Course-5 Understanding Disciplines and School Subjects pmd

c) Biglin’s (1970) Classification of Academic Disciplines
In the early 1970s Anthony Biglin carried out a study to investigate the faculty’s
judgment about similarities and differences between several academic fields. These
perceptions were classified as
i. Pure vs applied
ii. Hard vs soft (or paradigmatic vs non-paradigmatic disciplines)
iii. Concerned with life systems vs those not concerned with life systems.
i.  Pure vs applied:
Pure Disciplines: Pure discipline is studying a discipline purely for the sake of knowledge
and not for its application. For example, Mathematics is a Pure Discipline. In Mathematics,
we solve problems, find facts and answer questions that do not depend on the world around
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us, but on the rules of Mathematics itself. That is the reason why some theorems and rules
appear vague to us and we cannot understand its application.  The research outcomes in
Mathematics add to the body of knowledge in Mathematics, not every knowledge can be
applied to the world around us directly. Hence, pure disciplines refer to those disciplines
that tend towards fundamental research. There is systematic observation of phenomena
solely for discovering unknown facts which may develop into theories. The product of
these disciplines is some kind of new knowledge. Simply put a pure discipline is a discipline
that involves study purely for the sake of knowledge and not for its application. Some
examples are Pure Physics, Pure Chemistry, and Pure History and so on.