There was a story I heard a while ago about blind men and an elephant. In the story, the blind men are trying to figure out what the elephant is, so they each take different parts of the animal and make their guesses. One takes the trunk and says it’s a snake, while another takes the leg and says it’s a tree, etc.

I’d like to apply this story to natural science in general and how we categorize it into physics, chemistry, biology, and even further into particle physics, material and bio chemistry, etc. We separate our understanding of the world into so many categories, but in the process do we ever lose sight of the fact that in the end we are all observing and researching the same thing?

What kinds of impacts does sub categorizing our understanding of the world have in my our total progress?