SELF-ORGANIZATION OF SCIENTIFIC SPECIALIZATION AND DIVERSIFICATION - A QUANTITATIVE CASE-STUDY

The dynamics of scientific specialization are investigated in the fiel d of mathematical logic - a major subdiscipline of mathematics, embrac ing some 15,000 authors from 1874 through 1990. The following dimensio ns of specialization are described quantitatively, using a comprehensi ve bibliography: the number of areas of this subdiscipline in relation to the number of contributors; the frequency distribution of the numb er of areas within logic that those contributors deal with; the analog ous frequency distribution of the most prolific logicians; and the deg ree of division of labour between these prolific logicians. The salien t characteristics of these distributions is their skewness, pointing t o 'Lotka's Law' and other similar distributions, which are discussed a s quantitative indicators of scientific self-organization.