List of academic disciplines

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Please improve this article if you can. (July 2008)

1 Overview
2 Inclusion criteria
3 Humanities
4 Social sciences
5 Natural sciences
6 Formal sciences
7 Professions and Applied sciences
8 Notes
9 See also
10 External links

An academic discipline, or field of study, is a branch of knowledge which is taught or researched at the college or university level. Disciplines are defined and recognized by the academic journals in which research is published, and the learned societies and academic departments or faculties to which their practitioners belong. The inclusion criteria for this list are presented in a section below.

Fields of study usually have several sub-disciplines or branches, and the distinguishing lines between these are often both arbitrary and ambiguous.

Overview

In medieval Europe, there were only four faculties in a university: Theology, Medicine, Canon Law and Liberal Arts (Arts).¹ Current-day university disciplines have their roots in the mid- to late-19th century secularization of universities, when the traditional curricula were supplemented with non-classical languages and literatures, social sciences such as political science, economics and public administration, and by natural science and technology disciplines such as physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering.

In the early 20th century, new disciplines such as education, sociology, and psychology were added. In the 1970s and 1980s, there was an explosion of new disciplines focusing on specific themes, such as media studies, women's studies, and Black studies. Many disciplines designed as preparation for careers and professions, such as nursing, hospitality management, and corrections also emerged in the universities. Finally, the visibility of such interdisciplinary scientific fields as biochemistry and geophysics increased, as their contribution to knowledge became widely recognized.

An asterisk ("*") denotes a field whose academic status is debated. The use of asterisks is a holdover from the version of this list before adoption of the current inclusion criteria. As such marked items are reviewed, the asterisk will be removed if the item meets the inclusion criteria; items which do not meet the inclusion criteria will be deleted.

Note that the area into which some fields should be classified is debated, such as whether anthropology and linguistics are social sciences disciplines or humanities disciplines. Note that some people, particularly critical theorists are critical of the division of disciplines; and virtually every division of disciplines, as well as the structure of the concept of disciplines in general, is disputed by some.

A provocative question to ask might be "how many disciplines of study are there?" And an answer to this question could reasonably be that there is no end to the amount of academic disciplines one could have.

In academia today, it is a growing practice to incorporate fields of study that are created by extending the ideas, theories, and methods of more traditional disciplines. Also, new times and revolutionary thinkers can enhance or renew existing disciplines, or even create new disciplines altogether. For example, it can be argued that Freud created a new sub-field of psychology with his new perspective of psychoanalysis.

Inclusion criteria

The inclusion criteria for this list are as follows:

An item in the list must link to a relevant Wikipedia article.
The linked Wikipedia article must:
1. Contain the name of the discipline as it appears in this list.
2. Contain some description of the academic preparation which has been completed by those in the field.
3. Give a valid impression that the pursuit may be an "academic discipline", as defined elsewhere in this section.

If the academic status of an item is challenged, evidence that the field is an "academic discipline", as defined elsewhere in this section, may be required for retention of an item in this list.

Definitions (for the purposes of this section):

An "academic discipline" is an area of study in which a masters degree is offered by at least five major universities somewhere in the world.
A "major university" has a total enrollment of at least 10,000 students.
Links to current degree programs in major universities qualify as "evidence".