Gautheron, L., and Omodei, E. (2023). How research programs come apart: the example

Gautheron, L., and Omodei, E. (2023). How research programs come apart: the example
of supersymmetry and the disunity of physics. Études scientifiques quantitatives, Advance
publication. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00262

How research programs come apart: the example of supersymmetry
and the disunity of physics

Lucas Gautheron 1,2 · Elisa Omodei 3

Abstract According to Peter Galison, the coordination of different “subcultures” within a scientific field
happens through local exchanges within “trading zones”. In his view, the workability of such trading zones
is not guaranteed, and science is not necessarily driven towards further integration. In this paper, nous
develop and apply quantitative methods (using semantic, authorship, and citation data from scientific
literature), inspired by Galison’s framework, to the case of the disunity of high-energy physics. We give
prominence to supersymmetry, a concept that has given rise to several major but distinct research pro-
grams in the field, such as the formulation of a consistent theory of quantum gravity or the search for
new particles. We show that “theory” and ‘phenomenology” in high-energy physics should be regarded
as distinct theoretical subcultures, between which supersymmetry has helped sustain scientific “trades”.
Cependant, as we demonstrate using a topic model, the phenomenological component of supersymmetry
research has lost traction and the ability of supersymmetry to tie these subcultures together is now com-
promised. Our work supports that even fields with an initially strong sentiment of unity may eventually
generate diverging research programs and demonstrates the fruitfulness of the notion of trading zones
for informing quantitative approaches to scientific pluralism.

Keywords scientific pluralism; trading zones; topic models; citation networks; high-energy physics

1 Introduction

This paper focuses on High-Energy Physics (HEP), the field of physics concerned with the fundamental
entities of nature, and “supersymmetry”, a symmetry between the two basic types of particles in nature.
The idea of supersymmetry has brought together many of the most significant developments in the field
throughout the past 50 années, all the way from the highly abstract world of string theorists, deep down to
the machinery of under-ground particle colliders. Cependant, none of the discoveries that supersymmetry
promised have materialized as expected; as much as supersymmetry may be necessary to theorists seeking
to unify the forces of nature into a coherent picture, it is increasingly plausible that it will not be of much
use to the experimentalists looking to find new particles. Throughout this case study, donc, our work
exhibits the disunity of science, by demonstrating that even scientific fields with a strong “sentiment” of
unity, such as HEP (Wilson, 1986), can eventually fail to coordinate various research efforts. Our paper
is guided by the idea that empirical case-studies, although seemingly narrow in scope, do enrich our
understanding of the nature of scientific enterprise (in this case, the nature of the coordination of diverse

Lucas Gautheron
E-mail: lucas.gautheron@gmail.com
ORCID: 0000-0002-3776-3373
Conceptualisation, Méthodologie, Logiciel, Analyse formelle, Data Curation, En écrivant – Original Draft, Visualisation

Elisa Omodei
E-mail: omodeie@ceu.edu
ORCID: 0000-0002-6748-5124
Surveillance, En écrivant – Review & Editing

1Interdisciplinary Centre for Science and Technology Studies (IZWT), University of Wuppertal, Allemagne
2Sciences Po, médialab, Paris, France
3Department of Network and Data Science, Central European University, Vienna, Austria

droits d'auteur: © 2023 Lucas Gautheron and Elisa Omodei. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International (CC PAR 4.0) Licence.
Peer Review: https://www.webofscience.com/api/gateway/wos/peer-review/10.1162/qss_a_00262

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Lucas Gautheron 1,2, Elisa Omodei 3

scientific cultures), and that quantitative studies of science should provide conceptually informed tools
for carrying out such case-studies, preferably in ways that can be generalized for a variety of contexts.

We start by presenting Galison’s notions of subcultures and trading zones which is the framework for
studying the plurality of science and the dynamics of interactions between scientific fields that underlies
our investigation (2.1). We will then provide the necessary background knowledge for understanding
the context of our case-study before laying out our hypotheses: je) that theory and phenomenology, over
the historical period considered (1980–2020), are to be regarded as two distinct theoretical subcultures
within high-energy physics; ii) that supersymmetry generated diverse research programs, some being phe-
nomenological and some being more theoretical; and iii), that supersymmetry significantly contributed
to sustain successful trades between theory and phenomenology until it was put in doubt by experimen-
tal data (2.2). We then elaborate our motivation for addressing these hypotheses through quantitative
méthodes (2.3). Alors, section 3 details the quantitative methods that were deployed in order to address
each of the three claims put forward in the introduction. It starts with a description of the data on which
our analysis rests and how it was collected (3.1). Subsection 3.2 elaborates quantitative methods for
assessing the level of semantic and social autonomy of certain categories (subcultures), and applies these
methods to the two theoretical subcultures in HEP. The next subsection (3.3) elaborates a methodology
based on topic models in order to address the “plasticity” and “plurality” of supersymmetry, which can
in principle be applied to all “boundary objects”, c'est à dire. those objects that can be traded between dis-
tinct subcultures while preserving and sustaining their distinctness. Enfin, subsection 3.4 provides a
quantitative model for locating “trading zones” or more broadly concepts that enhance trades between
subcultures (or scientific disciplines in general), and applies the model to the exchanges between the
theoretical subcultures of HEP. Section 4 reveals and interprets the results of these analyses. Enfin,
Section 5 explores the consequences of this work, both for our case study (supersymmetry within HEP)
and for the more general question of the plurality of science from a quantitative perspective.

