# Obsolete Academic Disciplines **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 15, 2012, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-academic-disciplines/628346 "2012-07-15T21:49:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-academic-disciplines/628346/1 "2012-07-15T21:49:18Z")
My google-fu is weak today. There seems to be a concept of “obsolete academic disciplines”, but I can’t really find a list of them. Are there a fair number of academic disciplines that are considered obsolete or defunct in the sense that, while they were considered legitimate academic disciplines in the past, they are not considered so today? I’m not talking about disciplines such as Journalism that clearly still exist and can be majored in, and where practical job prospects still exist but are dwindling, but fields that you practically can’t study anymore at school because nobody teaches it. For example, could you get a BS in Animal Magnetism with a minor in Phrenology from Harvard in 1780, or could you take Alchemy 305 at Oxford in 1530 and get academic credit for studying occultic theories on transmutation? The question is not limited to hard sciences, but I’m looking at fields that were considered legitimate _academic_ disciplines, not job training programs. Also, I’m not truly asking about fields that still exist, but whose degree structure has been changed. For example, I understand that it was once possible in many areas to get a Bachelor’s Degree in Medicine that qualified one to be a doctor, but this degree is obsolete in many or most areas and the program has been restructured as a post-baccalaureate doctoral program, but _the field of medicine still exists_. I’ll accept answers in this vein as long as they don’t overwhelm the thread and are reasonably interesting. ---
**Author:** ![Lasciel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e79b87/32.png) [@Lasciel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lasciel)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-academic-disciplines/628346/2 "2012-07-15T21:52:55Z")
You might have some luck with this list of [Superseded Scientific Theories](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superseded_scientific_theories) from Wikipedia. Don’t know if it’s exactly what you mean, but I bet at least some of them existed for long enough (and were recent enough) that classes or official courses/degrees were given in them. ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-academic-disciplines/628346/3 "2012-07-15T21:57:37Z")
Wikipedia has a [list of academic disciplines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_disciplines) and a [list of fields of doctoral studies in the United States](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fields_of_doctoral_studies_in_the_United_States). Neither directly addresses the question, but they seem vaguely relevant. Edit: How about [regional science](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_science)? It’s not completely gone, but it’s much smaller than it used to be. ---
**Author:** ![Gagundathar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@Gagundathar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gagundathar)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-academic-disciplines/628346/4 "2012-07-15T22:07:48Z")
This may be a difficult question to answer. Academia has changed rather significantly during the last 150 years. For one thing, the entire concept of an academic major was introduced at Harvard in 1910. I doubt whether a course catalog similar to the ones used today were even in existence prior to the 20th century, but I could be mistaken. In fact, I would love to know what attending college was actually like back in the 19th century. Were there courses like ‘Alchemy 101’ or ‘Ætheric Studies 205’? ETA: Of course, I know that Alchemy was superannuated by the 19th century. I was being fanciful. Yeah… that’s it… fanciful. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-academic-disciplines/628346/5 "2012-07-15T22:23:47Z")
Theories are not disciplines. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-academic-disciplines/628346/6 "2012-07-15T22:33:56Z")
As **njtt** suggests, there’s a question here of whether we’re talking about disciplines, or about particular theories and practices that might be part of particular disciplines. If you’re talking about disciplines as professionally-demarcated areas of study, you probably won’t find too many obsolete ones. You might find some sub-disciplines that have become obsolete over time, but the most likely reason for this is that changing understandings of different fields of inquiry have led to realignments within disciplines. For the most part, the story of academia since the late nineteenth century has been one of increased specialization, and the emergence of new disciplines. I’ll put the following in quotation marks, because it is, for the most part, culled from my notes and from a lecture that i give in some of my history classes. The focus is mainly on the humanities and social sciences, not on the STEM disciplines, although many of those were subject to the changes described below. > [@](#): > > The increasingly complex, industrial society of the post-Civil War era brought with it concerns about how to organize and run that society. There was a