Not sure if it’s the right sub. Feel free to remove.
Is there a field of study that is basically the root level “logic” of lots of things in life from the laws of physics to the laws of society to the laws of human behaviour etc?
Not sure if it’s the right sub. Feel free to remove.
Is there a field of study that is basically the root level “logic” of lots of things in life from the laws of physics to the laws of society to the laws of human behaviour etc?
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Control Systems. Everything has its transfer function. Every action reverberates back to source, parsed by a world of different time constants.
Mathematics helps a lot with understanding other fields.
Math
This doesn’t really exist because if the different levels of complexity and the abstractions needed to meaningfully interpret each. However, some disciplines have subjects that tend to be “unifying” in a sense that it connects many previously disparate fields. I haven’t studied it but in mathematics, one of those topics is category theory.
In neuroscience, there have been many attempts to unite evolution/ecology with behavior; some call it neuroethology. The idea is that the brain isn’t simply a general purpose “computer” but that its architecture and computations should be interpreted firstly in context of the animal’s need to move and survive in whatever environment it’s adapted to. For a neuroscientist’s take, read reviews by Paul Cisek; for a singular approachable work to read, try A Brief History of Intelligence by Max Bennett.
Zen Buddhism. It explains the nature of reality.
Sociology feels like it feels that way to me in terms of social sciences. Lots of X studies fields are basically sociology (with a little bit of history mixed in.)
Tbh film is a great foundation for studying tv and media as a whole.
There is no field of study that makes biology easy to understand. There are lots of metaphor, that simply some aspects (DNA and info theory ), but the devil is in the details, and there is no underlying logic to the details.
Set theory. I think the biggest leap in logic that I have taken, was because of this.The concepts of union, intersection, exclusivity and set operations help reduce so much ambiguity when applied to general English too. Applying the concept of set theory to study probability was another huge addition I feel. Just opens up your brain.
I think this is a dangerous thing to want.
What you get if you try to look for a single field that provides insight on everything is the “man with a hammer” effect—everything looks like a nail, even when it isn’t. So you think you’ve got the key to understanding everything, but that belief will lead you astray more often than not if you try to apply your expertise beyond its range of applicability.
Can expertise in one area usefully inform your perspective on another area? Most certainly, but only when applied with caution and with a deep respect for the domain limitations of knowledge systems.
As an aside, the delightful word for the tendency to believe that expertise in one area qualifies one to speak authoritatively on other areas is ultracrepidarianism.
No such field. Sorry.
There is no such field, but imo the closest one would probably be biology (assuming you are interested in life sciences)
Physics.
Study literature and writing. It helps you to understand the lived experiences of the past and present, and helps you to interpret the behavior of those around you. It’s also a portal into the lives of people who may be different from you. It teaches you empathy.
It also teaches you logic. In my classroom, I often ask what must be true to make an author’s claims true. Or, if it’s creative writing, I ask them to consider what from their own background is influencing the way that they interpret the work. It teaches you to be more open to other perspectives and understand that more than one interpretation could be correct without contradicting one another.
Many of my students express that discussions teach them patience, because they learn that listening to another point of view doesn’t necessarily mean that people are disagreeing with you and you have to defend your position further. Discussions also teach students how to support their claims with evidence and reasoning.
In the same vein, studying writing will help you to not only better express yourself, but also get the tools to determine what others are trying to convey to you, even when it’s not readily apparent. For instance, you need not have a law background to read and understand a dense contract if you have a good foundation of reading and writing. In everyday interactions, if you are skilled at putting together logic with some of the pieces missing, you can better understand what someone who’s struggling to get their ideas across is trying to say.
philosophy is the real answer. every science, from hard to social, can be traced back to philosophy.
The fact that you are asking this question in a written language should tell you something. We tend to, as human beings, intuitively assume that language exists to help us describe our thoughts, but there is a growing amount of research that says the opposite. Your ability to process language can shape your ability for thought. And your ability to form thoughts is going to shape every other part of your life.
Econ.
Philosophy
Systems theory
Not necessarily a field but systems theory is relevant to pretty much every field that I can think of: sociological, familial, biological, and engineering systems.
Genetics: It explains why people act as they do, both good and bad.
Evolutionary biochemistry. Explains the origin of life.
Chemistry. About everything we have.
Physics
Physics and Mathematics.
If you understand these two subjects, you will understand how to model the world and you will have the computational tools to solve a variety of problems.
I would also add Economics and Finance. If you understand these subjects, you will understand how society (specifically, a society based on capitalism) works.
The good news is that whatever field you study, you’ll eventually think it’s the one with the greatest explanatory power. Expertise comes with a bonus helping of self-delusion. Oddly, you will occasionally feel like your entire field is stupid and you should have done something completely different with your life.
> root level “logic” of lots of things in life from the laws of physics to the laws of society to the laws of human behaviour etc?
Why don’t you take a course in formal logic? It is the best course I took in my undergraduate (I am a Econ prof). Every subject needs logical consistency.