2 Background

2.1 Subcultures and trading zones: Galison’s approach to the plurality of science

If science is a unified enterprise, what is the nature of the relationship between fields as diverse as
physics, biology, psychologie, or economics? Can we translate all the concepts of these disciplines into a
basique (say, physical) scientific language, as Carnap proposed? Or, are all these fields so incommensurable
and autonomous that it is impossible to translate their respective entities, laws, and explanations from
one’s language to another’s, as proponents of a pluralistic view defend (e.g. Suppes (1978), Dupré (1983),
Cartwright (1999))? Disciplines themselves can be so diverse, aussi, that the nature of what makes their
own unity is not necessarily obvious. Par exemple, the nature of the unity of physics has been the matter
of much debate, with sometimes serious political implications: reductionist views (which imply that high-
energy physics is the most fundamental, since it supposedly entail any higher-level theory) were mobilized
to justify the funding of large particle physics facilities (Cat, 1998), potentially to the detriment of more
“useful” projects, as certain condensed matter physicists argued (Martine, 2018, Ch. 9). Plutôt, the latter
argued that macroscopic systems have emergent properties that cannot be derived from “fundamental”
laws. They were most often proponents of a “methodological” form of unity (Ibid., p. 233), according to
which the field is bound together by shared norms and conceptual tools (Cat, 1998, p. 267), plutôt que
by relations of logical deduction from the most fundamental to the least fundamental theories. This view
provided an intellectual and philosophical basis for elevating the prestige of condensed matter physics
(Martine, 2018, p. 148–149), thus putting condensed matter and high-energy physicists on a more equal
footing.

Even within the subfield of particle physics, there is a strong contrast between theorists and experi-
mentalists. En fait, the nature of the relationship between the objects manipulated by, say, expérimental-
ists (par exemple, tracks within a cloud-chamber, or electric signals from a sensor) and the more abstract
entities manipulated by theorists (e.g. “quarks”, “gluons”, “strings”, etc.) has been the subject of much
philosophical debate. Inheriting a positivist view, some would grant experiment a more fundamental sta-
tus, by defending its ability to provide robust empirical statements that could dictate theoretical change.
Others, such as Kuhn, argued that empirical statements cannot be isolated from a theoretical paradigm
and emphasized the“primacy” of theory (Galison, 1988)1. It is in order to overcome this debate about

1 Par exemple, in his historical account of the discovery of quarks, Pickering (1984, p. 411) endorses the Kuhnian view: “To
attempt to choose between old- and new-physics [gauge] theories on the basis of a common set of phenomena [expérimental

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How research programs come apart: the example of supersymmetry and the disunity of physics

the relationship between experiment and theory within the context of physics that Galison originally
developed his concepts of subcultures and trading zones (Galison, 1987, 1997). Cependant, these notions
may apply more generally whenever distinct scientific communities attempt to overcome diﬀiculties to
communicate and achieve coordination (Collins et al., 2010, p. 8). Consequently it is useful in a much
broader range of contexts than the narrow case of physics; par exemple, it is generally useful for studying
the dynamics of interactions between disciplines in science2. Below, we propose a brief summary of the
concepts of subcultures and trading zones and the rationale for their introduction.

The notion of subcultures was introduced by Galison (1987, 1988) in order to account for two charac-
teristics of high-energy physics: d'abord, that it is subject to a strong division of labor, such that “theory”,
“experiment” and “instrumentation” are carried out by different groups of people (Galison, 1987, p. 138),
with their own skill sets and bodies of knowledge; et deuxieme, that each of these “subcultures” are par-
tially autonomous, c'est à dire., none of them are completely subordinate to the others. We can highlight two
tangible components of such subcultures: a social component–the community of practitioners–and a
linguistic component–the language specific to each community.

For Galison, alors, the question is what makes these subcultures part of a “larger culture” (physics),
while retaining that their successful coordination is a “contingent matter” (Galison, 1997, p. 18); et son
answer is “trading zones”. Trading zones allow knowledge to be exchanged across different subcultures,
inasmuch as the practitioners of distinct communities can locally agree on the usefulness of certain con-
structs despite the distinctiveness of their respective languages, commitments, aims, and methodologies.
That trading occurs within “zones” captures the fact that the exchange procedure is “local” rather than
“global”, such that subcultures working out trades with each other can retain much of their autonomy
in the process.

