Subquestion

What is subquestion? How should it be defined?

Questions can have subquestions. For instance, the question "Was Peter the Great an emperor of Russia?" is a subquestion of "Who were the emperors of Russia?", which is itself a subquestion of a broader question "Who were the rulers of Russia?". But what makes some question a subquestion of another question?

In the scientonomic context, this term was first used by Paul Patton and Cyrus Al-Zayadi in 2021. The term is currently accepted by Scientonomy community.

In Scientonomy, the accepted definition of the term is:

• A question Q is a subquestion of another question Q’, iff any direct answer to Q is also a partial answer to Q’.

Scientonomic History

Acceptance Record of the Term

Here is the complete acceptance record of this term (it includes all the instances when the term was accepted as a part of a community's taxonomy):

Community	Accepted From	Acceptance Indicators	Still Accepted	Accepted Until	Rejection Indicators
Scientonomy	1 August 2021	This is when Patton and Al-Zayadi's Disciplines in the Scientonomic Ontology hat offered a definition of the term was published. This is a good indication that the question of how the term is to be defined is considered legitimate by the community.	Yes

All Definitions

The following definitions of subquestion the term have been suggested:

Theory	Formulation	Formulated In
Subquestion (Patton-Al-Zayadi-2021)	A question Q is a subquestion of another question Q’, iff any direct answer to Q is also a partial answer to Q’.	2021

If a definition of this term is missing, please click here to add it.

Accepted Definitions

The following definitions of subquestion have been accepted:

Community	Theory	Formulation	Accepted From	Accepted Until
Scientonomy	Subquestion (Patton-Al-Zayadi-2021)	A question Q is a subquestion of another question Q’, iff any direct answer to Q is also a partial answer to Q’.	21 February 2024

Suggested Modifications

Here is a list of modifications concerning the definitions of subquestion:

Modification	Community	Date Suggested	Summary	Date Assessed	Verdict	Verdict Rationale
Sciento-2021-0006	Scientonomy	1 August 2021	Accept new definitions of subquestion, core question, core theory, discipline, delineating theory, subdiscipline, and discipline acceptance.	21 February 2024	Accepted	Prior to the 2024 workshop, Hakob Barseghyan commented on the encyclopedia indicating his support for accepting this modification and noted its potential to underpin further work on discipline dynamics. In fact, a significant amount of observational scientonomy work has been carried out in the past few years (including the paper on the rejection of alchemy by Friesen and Patton (2023),1 as well as some more recent papers) that presupposes the acceptance of these definitions, despite the fact that the modification containing them formally remains open. There was very little discussion about the modification, beyond raising points for the community to look forward to in the future, like a brief discussion between Jamie Shaw and Paul Patton about the need for more research on the difference between disciplines and disciplinary communities. The modification was accepted unanimously with 18 votes.

Current Definition

In Scientonomy, the accepted definition of the term is Subquestion (Patton-Al-Zayadi-2021).

Subquestion (Patton-Al-Zayadi-2021) states: "A question Q is a subquestion of another question Q’, iff any direct answer to Q is also a partial answer to Q’."

A question is a topic of inquiry.2 Questions can constitute hierarchies where more specific questions are subquestions of broader questions. For example, 'Was Peter the Great an emperor of Russia?' is a subquestion of 'Who were the emperors of Russia?' since by answering the former, we are also providing a partial answer to the latter. The latter is, in turn, a subquestion of the broader question 'Who were the rulers of European countries?'.3 A partial answer to a question is a complete, or direct, answer to one of its subquestions.456

Ontology

Existence

In Scientonomy, it is currently accepted that "There is such a thing as a subquestion."

Subtypes

In Scientonomy, there are currently no accepted subtypes of Subquestion.

Supertypes

In Scientonomy, there are currently no accepted supertypes of Subquestion.

If a question concerning the ontology of a subquestion is missing, please add it here.

Dynamics

If a question concerning the dynamics of a subquestion is missing, please add it here.