These were largely scientifically biased and in addition to English and Maths included Geology, Physics, Biology and Chemistry - the legacy of the dominant discourses of the nineteenth century. Newtonian concepts of mass, length and time were fundamental to the investigation of these disciplines. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, following a belief in fixed values for these basic units, an epistemology established a science which claimed an absolute factuality and truth. However the twentieth century has been dominated by a 'new physics' which through the contributions of Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg and others has challenged the immutability of the physical world.
Newtonian concepts become problematic and deeply flawed both at atomic and cosmic orders.
In the West these concepts have become pan-cultural, and parallel theories are to be found in the broad debates of semiotics, psychoanalysis and anthropology. It is a general interest and involvement with these ideas which underpin the conceptual framework of this sequence of images - The Study of Disciplines.