What kinds of goods may be subject to these “trades”? Examples of trade-able goods are “boundary
objects”, c'est à dire. “objects that are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and constraints of the several
parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites” (Star & Griese-
mer, 1989, p. 393)3. Trading zones may give rise to a purposefully crafted inter-language that allows for
further communication and coordination (a “pidgin”). If the inter-language grows, it may turn into a
full-blown language (a “creole”); this signals the emergence and stabilization of a new scientific discipline
of its own.

Arguably, this is the process through which “phenomenology” – a subfield of HEP at the boundary
between theory and experiment – has developed (Galison, 1997, p. 837). Cependant, we may wonder whether
phenomenology is still merely dedicated to bridging the gap between the theoretical and experimental
cultures, or whether it acquired enough autonomy to depart from the supremacy of abstract theory –
par exemple., by relying on independent sources of inspiration for its own enterprise rather than by seeking to
establish connections between high theory and experiment. In the following subsection we will suggest
treating “theory” and “phenomenology” in high-energy physics as two distinct subcultures, such that
they may both enjoy considerable autonomy and eventually fail to coordinate their developments – thus
extending the distinction made by Galison between theory, experiment and instrumentation.

2.2 Supersymmetry across theory and phenomenology

2.2.1 Theory and phenomenology as distinct subcultures within high-energy physics

High-energy physics involves a complex web of mathematical and technical knowledge, whether it con-
cerns the details of the often abstract underlying theories, the behavior of the instruments that are
assembled within sophisticated experiments, statistical notions for the analysis of the data derived from
these experiments, etc.. As a result of this complexity, there is a strong division of labor within high-energy
physics, and we can even distinguish two different groups within the theorists themselves. While “pure”
theorists (we will call them “theorists”, in accordance with the terminology within the field) are driven
by “the abstract elaboration of respectable theories”, phenomenologists (the second kind of theorists) sont
often more concerned with “the application of less dignified models to the analysis of data and as a guide
to further experiment” (Pickering, 1984), or at least more concerned with experimental consequences

facts] was impossible: the theories were integral parts of different worlds, and they were incommensurable”. Plutôt, Galison
emphasizes the relative continuity and robustness of experimental “facts”, across theoretical changes.

2 Par exemple, Kemman (2021) describes Digital History as a trading zone.
3 In the context of physics, Darrigol’s theoretical modules (Darrigol, 2007, p. 214), or multi-purpose scientific instruments

(Shinn & Ragouet, 2005, pp. 179–182), may be other examples of such trade-able goods.

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Lucas Gautheron 1,2, Elisa Omodei 3

rather than with high theory. This division is itself strong enough that these two kinds of physicists can
generally receive different training and diverge early in their careers, although some physicists – usually
prominent ones – have expertise in both these domains and are able to sustain exchanges between the
deux. Donc, in the present paper, we will make the following claim:

Claim 1: Over the historical range considered (1980–2020), categories “theory” and “phenomenol-
ogy” in high-energy physics should be regarded as distinct subcultures with their own bodies of
connaissance, ontologies and methodologies, and which are carried out by different people.

It is not controversial in itself that “theory” and “phenomenology” are different matters in HEP;
these are now distinct categories within the HEP literature and it is not uncommon for physicists to
label themselves as “theorists” or “phenomenologists” depending on their specialization. Cependant, notre
claim goes further by stating that the nature of their work is so distinct that it should not be assumed
a priori that they can sustain fruitful connections; per Galison, we should not expect a priori that
subcultures are bound to cooperate flawlessly under any circumstance; we should instead remain open
to the possibility that they may fail to produce constructs of shared value within the contexts of their
respective enterprises. There may not even be one single overarching goal that is equally shared and
sought after by HEP theorists and phenomenologists, and it is even less certain that their respective
methods should equally contribute to achieving their goals at any time4. In the following subsection, nous
will propose that supersymmetry exemplifies the contingent ability of high-energy physicists to coordinate
their respective methods and goals in a successful way. It does so because the story of supersymmetry is
that of a partial failure, rather than that of a total success. Although successful cases of cross-fertilization
across fields are valuable to illustrate the notion of trading zones, that science (and even physics itself,
as Galison claims, against a symbiotic view of theory and experiment) is disunified is better exemplified
by those cases where scientific cultures attempt and fail to establish coordination. The dramatic story
of supersymmetry provides such an example.

2.2.2 Supersymmetry as a trade-able good between theory and phenomenology

Supersymmetry is a symmetry that relates the two fundamental kinds of particles that arise in nature:
fermions and bosons. It was postulated simultaneously and independently by several physicists in the
early 1970s, who were each motivated by very different goals5. Supersymmetry rapidly gathered sub-
stantial attention from the theoretical community. The reasons were manifold, but they were clearly
theoretical rather than empirical, as early reviews of the topic show6. D'abord, symmetry principles play
a fundamental role in High-Energy physics, and supersymmetry was an especially attractive symmetry
because of its peculiar properties. Deuxième, supersymmetry can naturally give rise to gravity, as was ob-
served by Volkov and Akulov (1973), suggesting that it could lead to a consistent theory of quantum
gravity. This feature of supersymmetry gave birth to an entire research program, “supergravity”, lequel
then spanned several decades7. Troisième, while quantum field theory is prone to mathematical diﬀiculties
due to divergences appearing in the perturbative calculations of certain quantities, in many instances
such infinities were suppressed in supersymmetric theories.

