• 2006
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W. Bradford Paley approached making a map of science indirectly by making a map of a book on “The History of Science” by Henry Smith Williams. The history’s first two volumes are organized strictly historically, so as the book wraps around the right side of the ellipse, it is organized as a time line.

The next two volumes distinguish two major domains - making two time lines - for more recent scientific exploration: the physical sciences (along the bottom left) and the life sciences (top left).

Since the scattered words are pulled toward the places where they are used in the text – see the map itself for a better description of the layout – structure emerges: names of individuals appear along the outside, as they are usually mentioned in only one or two places, and concepts that are common to science of all eras (e.g., system, theory, experiment) are pulled to the center, as they are mentioned everywhere.

Even more fascinating, subjects that provided the main focus for certain areas are not near the specific edges nor the general center, but in a local, topical band between the two (e.g., mind, knowledge, and conception during the philosophic beginnings of science; moon, Earth, sun, and stars somewhat later; electricity, light, and forces in the recent physical sciences; and animals, disease, development, and brain in the recent life sciences)