# Dominant group/Project Description

Surface differential rotation "will most easily be detected among stars that have relatively stable modulation over several rotations within a season from a dominant group of [ active regions (ARs)] that experience a noticeable change in mean AR latitude (corresponding to a change in mean rotational period) between consecutive observing seasons." Bold added.
Dominant group may be a subject-independent entity (specifically, a two-word term) that often serves as an identifier designated by an author, based on observations of phenomena.
It does not appear to have a rigorous definition yet appears in at least one field (medicine) dictionary.
It enjoys current popularity in psychology and sociology and minor mention in such diverse fields as "quantum physics", "cometary chemistry", and, of course, "biology".
Several theoretical definitions have been discovered.
From its early origins in Kirby's An Introduction to Entomology of 1826, as the plural dominant groups, the term has radiated to additional fields carrying a similar meaning, or in synonymy.
Perhaps it is initially a concept within the natural theological (High Church Hutchinsonian) creation theory.

## Control group

An exploration of "What is a dominant group and the forces behind it?" may benefit from a control group to compare with, keeping in mind that control group is a synonym for dominant group.

## Statement of work

"What is the field of dominant group?"
Currently, the field to which dominant group is home is unknown. Determining what that field is constitutes an important part of the project. Dominant group or the concepts behind it may be inherent to humans or the result of outside influences.
Simply on the basis of construction, dominant is an adjective modifying the noun group. It is a two-word phrase that may be a term. The field applicable here is terminology.
What this term is and the author's decision-making process that applies it within a written text are a topic of interest. Primary source authors performing original research from a theoretical or empirical perspective are apparently using the term based on their training.
Research purpose: authors are apparently using dominant group with experimental, observational, or theoretical significance and implications. This effort involves exploration of individual articles to determine context, definition, or meaning; description with quotes from the authors to indicate context and meaning; explanation as a possible indicator or identifier, and prediction that uses possible meanings in fields where absent.

## Period objectives

In addition to exploring the field, origin, and the root meaning of dominant group, a number of hypotheses suggested, discovered, and proposed are to be tested.
Hypotheses:
* Accident hypothesis: dominant group is an accident of whatever processes are operating.
* Artifact hypothesis: dominant group may be an artifact of human endeavor or may have preceded humanity.
* Association hypothesis: dominant group is associated in some way with the original research.
* Bad group hypothesis: dominant group is the group that engages in discrimination, abuse, punishment, and additional criminal activity against other groups. It often has an unfair advantage and uses it to express monopolistic practices.
* Control group hypothesis: there is a control group that can be used to study dominant group.
* Entity hypothesis: dominant group is an entity within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
* Evolution hypothesis: dominant group is a product of evolutionary processes, such groups are the evolutionary process, produce evolutionary processes, or are independent of evolutionary processes.
* Identifier hypothesis: dominant group is an identifier used by primary source authors of original research to identify an observation in the process of analysis.
* Importance hypothesis: dominant group signifies original research results that usually need to be explained by theory and interpretation of experiments.
* Indicator hypothesis: dominant group may be an indicator of something as yet not understood by the primary author of original research.
* Influence hypothesis: dominant group is included in a primary source article containing original research to indicate influence or an influential phenomenon.
* Interest hypothesis: dominant group is a theoretical entity used by scholarly authors of primary sources for phenomena of interest.
* Metadefinition hypothesis: all uses of dominant group by all primary source authors of original research are included in the metadefinition for dominant group.
* Null hypothesis: there is no significant or special meaning of dominant group in any sentence or figure caption in any refereed journal article.
* Object hypothesis: dominant group is an object within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
* Obvious hypothesis: the only meaning of dominant group is the one found in Mosby's Medical Dictionary.
* Original research hypothesis: dominant group is included in a primary source article by the author to indicate that the article contains original research.
* Primordial hypothesis: dominant group is a primordial concept inherent to humans such that every language or other form of communication no matter how old or whether extinct, on the verge of extinction, or not, has at least a synonym for dominant group.
* Purpose hypothesis: dominant group is written into articles by authors for a purpose.
* Regional hypothesis: dominant group, when it occurs, is only a manifestation of the limitations within a region. Variation of those limitations may result in the loss of a dominant group with the eventual appearance of a new one or none at all.
* Source hypothesis: dominant group is a source within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
* Term hypothesis: dominant group is a significant term that may require a 'rigorous definition' or application and verification of an empirical definition.
Research questions:
* What is the nature of the relationship between dominant group and each article, subject area, and currently available definition(s)?
* What is the difference between articles regarding usage?
* What is the effect of dominant group on the article?
* Are there fields that do not use the term?
* Are the two words found together in any additional dictionaries or glossaries?