Cependant, as appealing as it was to theorists, supersymmetry posed a number of empirical diﬀiculties.
D'abord, supersymmetry establishes a symmetry between bosons and fermions; and yet, at first it was not
at all clear which of the bosons and fermions should have been related to each other by this symmetry.
De plus, if supersymmetry were perfectly realized in nature, the particles it relates should have identical
masses, which was also in contradiction with the data. This contradictory situation was well summarised
by Witten (1982) in his Introduction to supersymmetry:

[Supersymmetry] is a fascinating mathematical structure, and a reasonable extension of current
ideas, but plagued with phenomenological diﬀiculties. […] Supersymmetry is a very beautiful idea,
but I think it is fair to say that no one knows what mysteries of nature (if any) it should explain.

Toujours, efforts to incorporate supersymmetry into a theory consistent with the data were undertaken over
several years, and they culminated in what is now called the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model

4 Galison 1995 provides a distinction between two kinds of theorists similar to the one we propose to make here, resting

on the recognition that these two groups rely on very different sets of constraints as guides towards theoretical progress.

5 For a history of early supersymmetry, see Kane and Shifman 2000.
6 Fayet and Ferrara 1977; Freedman 1979; Taylor 1984 provide a good overview of the main arguments for supersymmetry

in its early days, all of which are highly theoretical.

7 Later on, supersymmetry proved even more interesting to theorists, by improving the consistency of string theory, et

by supporting the conjectured AdS/CFT correspondence, yet another major development in quantum gravity research.

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How research programs come apart: the example of supersymmetry and the disunity of physics

Theory

Phenomenology

Unification?
Quantum Gravity?

“New physics”?

Naturalness

Supersymmetry

Naturalness

Renormalizability,
Symmetries,
Consistency…

Collider/astrophysical data,
generic models…

figue. 1 Supersymmetry in the trading zone between theory and phenomenology. Theorists and phenomenolo-
gists have different aims and methodologies, and whether they can both positively appraise a particular construct is not
guaranteed. In the case of supersymmetry, it is the naturalness requirement that ensures that the MSSM is so valuable to
both subcultures. As a result supersymmetry enhances a trading zone between these two cultures.

(MSSM) (Fayet & Ferrara, 1977; Dimopoulos & Georgi, 1981). The MSSM is the result of reconciling
the achievements of the Standard Model of Particle Physics (SM) (the best theoretical account available
at the time and still today) with the requirement of supersymmetry. Ce, cependant, has very undesirable
consequences. Compared to the SM, the MSSM introduces 105 additional unspecified parameters, so that
supersymmetry can accommodate a large range of observations and has little predictive power in general
(Parker, 1999, p. 1). En particulier, although supersymmetry predicts the existence of many new particles
(the “superpartners”), there is a priori little chance that these particles will have just the right properties
to be discoverable in experiments. If not, supersymmetry may be of high value to theorists (because of
its mathematical properties, and its promise to achieve a coherent account of quantum gravity), alors que
being of low value to phenomenologists who are interested in building predictive models that can lead
to the discovery of new particles or phenomena8.

Encore, dans 2011, supersymmetry was perceived across the field as the theory beyond the SM that was
most likely to manifest itself in experiments (Mättig & Stöltzner, 2019, 2020). Arguably, the reason why
it became highly credible and valuable to phenomenologists as well, was that it could solve the so-called
“naturalness” problem of the standard model on the condition that it was discoverable. In parallel to
these developments around supersymmetry, there was indeed increasing recognition that an explanation
was required as to why the the mass of the Higgs boson (an important piece of the Standard Model) pourrait
be many orders of magnitude below the mass scale at which the unification of forces is assumed to take
place. It was also realized that supersymmetry could provide an answer to this “naturalness” problem
(Weinberg 1979; Veltman 1981; Witten 1982), but only as long as the masses of the superpartners
(the particles predicted by supersymmetry) are not too high, so that they should be discoverable in
future experiments9. In light of this, supersymmetry became of very high value to phenomenologists and
experimentalists as well, rather than just a mathematical toy for the theorists to play with10.

This situation is summarised in Figure 1. As theorists work out a path towards their goals (par exemple., le
unification of forces, or the formulation of a consistent theory of quantum gravity), they rely on theoret-
ical heuristics such as renormalizability, symmetry principles, consistency requirements, etc.. (Galison,
1995). In that context, supersymmetry emerges as a very valuable concept. Phenomenologists, on the
other hand, try to work out a path towards the discovery of “new physics” (evidence for new phenomena

8 Supersymmetry suffers from other disadvantages. Par exemple, many parameters of the theory imply certain phenomena
to extents that have not been observed, par exemple., baryon and lepton number violation, or flavor changing neutral currents
(Weinberg, 1995, pp. 201–209, 235–240), which requires ad-hoc explanations as to why, although allowed by the model,
these mechanisms do not occur in nature.

