On fields and fences in science.

Many years ago, the second time I attended a meeting on biological rhythms, I met a fellow who asked me how long I’d been in the field and whether I was connected to Pittendrigh. I didn’t really think of rhythms as a field at the time, more like a problem, maybe an area—I thought of my field as Neuroscience, subfield Neuropharmacology, area Receptors and signal transduction, system rat Pineal gland—and I’d never met Pittendrigh. He was just being friendly though, this fellow, like asking how long I’d been in town, and did I have any kin here, and was I fixin’ to stay? This was home to him. As it happens, I moved away for a few years, sojourning in the lands of Neurochemistry and Retinal biochemistry, before coming back, buying a farm (a chicken farm), and settling down. The organization of science into areas, fields, and disciplines is not as well defined as the organization of geopolitical entities into villages, towns, districts, counties, states, countries, and continents. Still, science is organized politically, with nested realms distinguished by territory, kinship, language, and way of life. These “polities of science,” like those that appear on a map, overlap with the social organization of self-defined communities and “peoples.” I don’t think “biological rhythms” was a “field” at the time, but as I’ll explain, I’m sure it is one now, and the Journal has a role in defining that field. To begin with, the development of a field requires the generation of a sense of a community distinguishable from others, and of allegiance to it. Early on, it seems, there is an especially strong emphasis on kinship, on founders and forebears (e.g., “We are the sons of Shem!”), on distinctive local geography (e.g., “We are the Green Mountain Boys!”), and/or a way of life (e.g., as reflected in the cry “NONHUMAN TEXANS!”) that provide a sense of community and homeland. Such distinction and loyalty is helped by a degree of isolation and by achievement of a critical mass. Often, the nascent field is dominated by—sometimes composed of—a handful of lineages (and of their patriarchs, living or dead), and everyone knows who belongs to which lineage. The sense of distinction and community is bolstered by shared lore and cherished practices and beliefs, often consisting of cautionary tales (cryptic light leaks) and epic tales recounting how our forebears vanquished the unbelievers (conversion of the criticism of “temperature independence” to the canon of “temperature compensation”). A tribal jargon develops and provides slogans and shibboleths by which comrades recognize and identify each other (“We are the knights who say ‘homeostasis of tau.’ ”). Greek letters, acronyms, abbreviations, and stock phrases are often used (tau, psi, alpha, rho; DD, PRC, per) and help to identify a stranger or a novice (“That’s ‘photoperiod refractoriness’ not ‘photorefraction’; ‘dead zone,’ not ‘death zone.’”). Fortunately, at the time of the meeting, I had already been partially acculturated at a previous meeting by a (now) tribal elder, a scion of a major branch, who claims to have done it in one long night, and I could already lard my sentences with “type 1 PRC” and “state variable,” more or less appropriately, though I still spoke with a recognizable accent. As an area develops into a field, other considerations besides kinship come to the fore, although lineage never loses its importance (“I’m Goldberg, the tailor. You want Goldberg, the spy. Upstairs.”). A rough consensus emerges on the boundaries of the field. That rough consensus distinguishes between core problems and those that are peripheral but still within the field’s purview, between fundamental and trivial issues, and between relevant and irrelevant issues. Standards of quality are established (“You call that a phase shift?”), as are acceptable scientific approaches and methodology, and preferred or acceptable reductionist levels and level of concreteness. The locations of “black boxes” are tacitly decided and whether attempts to open them fall within or outside the field (“‘That’s not my Department,’ says Wernher von Braun.”). Very commonly, it is the system that defines and bounds the field (cardiac physiology) or the reductionist level (electrophysiology) or the methodology (x-ray crystallography) or the problem or goal (AIDS research). Consequently, we each have cross-cutting allegiances to several fields, sometimes to several disciplines, organized around different unifying princi-