the structure of knowledge

Via Kevin Kelly, a rather nifty map of scientific knowledge, as determined by citations within journal articles.   And here's a (slightly less readable) map of knowledge relationships as determined by "clickage," or clicks from one reference source to another:

What I find striking about these two maps - aside from their innate coolness - is the fact that neither of them links into any of the liberal arts.  There is plenty of linkage to the social sciences - more, in fact, than I might have expected - but nothing regarding literature or the visual arts.  As far as the "maps" are concerned, art and science exist in completely different worlds.

"Art is the tree of life," said William Blake, "science is the tree of death."  That's not a widely held belief these days.  And the Internet, for example, is nothing if not an amalgam of technology, literature, and graphic art.

C. P. Snow's observations about the "two cultures" aren't considered relevant by too many people these days.  Even Snow backed off them quite a bit.  Yet here's a map that suggests he may not have been too far off the mark, at least in terms of the intersection of two academic worlds.  Some of my favorite art works take place where these two worlds collide.

And where exactly is that point of collision to be found?  "It is not down in any map," Herman Melville wrote.  "True places never are."

Comments

[Jon]

Gary Paul Nabhan has written some pretty good stuff trying to link poetic thought with scientific thought. He's a botanist. Rudy Rucker, a mathematician, has written tons of science fiction based on mathematical theory, but he also wrote one very good historical novel having nothing to do with math. Rucker is also an interesting painter and a very good photographer. I think part of the problem lies in the structure of academia. That and the fact that most of us can only hope to be very good at one thing. Or at least one thing at a time.

All that aside, the maps are cool.