9 One can put other constraints on the MSSM, by requiring that supersymmetry explains dark matter, or that it ensures
the convergence of the “couplings” that measure the strength of the fundamental forces at different length scales, lequel
suggests it should play a role in the unification of these forces. Cependant, as Giudice and Romanino 2004 put it, “the
unification and dark-matter arguments [for supersymmetry] are not in general suﬀicient to insure that new physics be
within the LHC discovery reach, contrary to the naturalness criterion”.
10 The naturalness argument also provides a “narrative” that connects what theorists are concerned with (the details of
the theories at energy scales unattainable in the experiment) to what experimentalists can probe. As Borrelli (2015, p. 76)
puts it, “the strength of the naturalness narrative is largely due to its flexibility, which allows it to become a unifying factor
in the high-energy community and to bridge the gap between theorists and experimenters”

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Lucas Gautheron 1,2, Elisa Omodei 3

unaccounted for by the SM) by relying instead on more generic models and constraints derived from
experimental data (e.g. from particle colliders or astrophysical observations). It is the naturalness re-
quirement that makes supersymmetry valuable to phenomenologists as well, by strengthening the belief
that supersymmetric particles should have masses that are low enough to be discoverable. In this way,
supersymmetry effectively enhances the “trading zone” between theorists and phenomenologists: les deux
communities can acknowledge its value in spite of the vast differences in their aims, méthodes, and objects
of inquiry.

It is now time to introduce the last (but not the least) player in our drama: the Large Hadron Col-
lider (LHC). Operating since 2010, the LHC is the largest physics experiment ever built. By performing
particle collisions at the highest energies ever achieved, it promised to discover supersymmetric parti-
clés, provided that they had the properties prescribed by the naturalness problem that supersymmetry
should solve. Cependant, no such discovery has been made, which suggests that the “naturalness problem”
was unwarranted (Giudice, 2018). If there is no naturalness problem, alors, supersymmetry is left un-
constrained again; there is no guarantee that supersymmetric particles will ever be discovered; and its
phenomenological value plunges back to the depths from which it surfaced. Therefore we will put forward
the following claim, which will also be evaluated in the present paper:

Claim 2: Supersymmetry occurs in a variety of partially independent contexts within high-
energy physics, some of which belong to “theory” and some of which belong to “phenomenology”,
and these applications of supersymmetry have responded differently to the LHC’s failure to find
supersymmetric particles.

En outre, we hypothesized that supersymmetry should be losing its ability to sustain trades

between theory and phenomenology. Donc, we will evaluate the following claim:

Claim 3: Supersymmetry sustained trades between theory and phenomenology in high-energy
physics, until it was challenged by the LHC’s failure to observe the particles predicted by super-
symmetry.

If theorists and phenomenologists fail to share a similar appraisal of supersymmetry, then this may
pose a serious problem for the field: this would imply that theorists’ research programs can persist de-
spite their low value to phenomenologists, and conversely that experimental input has little to offer to
theorists; if that is the case, then the unity of high-energy physics would indeed be fragilized. Là-
fore, addressing claims 1-3 (1–that theory and phenomenology are partially autonomous subcultures of
high-energy physics; 2–that supersymmetry arises in distinct, autonomous contexts, which responded dif-
ferently to the absence of supersymmetric particles at the LHC; and –3– that the value of supersymmetry
for bridging together subcultures of physics has decreased as a result of the failure of phenomenological
supersymmetry) should contribute to answering the questions of what makes and unmakes unity in HEP.

2.3 Towards a quantitative assessment of subcultures and trades

Dans ce qui suit, we propose an array of quantitative methods implementing several dimensions of Gali-
son’s framework for addressing the plurality of science, which evaluate the claims put forward above. À
this end, we will rely on authorship data (for investigating the social entrenchment of theory and phe-
nomenology as distinct subcultures), semantic analyses (for investigating the linguistic divide between
these subcultures as well as the plurality of supersymmetry research), et données de citation (pour
locate “trading zones” within the field). To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to implement Gal-
ison’s framework into a quantitative analysis of scientific literature. Bien sûr, the plurality of science
and the coordination between scientific fields have already been addressed quantitatively in numerous
publications. In the context of physics research, par exemple, Battiston et al. (2019) have evaluated the
ability of physicists to publish in various subfields. En particulier, they demonstrate that HEP physicists
are among the most specialized physicists (c'est à dire., they have a high probability of publishing only in their
primary subfield), although their work does not distinguish between the various kinds of high-energy
physicists, which will be done in the present paper. There remains to address the linguistic component
of the divide between these subcultures, in particular theory and phenomenology, and to this end we
will propose a novel strategy based on semantic data (titles and abstracts of the literature).

As for the analysis of the plurality of supersymmetry-related research in HEP, we will develop a
topic model approach in order to identify clusters of concepts that are most likely to be associated with
supersymmetry in the literature, and we will explore the dynamics of supersymmetry research throughout
temps.

