinary boundaries and what you end up with is a handful of people from different disciplines combining knowledge in useful ways that sometimes ends in a new sub-field. These branches from some applied work may not tend to be as extreme -- although extreme cases such as the transistor do exist.

I cover some of these topics much more thoroughly in various pieces on my substack. If you visit this post (https://freaktakes.substack.com/p/math-and-physics-divorce-poetry-and) and skip down to the 'If true, how does the human systems hypothesis change things?' I give a brief guide of which pieces I've written give what kind of evidence. From there, you can check out whatever looks most fun!

Thanks so much for reading the piece and thinking deeply about it:)

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