Hierarchy of the Sciences and Terminological Sharing of Laws among the Sciences

Abstract

A variable called index of terminological sharing that measures the extent to which one science shares lawful concepts from another science was used to assess hypotheses concerning the concept of an hierarchy of sciences and psychology's terminological relationship with other sciences. (1) The values of the index will be relatively small for the natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology) as compared to the relatively large values for the social sciences (anthropology, sociology), and (2) the index's value for psychology will be closer to the mean value of the social sciences than to that of the natural sciences. Analysis showed only a 17% agreement between the present data and the relative ordering of the sciences assumed by the hierarchy. Hypothesis 1 was confirmed, but not Hypothesis 2. Index values for psychology were closer to those of the natural sciences than to those of the social sciences. Psychology appears to have a relatively high terminological independence concerning citation of shared lawful concepts in textbooks as compared to other sciences, but also psychology shows a large and disproportionate use of eponyms in references to shared lawful concepts. It was suggested that new quantitative-comparative measures, in addition to the present index, be developed to understand further psychology's relationships with other sciences.