growing awareness that the modern world was too large and complicated to be completely understood by single individual, and that Americans would need to arrange their learning and their work practices and their government in ways that would allow them to maintain control over the seemingly endless entropy and chaos caused by modern growth. The historian Robert Wiebe, in an important scholarly work, characterized America’s focus during the period 1860 to 1920 as a “search for order” in a period of rapid change and uncertainty. > > Part of this search for order involved increasing specialization in many types of work, including intellectual work. More and more, work of all types was split up into smaller and smaller subspecialties. Knowledge itself was broken into separate (although often overlapping) areas of study, often known as “disciplines.” Many of the modern social science and humanities disciplines that we take for granted today only emerged as discrete areas of inquiry during this period. An early development was the formation of the American Social Science Association in 1865, but the following decades saw the breakup of this rather ecumenical organization into a whole array of specialized disciplines such as sociology, political science, economics, anthropology, and history. > > These disciplines found a home in the universities and colleges of America, which were themselves undergoing important changes. American colleges had previously been institutions that had focused on the moral education of upper class men, providing instruction in religion, philosophy, mathematics, and the classics. In the late 19th century, influenced by developments in Europe (and especially in Germany), American institutions of higher learning shifted their focus to a more modern arrangement. Religion as theology was marginalized, and the classical curriculum was broken up in favor of a system of electives, including the new disciplines that were emerging during this period. Education itself became more specialized. > > Julie Reuben, in her work on the transformation of American universities, notes that these institutions shifted their focus, during the half-century after the Civil War, from being “moral academies” to a “community of investigators.” Original research, using scientific principles, became a priority. Universities in Germany were already flourishing as centers of research, and Americans began to push aside the classical curriculum in favor of the German model. A key US development in this shift was the establishment, in 1876, of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, as the nation’s first research university. > > The new disciplines that I mentioned earlier not only found a place in the new universities, but each one also began to assert itself as a discrete profession, with its own standards and methodologies. Practitioners of these disciplines also began to form associations of like-minded intellectuals designed to unite members on a national basis. > > The American Historical Association was founded in 1884; the American Economic Association in 1885 (incorporated in 1923); the American Psychological Association in 1892; the American Anthropological Association in 1902; the American Political Science Association in 1903; and the American Sociological Association in 1905. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-academic-disciplines/628346/7 "2012-07-15T22:47:48Z")
> [@Lasciel](#): > > You might have some luck with this list of [Superseded Scientific Theories](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superseded_scientific_theories) from Wikipedia. Much of what is said on that page is confused, misleadingly expressed, or downright wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Lasciel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e79b87/32.png) [@Lasciel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lasciel)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-academic-disciplines/628346/8 "2012-07-15T23:15:08Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Much of what is said on that page is confused, misleadingly expressed, or downright wrong. And the OP was asking about degrees from Oxford given in 1530, when the idea of getting a specific “degree” in a particular subject area that qualified one in some way to do something didn’t even exist in academia. Obviously the OP isn’t going to be getting any overarching reliable answers about fields of study given that the way the question is presented leads only to an answer of _“no, because they didn’t do things like that back then”_ which, while accurate, may not be exactly the most helpful answer. I didn’t know the specifics of when the education landscape changed to allow for specific degrees in specific subjects (\*\*Gagundathar \*\*handled that quite nicely) so I thought I’d offer some generalities that may be helpful. I am not a scientist, nor did I spend time perusing the page to see if the examples given were all totally accurate and relevant to the OP’s interest - I simply offered a resource which I thought might prove interesting to pursue. Perhaps you could offer something more useful to the OP, since you haven’t done so yet? ---
