Abstract
We report on results from an analysis of mathematical logic from 1874 to the present time, covering about 15,000 authors with 50,000 publications. Frequency distributions in terms of contributions or in terms of the number of special areas dealt with exhibited a well-known lognormal form. A dynamic version of Price's inverse square (or power) law of elitism seems to be corroborated. The idea of a general exponential growth law is not convincing, however: All forms of growth of logic areas occur. In this contribution we apply, in addition, Goffman's epidemic model, contained in one of the rate theories of scientific dynamics, to the development of logic and formulate ex-post-ante prognoses of some areas of logic. The outcome casts doubts on the applicability in scientometrics of the epidemic theory in the form suggested byGoffman.
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Notes and references
For further details see ourMathematische Logik von 1847 bis zur Gegenwart: Eine bibliometrische Untersuchung, de Gruyter, Berlin 1993. We thank Dr. W.Lenski and Prof. M.Richter (Forschungsstelle für Mathematische Logik, Heidelberg) for giving us machine-readable data fromG. H. Müller (Ed.), ΩBibliography of Mathematical Logic, Vols 1–6, Springer, Berlin 1987.
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Wagner-Döbler, R., Berg, J. Regularity and irregularity in the development of scientific disciplines: The case of mathematical logic. Scientometrics 30, 303–319 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02017230
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02017230