New scientific fields are triggered by powerful new methods

Abstract

Abstract Scientific fields embody our greatest scientific advances, but we do not yet understand how we give rise to new fields. Explaining empirically and theoretically how we kick-start new fields has the potential to accelerate scientific progress. No comprehensive answer to this fundamental question yet exists. Here we systematically trace the origins of science’s major fields including over 350 fields spanning across science. We do this by analysing the methods and tools that enabled sparking the fields and link them to the broader conditions of the scientists who created the fields. This provides a unique opportunity to identify the common mechanism driving new fields. We find that fields consistently emerge by developing a new method or tool – from advanced telescopes to electrophoresis – as they enabled a completely new perspective to the world and without them, the fields would not have been possible. About a quarter of fields are the new method or tool themselves, such as laser physics, computer science, x-ray crystallography, and econometrics, forming entire disciplines around novel techniques. Our extraordinary development of new statistical techniques, x-ray devices, microscopes and spectrometers each made over ten new fields possible. The common link uniting these diverse fields is not specific theories, large teams, more funding or even serendipity – it is that each field relied on the same kind of powerful tool, used in remarkably different domains. The speed at which science expands is not random. The pace of opening new research domains is mainly determined by the pace at which we create new tools: particle detectors launched high-energy physics, microscopy techniques triggered neuroscience and randomised controlled trials kick-started experimental economics. This simple yet powerful principle – if we begin to deliberately develop transformative methods and tools – holds the key to enabling a tool revolution in science, changing the way we understand and the speed at which we make scientific progress. This methods-driven mechanism can provide a foundation for the field of Science of Science . It also points to the need for a new field targeted to the development of methods: Methodology of Science .

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