The State of a Science: Indicators in the Specialty of Weak Interactions

For several years now sociologists of science (and other science analysts) have been moving toward the study of scientific specialties and other smaller aggregates of scientists,1 such as theory groups2 and the 'problem domains' discussed by Studer and Chubin.3 These smaller intellectual and social divisions of science became an increasingly salient focus of attention because of their real importance for the ongoing requirements of specialized research. It is at the level of specialties, theory groups, and problem domains, not of disciplines, that scientists tend to communicate ideas and receive criticism related to proposed and ongoing research. We believe that careful study of the social and intellectual properties of these smaller units within science, followed by systematic comparative analysis, is essential to an understanding of the way science functions. Our work on a specialty within elementary particle physics, the physics of 'weak interactions', is meant to be a contribution to this very recent tradition of research, and we present our first results in this paper. Many different research approaches have been taken by analysts of specialties and smaller aggregates (hereafter, just 'specialties'), ranging from primarily qualitative case studies4 to studies where one or more