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Enfin, we will assess the intensity of trades between theoretical subcultures and locate the concepts
that facilitate these trades. Yan et al. (2013) proposed a quantitative assessment of dependency relations
between scientific disciplines based around a metaphor with international trade, by measuring quantities
such as “exports”, “imports”, or “self-dependence” of various fields throughout time based on citation
data. Cependant, this work does not investigate what exactly allows these trades to happen, par exemple., lequel
concepts sustain them. This requires combining citation data with semantic information about papers’
concepts, as achieved by Raimbault (2019) who proposed measures of interdisciplinarity built upon such
data. Similarly to Yan et al. 2013, we will assess the self-dependence of experiment, phenomenology,
and theory in HEP based on the citation network. Cependant, we will also evaluate the ability of different
concepts (such as supersymmetry) to sustain trades across subcultures throughout time, by combining
semantic and citation data.

More broadly, this work will add to quantitative studies of science literature, by helping to fill a gap
that has come to the attention of the community. As stressed by Leydesdorff et al. (2020), Kang and
Evans (2020), Bowker (2020), quantitative and qualitative studies of science have mostly diverged in
their goals and “world views”, urging the need to “bridge the gap” between them. We propose, donc,
a bridge connecting these two forms of scientific study. D'abord, we demonstrate that quantitative methods
can address questions raised by the philosophy, histoire, and sociology of physics. De plus, we show that
concepts from qualitative science studies can give structure to quantitative methods, in line with the
call by Heinze and Jappe 2020 to inform quantitative analyses with “middle-range theories” (of which
Galison’s trading zones are an example). Par conséquent, our methods are in principle meaningful in any
context where such a theory is valid – whenever scientific cultures attempt to achieve coordination –,
much beyond the case-study proposed in this paper.

3 Methods

3.1 Données

Our data consists of the scientific literature on high-energy physics and the semantic, authorship, et
citation information that it entails which is of interest for our questions.

The data were retrieved using the Inspire HEP database (Moskovic, 2021). Inspire HEP is a platform
dedicated to the HEP community and is maintained by organizations that include CERN, DESY, Fer-
milab and SLAC. It aggregates publications from the HEP literature, and maintains a list of institutions
and collaborations involved in the community, while also publishing job offers. It replaced Spires in
201211.

The database is fed by an automatic aggregator that retrieves articles from multiple sources12 includ-
ing a number of databases (including the Astrophysics Data System, arXiv, etc.), research institutions
(CERN, DESY, Fermilab, IHEP, IN2P3, SLAC), and scientific editors such as the American Physics
Society or Springer.

Inspire then aggregates data from these sources with automated crawlers, and it performs manual
curation for completion or error-correction13, including author name disambiguation. This database has
a strong yet untapped potential for quantitative analyses. Cependant, only contents related to HEP are
subject to a systematic effort of collection and curation, and the data should be used preferably in
analyses which scope is limited to HEP, thereby making it unsuitable for, par exemple., studying interactions
between HEP and other fields of physics (e.g. condensed matter physics).

The database includes data about the contents of the literature (title, summary, sometimes keywords),
the authors (nom, unique identifier, institutional aﬀiliations), dates corresponding to different events
related to each paper, associated experiments, references of the articles. The only data pertaining to the
contents of the articles that are consistently available and that we have used in the present paper are
titles and abstracts. Articles are categorized according to a classification scheme compatible with that
of the arXiv pre-print platform. This scheme includes categories such as Theory-HEP, Experiment-HEP,
Phenomenology-HEP, Astrophysics, etc.. Categories of papers published on arXiv.org are extracted
directly from the platform (where they are defined by the authors, while being subject to moderation

11 “Physicists, start your searches:
symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2012/05/24/physicists-start-your-searches-inspire-database-now-online
12 Melissa Clegg, “INSPIRE Content Sources ”, May 30th 2020 (https://help.inspirehep.net/knowledge-base/
inspire-content-sources/)
13 Stella Christodoulaki,
content-policy/

“Content Policy”, March 4th 2020, https://help.inspirehep.net/knowledge-base/

INSPIRE database now online”, Symmetry, May 24th 2012, https://www.

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and controls). Categories of papers not published on arXiv.org are now assigned manually by curators.
Categories of papers inherited from the ancestor of Inspire HEP (Spires) and absent from arXiv.org were
derived according to a mapping between Spires’ classification and the current arXiv-based classification.
In this paper, we rely mostly on three categories which entail most of the high-energy physics literature:
Theory-HEP, Phenomenology-HEP, but also Experiment-HEP, which typically entails papers that report
empirical results such as statistical analyses of experimental data. A portion of the articles between the
années 1990 à 1995 were not categorized, which led to some issues with the data collection process, comme
described in S1 (see supplementary materials). For this reason, our longitudinal analyses will focus on
later years, which does not prevent us from addressing our research questions. The analysis of subcultures
spans over years 1980 à 2020. The years prior to 1980 could also have been interesting for this analysis
aussi, but the corresponding data was of lower quality.

