You may as well know that I'm as susceptible to peer pressure as the next geek.
This means that even though I myself was dismissive about the prospects for creating an accurate and/or useful taxonomy of my people in the tribe of science, now that my sibling ScienceBloggers are soliciting information to flesh out the taxonomies of anthropologists, physicists, and biologists, I don't want to be left out.
Of course, in the World of Geekdom, I have dual citizenship. This means I'm appealing to you to contribute to the wall chart of identifying features for various sorts of chemists or philosophers.
The appeal needs rules, right? Here they are:
- Your contribution can be based on first hand knowledge. Or, it can be based on hearsay and innuendo. You make the call.
- You should give enough in the way of observable descriptions that someone who woke up in the lab or office of a chemist or philosopher of the subtype in question could help the authorities determine just what type of chemist or philosopher the person had fallen into the clutches of.
- Dry humor is welcome, but for gosh sakes, don't take the exercise too seriously!
- Bonus points for clever disjunctive taxons (e.g., Analytic chemist or virtue epistemologist: ...)
- If you agree with me that the project of coming up with these taxonomies is ill-advised, let that be the subtext of the taxons you contribute.
- Don't harm any animals in the process of sending them in. Seriously!
The appeal has been issued. Go wild.
There goes my plan of submitting my entries wrapped in the skin of a freshly killed badger and tied up with snakeskin.
Historians of science are under the far-fetched impression that science is something that exists in the real world, rather than being an absolute perfect goal. Despite this, they spend their time trying to explain that science is also an intellectual process, but really not too intellectual, but still a little bit intellectual, for fear that somebody points out to them that they are really detail-oriented sociologists. If you come across someone who can't actually articulate in which field he works, chances are he is a historian of science.
A first rate typology of geeks has already been produced by Lore Sj�berg. It captures not only the major kind of geeks, but their dominance hierarchy. Unfortunately it is for science *fiction* geeks, not for science geeks. Still it is well worth checking out, if only as a possible model for a science geek typology.
The existential pragmatist: believes the world is an illusion, but seems to work anyhow.