hierarchy of science

    Caption: Length scales of the universe mapped to the hierarchy of science---which is just a vague concept---but a useful one.

    Features:

    1. In the opinion of yours truly, all sciences are emergent sciences since they all depend on yours truly's broad definition of emergence.

    2. That said, the ordering of the hierarchy is loosely that of sciences higher in the hierarchy contain entities who internally depend on sciences lower in the hierarchy and therefore can be said to emerge from those lower in the hierarchy.

      This is all rather vague, but still a useful perspective and it accords with the narrow definition of emergence.

    3. The hierarchy of science is somewhat correlated with size scale as illustrated by the axis in the figure.

      But size scales don't always apply. For example, astronomy spans many scales and logic none or all depending on how you are thinking of it.

      The axis has a logarithmic scale which just means that tick marks indicate factors (in this case factors of 10**3) and NOT absolute amounts.

      Logarithmic scales are useful for displaying quantities that vary vastly in scale.

    4. The physical sciences are traditionally physics, astronomy, chemistry, geology, climatology, meteorology, etc.---they are the sciences obviously strongly dependent on physics.

    5. The sciences that are NOT traditionally physical sciences are those that strongly rely on emergent theories that are NOT physics theories even though they may strongly reply on physics theories too---e.g., biology, neurology, etc.

    6. The multiverse is obscurely alluded too as parallel universes.

    Credit/Permission: © User:Efbrazil, 2013 / Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0.
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