Existence of Sub-Communities

Is there such a thing as a sub-community? Can communities consist of other communities?

When dealing with a community, it might be useful to analyze it in terms of its constituent sub-communities (e.g. the sub-community of particles physicists within the community of physicists). But such an analysis is based on an assumption that a community can be said to be consisting of other communities. This assumption is by no means trivial; indeed, there might exist a view that each community is to be treated separately as one indivisible whole and, thus, any talk of its constituents is meaningless. Therefore the question here is whether communities can be said to be consisting of other communities, i.e. whether there is such a thing as a sub-community.

In the scientonomic context, this question was first formulated by Nicholas Overgaard in 2017. The question is currently accepted as a legitimate topic for discussion by Scientonomy community. At the moment, the question has no accepted answer in Scientonomy.

History

Acceptance Record

Here is the complete acceptance record of this question (it includes all the instances when the question was accepted as a legitimate topic for discussion by a community):

Community	Accepted From	Acceptance Indicators	Still Accepted	Accepted Until	Rejection Indicators
Scientonomy	19 May 2017	The publication of the article by Overgaard titled A Taxonomy for the Social Agents of Scientific Change is a good indication of acceptance of the question.Overgaard (2017)	Yes

All Theories

The following theories have attempted to answer this question:

Theory	Formulation	Formulated In
Sub-Communities Exist (Overgaard-2017)	Communities can consist of other communities.	2017

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Accepted Theories

According to our records, no theory on this topic has ever been accepted.

Suggested Modifications

Here is a list of modifications concerning this topic:

Modification	Community	Date Suggested	Summary	Verdict	Verdict Rationale	Date Assessed
Sciento-2017-0013	Scientonomy	19 May 2017	Accept that communities can consist of other communities, i.e. that there is such a thing as a sub-community.	Open

Current View

There is currently no accepted answer to this question.

Related Topics

This topic is a sub-topic of Epistemic Agents. It has the following sub-topic(s):

• Epistemic Community as Part of Non-Epistemic Community