Emergence of new disciplines

[Alan Pritchard]

This question was posed in soc.history.science

"*From:* DrJohnson1980 at hotmail.com (Johnson)

"When can we speak of a new field? When does the era of a specialism
(of the mother-science) end? When a new field is born?"

Dear readers,

I am looking for ideas and theories to describe the emerge of new
scientific fields.

For instance: biochemistry.

When this was considered a new field? It's a cross-over of two
sciences.

When it has journals of its own?
When it has dedicated meetings?
When people start calling themselves biochemical scientists?

Are there models who describe this process? Are there different
'typical paths' that are followed?
Can evolutionary models be used for this purpose? Self-organization?
What if only a few people are 'crossing' the boundaries of the
different sciences? When do these 'early days' end?

Any names of people involved in this research (the research of
emerging fields in science)?

I am curious!

Thanks you for reading my posting.
Mr. Johnson"

It seems the sort of thing that I vaguely remember from years back using
citation clustering or some such technique. It would seem to overlap with
bibliometrics, scientometrics, sociology of science.

If anyone can help the gentleman concerned, I'm sure he would be grateful.

Best wishes
Alan Pritchard
The GLOBAL GAZETTEER™: the world on file
http://www.allm-geodata.com
Tel: +44 (0) 1202 417 477

NOTE my new email address: alan.pritchard at gmail.com