Hossein Jorjani First publication: 2026 – 07 – 28 It is often assumed that each academic discipline possesses its own distinct subject matter. This assumption is misleading. The boundaries separating disciplines frequently reflect differences in conceptual vocabulary, explanatory emphasis, and historical development rather than fundamentally different domains of reality. The same phenomenon may therefore beContinue reading “Excursus 124 – On the Relationship Between Disciplines and Their Subject Matter”
Tag Archives: academic disciplines
Excursus 057 – On Positivism
Hossein Jorjani First publication: 2026 – 07 – 18 The term “positivism” is today employed more often by its critics than as a self-description by its proponents or alleged proponents. Consequently, discussions of positivism frequently proceed without an explicit definition of the position under criticism. In the present work, the term is therefore used inContinue reading “Excursus 057 – On Positivism”
Excursus 056 – On the Three Dimensions of an Academic Discipline
Hossein Jorjani First publication: 2026 – 07 – 19 Every mature academic discipline may be distinguished into three related but conceptually separate dimensions: the discipline itself, its history, and its philosophy. Although these dimensions interact continuously, they pursue different questions and employ different methods. Failure to distinguish them often leads to confusion about the natureContinue reading “Excursus 056 – On the Three Dimensions of an Academic Discipline”
Excursus 055 – On Mental Faculties and the Division of Academic Disciplines
Hossein Jorjani First publication: 2026 – 07 – 18 The traditional division of the human mind into faculties such as sensation, perception, memory, imagination, understanding, reason, judgment, emotion, and will should not be understood as a map of sharply separated regions within the brain. These faculties are better regarded as functional distinctions: analytical categories usedContinue reading “Excursus 055 – On Mental Faculties and the Division of Academic Disciplines”
Excursus 047 – On the Growth of Fields of Expertise
Hossein Jorjani First publication: 2026 – 07 – 18 The history of knowledge is, in large measure, the history of intellectual differentiation. In antiquity, philosophy (philosophia) embraced nearly every systematic inquiry into nature, humanity, and society. Aristotle’s division of knowledge into theoretical, practical, and productive sciences established a broad framework from which later disciplines graduallyContinue reading “Excursus 047 – On the Growth of Fields of Expertise”
Hossein Jorjani 