## Expected significance

Current activity is exploratory in nature and is resulting in an advance of knowledge and understanding about dominant group and its uses within various fields and languages. The identification of its own field may result; thereby, in allowing differentiation of other fields so as to determine how knowledge is advanced across those different fields with its use.
The number of occurrences of dominant group in any subject is low suggesting that it is not significantly relevant but may only be an artifact of author word choice. However, including synonyms, may bring the level of theoretical or empirical significance to an importance of approximately 15% of all concepts in any field.

## Relation to longer term goals

A course on terminology (elements of terminology) is being developed for educational use at Wikiversity. As the concepts behind dominant group may be inherent in an enduring question about human nature, further exploration into the enduring question may become a course. Gains in original research focused on dominant group are and will add to the content of this and other courses.

## Relation to present state of knowledge

It's like the mathematical term "differential equations". Although differential equations is a subject within mathematics, its spread to other subjects such as physics with ensuing use advanced knowledge within physics.

## Relation to work in progress

Exploring the enduring question focused on the concepts behind dominant group, including their origin, advances understanding about diverse fields such as astrophysics and the humanities. At present the only theoreticians attempting to understand humanity and the universe are humans. If humans are subject to a dominant group, have been in the past, or continue to be into the future, true understanding may not occur and humanity will likely go extinct.

## Experimental methods

Research method:
* Small-group study: within each subject area, the meaning and context is analyzed from a small group of publications.
* Survey: a survey using Google scholar and where needed offline library resources, Wikipedia, Wikiversity, and additional Wikimedia resources.
* Field experiment: testing each hypothesis and other possibilities during the course of investigating uses of "dominant group" in articles.
Sampling: Google scholar, Wikipedia, Wikiversity, other Wikimedia sources and offline libraries.
Data analysis: looking at and summarizing data with the intent to extract useful information, make inferences, and develop conclusions.

## Broader impacts

What are the broader impacts of the proposed activity regarding dominant group?
The broader impacts are "concerned with issues of education, infrastructure, diversity, and societal benefit." This along with intellectual merit “are criteria for scientists to be judged by scientists.”
"Among the major recommendations of the [National Academy of Public Administration] NAPA panel is that ‘there is a need to improve the conceptual clarity of the objectives of the new criteria as well as the language used in stating them ... This is true of the language of Criterion 2 [broader impacts], in particular’"
"[I]t may ... be simply that ... different scientific communities (i.e. disciplines) interpret Criterion 2, differently. ... Some disciplines, for example, may see themselves as purely scientific and, therefore, necessarily unconcerned with the broader impacts of their research."
"While it may not be possible to predict specific potential applications for one's research, one should be able to discuss the value or applicability of the line of inquiry or research area."

## Intellectual merit

For the term dominant group, the intellectual merit “is chiefly concerned with scientific merit as judged by scientists”.
With respect to grant applications to the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), "[k]nowledgeable persons outside NEH will read each application and advise the agency about its merits. NEH staff comments on matters of fact or on significant issues that otherwise would be missing from these reviews, then makes recommendations to the National Council on the Humanities. The National Council meets at various times during the year to advise the NEH chairman on grants. The Chairman takes into account the advice provided by the review process and, by law, makes all funding decisions." Bold added.

## Linguistics

Its definition and how it is used is a part of linguistics.

## Psychology

In psychology a dominant group may be only associated with psychology or be the subject of psychological research. Proof of concept may be either one or both, or involve more extensive classes of meaning. Dominant group may only be an artifact of human inquiry. It enjoys popularity in psychology.
Group theory has an abstract home in the field of mathematics and a humanities home in psychology among the study of groups.

## Philosophy

Considering the wide variety of subject areas within which dominant group occurs, philosophy is on the list.