3.2 Social and semantic analysis of subcultures of high-energy physics

The first claim that we seek to establish is that “theory” and “phenomenology” should both be regarded
as distinct subcultures within physics. There are two components to subcultures: a linguistic one (ils
should have vocabularies that are distinct enough to signal complementary bodies of knowledge) et
a social one (they should correspond to distinct groups of people). Therefore we will proceed twofold.
D'abord, we will demonstrate that theory and phenomenology manipulate vocabularies that are so distinct
that we can predict with reasonable accuracy whether a paper belongs to one of these categories based
on the words present in its abstract; our predictive model will then be used to unveil the ontological
differences between these subcultures. Deuxième, we will show that these categories from the literature are
associated with different communities.

3.2.1 The semantic divide between Theory and Phenomenology

If it is possible to tell whether a paper is theoretical or phenomenological based on the words it contains,
then this implies that these categories use partially distinct vocabularies – i.e., that each of these two
categories has its own “language” – in a way that allows papers from one category to be distinguished
from those from another. If that is the case, we can then examine the nature of the linguistic divide
between theory and phenomenology in order to better understand their differences. In what follows, nous
apply this strategy using statistical methods, based on the classification of HEP literature provided by
Inspire HEP14. Although we are more interested in the divide between “theory” and “phenomenology”,
we also include “experiment” (which Galison himself labeled as a subculture of its own) in our analysis
in order to emphasize its differences with phenomenology.

In order to establish whether we can predict which articles d belong to any of the categories c ∈
{Experiment, Phenomenology, Theory}, we will build a simple linear logistic regression using a bag-of-
words as the predictive features. Dans cette approche, the corpus is represented by a matrix B = (bd,je) ∈
RD×V where D is the amount of documents, V is the size of the vocabulary, and bd,i is the number
of occurrences of the word (or expression15) i in the document d. This representation excludes a lot of
semantic information that results from the knowledge of the ordering of the words and the structure
of sentences within the documents; it is in line with our goal to find out whether the vocabularies of
each category are so distinct that the mere presence or absence of certain words can be used to infer
the category of a document. We perform a normalization of the bag-of-words prior to the regression, par
applying the tf-idf transformation16 to (bd,je), resulting in a normalized bag-of-words which we will name
(b′

d,je). More specifically, our predictive model is defined as:

(

P. (d ∈ c) = logit−1

βc +

)

V∑

je = 1

βcib′
di

(1)

14 Since this classification relies on a manual assignment of the different categories, any potential linguistic divide between
them cannot be the byproduct of some algorithmic bias
15 We also include some n-grams in the model, c'est à dire. expressions of several words, provided they follow certain pre-defind
syntactic patterns (e.g. “adjective +noun”)
16 For a definition of the tf-idf transformation, and information theoretic justifications of its relevance, see Beel et al.
2015; Robertson 2004. We use scikit-learn’s implementation of the inverse-document frequency transformation which is
idf = 1 + log(1/F ) where f is the fraction of documents in which a word occurs. It differs from the “textbook” definition
log(1/F ) because of the regularization term (+1).

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This model is then trained on N = 100, 000 articles of our database from 1980 à 2020 that belong
to any of the following categories: Experiment-HEP, Phenomenology-HEP, and Theory-HEP, 17. Le
vocabulary used in the regression is the V expressions (n-grams, up to four word long) among those
that belong to predefined syntactic patterns18, that have the highest “unithood” as measured in Omodei
201419. The size of the vocabulary V is chosen to be a round number that is just high enough to reach
about the maximum accuracy of the model, as evaluated on the test set (which consists in 10,000 articles
not present in the training set). Alors, the accuracy of the predictions of the model is evaluated using
the same test set. The coeﬀicients βci are then analyzed in order to extract the words that are the most
discriminatory between “theory” and “phenomenology”, thus revealing the most salient differences. Pour
que, we retrieve those expressions i that maximize βth,i − βph,i and βph,i − βth,je. Because of the inverse
document frequency transformation applied prior to the regression, expressions that are more common
are favored by this selection process.

3.2.2 The social divide between Theory and Phenomenology

What does it mean to say that theory and phenomenology have a “demographic component”, as Galison
(1987, p. 138) puts it, regarding theory and experiment in HEP? It means that these categories of the
literature are supplied by distinct groups of people, “theorists” and “phenomenologists”. Donc, nous
will investigate whether it is the case that experimental, phenomenological and theoretical papers are
published by three distinct groups of physicists, such that these physicists usually contribute mostly
to just one of these categories Again, “experiment”, which is a paradigmatic example of subculture in
Galison’s view, is also included in our analysis. It will be useful to assess whether the distinction between
phenomenology and theory is comparable to the distinction between theory and experiment (the one
initially stressed by Galison).