You can acquire logic through mathematical training, just that I suspect it takes much longer than studying formal logic itself.
I am tempted to say that statistics is a close second – but being real here, nobody knows statistics. You can find a lot of statistical mistakes/abnormalies in every empirical field. Statistics is a field that is supposed to be useful, but turns out learning it does not make a difference in understanding other subjects. In contrast, logical mistakes are rarer in academic literature.
I just finished a degree in mathematics and philosophy. very useful, I feel it has entirely shaped my understanding and approach to the world in many different facets
Physicists think it’s physics. If you spend a lot of time talking to physicists about biology research, you will realize physicists are remarkably skillful reducing questions into their, well, physical components, and simplifying things to a point where they can be quantified and manipulated. This is cool and useful but sometimes wildly inaccurate for fields like biology that have a lot of variance and chaos because of that messy thing called life.
As always, there’s a good xkcd about this…
I believe you just described college universities
Man, most of these answers are just repeating the same hard sciences. I was really hoping to see some out of the blue, hyper specific answers, like Weimar Expressionist Film or Latin American Magical Realist Literature.
>Is there a field of study that is basically the root level “logic” of lots of things in life from the laws of physics to the laws of society to the laws of human behaviour etc?
Philosophy. It forces you to question everything you think you know, and rebuild all of your beliefs and convictions from a more firm foundation. There’s a reason that the highest qualification for most academics is becoming a “doctor of philosophy.”
Geology
Rhetoric
Statistics
Physics
Get a regular old bachelors degree. The breadth requirements alone will take care of you. I learned deeply important things about the patterns of existence from intro chemistry, anthropology, economics, literature… Even accounting! All the fields are trying to describe reality and using different tools to do so. Learning how to think critically is a more fundamental and important skill than any individual field of study.
I have found many problems fit neatly into control systems theory.
To agree with some of the other answers:
Foundational mathematics is really just analyzing the structure and validity of reasoning, which doesn’t help you understand the field per se, but does help you understand the understandings of the field.
Philosophy really does seem the answer, “the systemic study of fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, values, reason, and the nature of reality”.
Economics, though focused on the economy ofc, discusses how people make choices and how to properly ask questions about it.
Personally:
I’m partial to the maths, but I recently started dabbling in economics and it’s helped my research undoubtably.
I didn’t mention philosophy in my personal? Well, this boils down to the fact that I see philosophy and mathematics as the same with different presentations.
Some fun historical figures that were both mathematicians and philosophers in some sense:
Aristotle,
Plato,
Pythagoras,
Pascal,
Descartes,
Leibniz,
Gödel,
Badiou,
Hausdorff,
and the list goes on 🙂
Linear Algebra
Not molecular biology
History!
Math, physics, philosophy and communication
History. “We are living in unprecedented times!” We are not, everything happening now has a close historical parallel. Human beings as a species don’t change.
Metaphysics?
Political economy, unfortunately.
This is a silly question. The answer is theatre. Just ask your dog walker, barista, or server. Ask me how I know….
Philosophy.
Mathematics.
/thread
For me, it’s Humanities (in my case, Sociology and Communication). They work along with History and Philosophy
Linear algebra
HISTORY
You answered the question yourself… logic
These days a lot of AI researchers think that their work is literally the most important labor in human history and all other knowledge work if not will soon be obsolete thanks to the at minimum super-intelligent, and at maximum, destroyer-God technologies they are working to create.
These dudes are real fun at parties.
Physics
Dialectics, Cybernetics, and Systems Theory (incl. Luhmann) have maybe the broadest applications, outside of something fundamental like math or physics.
Sciences: Math.
Humanities: Rhetoric.
Also: Ancient Greek, maybe Latin.
Mathematics and certain branches of philosophy (like metaphysics, epistemology), formal logic. They are fundamental at least. They don’t “make life easy to understand” though.
Psychology won’t help you understand much about the universe, but it damn sure helps understand the many ways people interact in/with it.
Anatomy… it’s so weird that we aren’t all experts… like we literally live in this thing! Lol -an anatomist
Sociology
Sociology 💀
Jesus wasn’t a Christian either.
No
Psychology (at the right level)
Particle psychics
Astrophysics
Math is probably the most fundamental, but there is nothing that makes everything easy to understand. The universe is too complicated.
I would add materials science as another one – we are literally surrounded by physical, material things (including what makes us, as organisms) – understanding the fundamentals of materials is very enlightening for appreciating and understanding the physical world, in my opinion. I consider it a part of mindfulness, because it can generate a greater connection to your surroundings.
Philosophy. I am going to get some chuckles for this but let me explain. Philosophy is the weighing of arguments on the basis of logic. You learn common structures of arguments, common pitfalls (logical fallacies), and you learn how to explain them to humans, you learn to be gracious when arguing (e.g. the principle of charity), and you learn how to write and say things to be understood. And no “debating” as it is commonly known has nothing to do with philosophy.