## Anthropology

The subject area to which an appropriate rigorous or justifiable empirical meaning of dominant group may be home to is linguistic anthropology or cultural anthropology.
With its earliest readily accessible origin in the 1826 book by Kirby and Spence, 185 B.P. or 174 b2k (before 2000), the term may qualify as a topic limited to the history of science. Or, perhaps it is initially a concept within the natural theological (High Church Hutchinsonian) creation theory.

## Archeology

Archeology is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes (the archaeological record).

## Sociology

The term enjoys current popularity in sociology.

## Field of the proposal

What is the field of the proposal?
The proposed activity consists of finding the origin of dominant group or one of its relative synonyms, defining the two-word term perhaps from context (lexical pragmatics) (or perhaps rigorously), determining why scientists outside biology use the term, and verifying its divergence and radiance by examples.
The proposed activity is to determine how dominant group advances knowledge and understanding within each field which may be considered its own field or across all these different fields.

## Dominant group/Evolution

Hypothesis: As an evolutionary process, a dominant group may be a force for extinction by driving a number of groups extinct and a force for speciation when spatial or temporal dispersion creates diversity and isolation which may eventually produce new groups. As a force for extinction, a particular dominant group may also through its actions on other groups ultimately produce its own extinction event. This departure from a zone then allows other groups to fill the niche.
The synonyms of dominant group appear to date from earlier times suggesting that the concept(s) behind dominant group may have been around longer and represent perhaps an artifact in human evolution, or pre-human evolution.
"Archaeology is the subdiscipline of Anthropology that studies human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material remains and environmental data, including architecture, artifacts, biofacts, human remains, and landscapes."
Archaeology "is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes (the archaeological record)."
Def. "[a]n object, such as a tool, weapon or ornament, ... structure or finding in an experiment or investigation ... made or shaped by some agent or intelligence, ... [as] a result of external action, the test arrangement, or an experimental error ... rather than an inherent element" is called an artifact, or artefact.
Is any "dominant group" in Archaeology or associated with Archaeology an artifact?
"Dominant group" may be an artifact of human endeavor or may have preceded humanity.
"Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins."
With respect to dominant groups, evolutionary processes
* produce dominant groups,
* are the same as dominant groups (dominant groups are the evolutionary process),
* are produced by dominant groups, or
* are independent of dominant groups (i.e., dominant groups are an artifact).
"There is no evidence that the superiority of any existing dominant group is based on any thing but an accident, and any attempt to maintain that dominance by reason, is merely the rationalization of a "myth."

## Lexical pragmatics

From a metadefinitional point of view each use of "dominant group" has a relationship between members of the dominant group, a population from which the dominant group is a subset, a criterion for dominance, and a region, range, distribution or "in their own country". But, each of these four structures may have their meaning in the context within which the author or speaker places the two-word technical term "dominant group".

## Oldest two-word terms

It may be one of the oldest two-word terms.

## Origins

1826 (Kirby): "Groups, according to their range, may be denominated either predominant, dominant, sub-dominant, or quiescent."
1840 (Shuckard): "The Ants and the Staphylini have been supposed to represent each other in the tropical and temperate zones. In the temperate zone, and especially in our own country, the Staphylini are a dominant group, and the ants a secondary one."
1857 (Tocqueville): “The fact that a group is egoistic and dominant proves that it is well formed and that it approaches the make-up of a man.”

## Synonyms

In dominant group/origin is the discovery of a use of dominant group in 1826 (174 b2k), the earliest use so far.

### Dominant party

* 1820
"There was a violent war party, who wished all the resources of the State to be placed at the disposal of the national government; there was a peace party, composed of members of both parties, determined to put every obstacle in the way of the administration; while the Federalists generally regarded the declaration of war as an act of tyranny, and the measures of the dominant party as an infringement of State rights." [Bold added]

### Dominant religion

* 1726
The phrase “die Dominanten Religionen von ganz Europa” occurs in 1726.

### Most important interests

* 1780
"Even the actual promoters of the most important interests of mankind have seldom anticipated, in idea, the progressive consequences of their own plans."

### The dominants

* 1757
“so sind solche entweder tonische Noten, Dominanten, oder Unterdominanren, und die Dominanten können simple oder tonische Dominanten seyn.”

### Upper departments

* 1780
"For the impression of the commercial arts is often conspicuous in the upper departments of life, before it reaches those of inferior condition; but the circle gradually widens."