**Author:** ![Ashley\_Pomeroy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c68b51/32.png) [@Ashley\_Pomeroy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashley_Pomeroy)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-academic-disciplines/628346/9 "2012-07-15T23:34:00Z")
I surmise that the fall of the Soviet Union left a lot of people with obsolete degrees in Marxist-Leninist Economic Theory (and so forth). No doubt you can still study Marxist-Leninist Etc in universities today, just not as an entryway into a career as an actual Marxist-Leninist Economist. At this point I should insert some examples. But my knowledge of political education in the Soviet Union is weak. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-academic-disciplines/628346/10 "2012-07-16T02:01:31Z")
I used to joke about getting a degree in Alchemy by combining the [trivium](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trivium_%28education%29), the [quadrivium](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrivium) and something like [materials engineering](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materials_engineering) 😃 After all, Connecticut is home to [Albertus Magnus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertus_Magnus) University :dubious:😃 ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-academic-disciplines/628346/11 "2012-07-16T02:27:06Z")
> [@Lasciel](#): > > And the OP was asking about degrees from Oxford given in 1530, when the idea of getting a specific “degree” in a particular subject area that qualified one in some way to do something didn’t even exist in academia. > > Obviously the OP isn’t going to be getting any overarching reliable answers about fields of study given that the way the question is presented leads only to an answer of _“no, because they didn’t do things like that back then”_ which, while accurate, may not be exactly the most helpful answer. > > I didn’t know the specifics of when the education landscape changed to allow for specific degrees in specific subjects (\*\*Gagundathar \*\*handled that quite nicely) so I thought I’d offer some generalities that may be helpful. I am not a scientist, nor did I spend time perusing the page to see if the examples given were all totally accurate and relevant to the OP’s interest - I simply offered a resource which I thought might prove interesting to pursue. > > Perhaps you could offer something more useful to the OP, since you haven’t done so yet? Well, I am sorry if I hurt your feelings, but it does not change the fact that the information on that page is (a) full of inaccuracies and misleading or dubious claims, and (b) not really relevant to the OP’s question, because it is concerned with theories rather than disciplines. I think that pointing out that other people’s “answers” are irrelevant or wrong is actually a good deal more useful and constructive than posting replies that are irrelevant or wrong, like you did. At least I am not actively misleading anyone, but rather trying to prevent them from being misled. I do not have any positive answer to give to the OP because, so far as I am aware, there are _no_ clear examples of academic disciplines, as opposed to theories, that have become obsolete, although on some tendentious definitions of “discipline” one might be able to come up with one or two examples. Astrology might count if you define both “discipline” and “academic” very loosely, but, although it was certainly sometimes taught in universities, it was never really an academic discipline in its own right, and always flourished more outside academia than within it. I suppose it has pretty much been completely purged from academia today, but it still continues to be pursued outside, so it is not even even obsolete in that sense. Just because I, probably you, and the majority of academics think it is nonsense, does not mean that it has gone away. As others have pointed out, the historical tendency has always been to add new disciplines (or subdivide established ones) rather than to eliminate them. Originally, there was only one academic discipline, philosophy, taught in the original Academy. It is still around. Some disciplines, such as theology, once flourished mightily, but are now much reduced, but theology too is still practiced in academia. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-academic-disciplines/628346/12 "2012-07-16T02:46:32Z")
We had a thread on this a few months back. My contribution was Humanics. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-academic-disciplines/628346/13 "2012-07-16T02:57:14Z")
This is that thread: > **[Dead Disciplines](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=630066)** > > Or, Who Has a Good Philology Program? It’s said that, if nothing else, a Ph.D. program will always prepare you for a career teaching whatever you got a doctorate in; thus are programs self-perpetuating. However, this doesn’t always seem to work.... You’ll notice that the existence of humanics as ever being a thriving academic discipline has been disputed. ---
**Author:** ![JWT\_Kottekoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ec8ea/32.png) [@JWT\_Kottekoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JWT_Kottekoe)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-academic-disciplines/628346/14 "2012-07-16T03:21:14Z")
Geography seems to be waning as an academic discipline, but it isn’t dead yet. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-academic-disciplines/628346/15 "2012-07-16T03:52:01Z")