I think deep interdisciplinary knowledge is vital. I have a doctorate in Human Development and teach Disability Studies, but my interdisciplinary knowledge is vital for teaching.
My background in humanities and social sciences is extremely useful for the courses I teach. I teach from a social science and humanities perspective, but everything is interdisciplinary. My courses are based in the humanities department, but have more of a social science slant.
I would be lost without sociology and psychology.
The Bible – the word of our Creator, it contains all the answers to “life, the Universe, and everything “.
If we know the Bible we will avoid a lot of worry about where we came from, the future, what is ‘out there ‘, etc.
You can start learning the Bible by attending your local church on Sunday and listening to the sermons.
After the Bible, there is the study of Philosophy, which includes ‘Natural Philosophy’, encompassing all the physical and life sciences.
Classics – you’d be surprised at how much the modern world links to ancient history. Kind of depressing that history repeats itself so blatantly but it’s a beautiful subject that tells you so so so much about the world in so many ways
I don’t think there is one field of study that will do that. Humans are too complicated. However, whatever field you choose to study will give you a lens through which to view the world that can be augmented by learning more about other fields. I work as a counselor and having a background with computers, the arts, history and philosophy helps shift my lens in a way that is different than some of my peers. Does being a counselor make it easier to understand somethings related to human behavior? yes inherently because of the field, and also if I only stuck counseling my world would be very narrow. There is no objective truth, instead what we can do is shift our subjective lens of the world to view it from different perspective and create a synthesized understanding of the world.
There isn’t one, but math is maybe the closest when it comes to more easily understanding some aspects of other stem fields.
Speaking as a historian:
history.
The history of science will tell you a lot about actual science…. but also show how new ideas can emerge and propagate in complex cultural systems.
The history of art will tell you a lot not only about trends in style, color, form, etc., but also about how creativity can be as much a cultural construction as an individual trait.
The history of war will tell you not only about topics such as strategy and economics, but will offer insights into things like the social origins of technology or the historical dynamics of social organization (from the micro level–leadership–to the macro level, such feudalism or nationalism).
I could go on and on. History is the root of all knowledge… at an epistemological level. (there’s no philosophy without the history of philosophy…)
Anthropology! All human behaviour and philosophy is in scope
I agree with the top comments here. I’ll just add that studying chemistry deeply added a layer of wonder/understanding to lots of my daily life. Understanding how much of the world is chemistry or how our society of shaped my major advances in chemical sciences is fascinating.
For instance, and I’ve never fact-checked this, but ~50% of the nitrogen in your body is from the haber-bosch process. A process that takes H2 and N2 with Fe catalyst to produce NH3 (ammonia aka fertilizer). “Food from thin air.” We feed a globe off this one reaction (and ok all the engineering and infrastructure in between). And that’s ONE chemical reaction. There’s a vast myriad of others that influence your life in ways unseen.
Underwing how to hack the dopamine rewards system makes anyone disciplined.
You should read or watch the works/lectures of Richard Feynman. Brilliant Cal Tech professor, part of the Manhattan Project, Nobel Prize winner, and outstanding teacher. This is the way he learned and taught. Understand the most basic level and build from there. I think the basics are math and fundamental/particle physics.
I believe a whole series of lectures is available on YouTube for free. I’ve not actually watched or read much of his teaching (frankly over my head), but I’ve read some of his popular audience works that are very entertaining.
I don’t think there’s one magic field that unlocks all, but philosophy really digs into the fundamental questions and frameworks that underpin many aspects of both human thought and the universe.
Law explains how our society works.
Political Science undoubtedly esp political philosophy
mechanical engineering
Philosophy & math. Must be both and not one or the other.
History.
The history of philosophy. The history of religion. The histories of all of the sciences, both theoretical and applied (math, chemistry, physics, engineering, etc.). The histories of the social sciences (anthropology, sociology, economics, etc.).
The laws of learning [at doc level] if you want to most directly and simply understand behavior [human/animal]. An undergrad level course may be an okay start but you wont be able to interpret subtleties of application that can make all the difference. Math for the rest of the universe
Latin helps!
I’d say mathematics and epistemology. In a sense, they’re the foundation of knowledge itself.
To me it’s Godel’s theorems and theory+proof of biological evolution. Very life changing once you get a modicum of understanding.
Developmental Psychology
Biomedical sciences… it’s incredible to understand how cells work and how everything that lives hangs together via chemical reactions. I feel like I understand the world on a different level after I did my studies. Additionally, you’ll understand the interaction between body and environment much more – which is relevant for your own health etc.
Linear algebra. It’s basic inductive and deductive reasoning. in school you learn it with variables as numbers. But the concept of isolating the variable and breaking down a problem into smaller parts is a building block for a lot of other things.
Anthropology. It takes all of the other fields named in this thread as objects of study (because they are all clues to how humans understand the world). Truly a theory of everything.