I don’t really know that it would count as an academic discipline since much of the learning was done via apprenticeship, but at one point in time even as recently as the 19th century there were people trained in the practice of ecclesiastic law to handle matters in ecclesiastic courts. I don’t believe there are any still functioning ecclesiastic courts so I imagine this as a field of study (if it could ever have been called that) no longer really exists. ---
**Author:** ![Lasciel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e79b87/32.png) [@Lasciel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lasciel)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-academic-disciplines/628346/16 "2012-07-16T03:56:40Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Well, I am sorry if I hurt your feelings, but it does not change the fact that the information on that page is (a) full of inaccuracies and misleading or dubious claims, and (b) not really relevant to the OP’s question, because it is concerned with theories rather than disciplines. > > I think that pointing out that other people’s “answers” are irrelevant or wrong is actually a good deal more useful and constructive than posting replies that are irrelevant or wrong, like you did. At least I am not actively misleading anyone, but rather trying to prevent them from being misled. Less hurt feelings than simply a bit sarcastically amused that you felt it sufficient to tersely shoot down other responses without also contributing your own. If for instance the unquoted portion of your post (which is very useful information, and contributes to the thread much more than your other comments, IMO) had either preceded or accompanied your commentary about my own reply, I doubt I would have said anything in response. Fighting ignorance and all that - as I said, I knew it was tangential, but with the OP, there’s not much on the positive-answer side to offer, because the factual and quick answer is “Nope” which, while accurate, isn’t particularly illuminating. Your elaboration there is a much more complete (and to my eyes, useful) answer than simply refuting my mistake. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-academic-disciplines/628346/17 "2012-07-16T04:00:20Z")
> [@Lasciel](#): > > Less hurt feelings than simply a bit sarcastically amused that you felt it sufficient to tersely shoot down other responses without also contributing your own. If for instance the unquoted portion of your post (which is very useful information, and contributes to the thread much more than your other comments, IMO) had either preceded or accompanied your commentary about my own reply, I doubt I would have said anything in response. Fighting ignorance and all that - as I said, I knew it was tangential, but with the OP, there’s not much on the positive-answer side to offer, because the factual and quick answer is “Nope” which, while accurate, isn’t particularly illuminating. Your elaboration there is a much more complete (and to my eyes, useful) answer than simply refuting my mistake. Your mistakes certainly needed to be refuted. Get off your high horse and stop telling me what I should or should not be contributing. ---
**Author:** ![Donnerwetter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Donnerwetter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donnerwetter)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-academic-disciplines/628346/18 "2012-07-16T12:16:27Z")
There used to be an academic discipline at universities in the German speaking world called _Zeitungswissenschaft_ (literally: newspaper science). Although studying this science didn’t really provide any journalistic training, is was popular with aspiring journalists (print media and TV/radio alike). As far as I can make out, the term has virtually disappeared. The nearest academic subject one could study at an university these days would probably be communications. ---
**Author:** ![Lasciel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e79b87/32.png) [@Lasciel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lasciel)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-academic-disciplines/628346/19 "2012-07-16T15:41:27Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Your mistakes certainly needed to be refuted. Get off your high horse and stop telling me what I should or should not be contributing. It’s a message board dedicated to fighting ignorance. People tell people to offer info all the time here. It’s even a board meme. Perhaps you could try reading my posts as a compliment to your more accurate information, since that’s what they actually were (albeit a bit snarky). I do apologize for the snark. You were right, I was wrong. Thank you again for the specific information - it was interesting (to me at least) to learn. ---
**Author:** ![Full\_Tilt\_Boogie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/2acd7d/32.png) [@Full\_Tilt\_Boogie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Full_Tilt_Boogie)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-academic-disciplines/628346/20 "2012-07-16T15:48:32Z")
Do we class alchemy as a ‘science’? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obsolete-academic-disciplines/628346.md?page=2)