Let Nij be the amount of articles co-authored by a physicist i that belong to the category j ∈ {théorie,
phenomenology, experiment}, and Ni the total amount of articles co-authored by i. Let us assume
Nij ∼ Binomial(Ni, pij), where pij is the latent probability that a paper from physicist i belongs to the
category j20. Since the researchers co-authored widely varying amounts of publications (ranging from a
few papers to hundreds), we assumed that the latent probabilities pij were described by the following
model:

Nij ∼ Binomial(Ni, pij)
pij ∼ Beta(αj, βj)
αj, βj ∼ Exponential(1)

The binomial process assumes that each physicist can be imputed a constant latent fraction of papers
in each category. The beta prior is a flexible distribution over probabilities, which can be either unimodal
or bimodal. The exponential prior over α and β is agnostic regarding these two possibilities, and its exact
shape does not significantly matter considering the amount of available data. Most crucially for us, ce
model allows to combine information from researchers with many papers and researchers with very few
papers; for those with few papers, the estimation of the latent probabilities is more influenced by the
shape of the beta distribution. The model was fitted to 2500 researchers randomly sampled among those
with more than 3 publications in HEP for 1980-2020. In order to evaluate the social entrenchment of
these categories, we verify that most physicists contribute mostly to just one of these categories.

3.3 Assessing the plurality of supersymmetry research with topic models

Our second claim pertains to the plurality of supersymmetry research. Dans cette section, we present our
methodology for assessing the plurality of supersymmetry related research, by recovering the contexts,
c'est à dire., the topics in which supersymmetry occurs, and by evaluating the extent of their independence, et

17 The fit is performed with the scikit-learn python library (Pedregosa et al., 2011) using L2 regularization.
18 We choose a subset of the syntactic patterns used to analyze the Association for Computational Linguistics Anthology
Corpus in Omodei 2014.
19 The “unithood” measures “the degree of strength or stability of syntagmatic combinations or collocations” (Kageura
& Umino, 1996)
20 Since these categories are not mutually exclusive in our database (an article may belong to more than one of them), un
multinomial process would not be a good fit.

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how they responded to the results of the LHC. More broadly we provide a methodology for investigating
scientific “objects” akin to “boundary objects” in that they are “plastic enough to adapt to local needs
and constraints of the several parties employing them” (Star & Griesemer, 1989, p. 393), by unveiling
the plurality and autonomy of the contexts in which such objects may arise.

3.3.1 Model

In order to evaluate in which contexts supersymmetry arises within the high-energy physics literature, nous
have chosen to subdivide the literature into sub-topics using an unsupervised probabilistic topic model,
namely the Correlated Topic Model (CTM, Blei and Lafferty 2007). We do not use conventional classi-
fications such as the Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme® (PACS) codes from the American
Institute of Physics (AIP), because they were not available for the whole dataset – PACS codes were
only available starting from 1995, and only for a subset of the papers, which may not be representative
of the whole. Besides, PACS codes are too numerous (plus que 5000 catégories)21 for our purposes.
Donc, we opted to extract the topics in the literature using unsupervised topic models instead.

Probabilistic topic models generally assume that each document of a corpus is a mixture of variable
proportions of a certain amount of topics, each of these topics having their own vocabulary distribution.
When trained on a corpus, such models simultaneously learn the “topics” in the corpus (and their
vocabulary), as well as the relative contribution of each topic to each document of the corpus. These
models have demonstrated their ability to capture the semantic information contained within the scientific
and academic literature, as shown in previous work22, even from abstracts alone (Syed & Spruit, 2017); comme
a result this technique has seemingly taken precedence over network-based semantic maps (Leydesdorff
& Nerghes, 2016, Chiffre 1). Although co-occurrence networks may have more conceptual bearing in
the STS tradition, we have preferred topic models for their intrinsic ability to capture the polysemy of
certain words (par exemple., “supersymmetry”), in terms of the probabilities that such words can arise in different
contexts (c'est à dire. topics).

En particulier, we have chosen the Correlated Topic Model (CTM) for its ability to capture correlations
between topics. In this model, the contribution of a topic z to a document d, P. (z|d), is assumed to be
drawn from a hierarchical model involving a correlated multivariate distribution (Blei & Lafferty, 2007):

⃗βd ∼ N (⃗µ, Σ)

P. (z|d) =

exp βd,z
∑
k
i=1 exp βd,je

(2)

(3)

Through the covariance matrix Σ, the CTM model is able to learn correlations between topics, et
therefore to account for the fact that some topics are more likely to occur together within one document.
De plus, our intuition is that using CTM allows the derivation of more realistic topic-distribution for
short texts such as abstracts, for which the small amounts of words only moderately inform the prior
topic distribution. Le plus important, this model allows us to directly assess the level of independence
between the topics derived by the model, which is important for assessing the autonomy of the contexts
in which supersymmetry arises.

The model is trained on N = 120, 000 articles randomly sampled from those between 1980-2020 que
belong to any of the categories Theory-HEP, Phenomenology-HEP, Experiment-HEP, and also Lattice
(a theoretical approach to HEP, with ties to both theory and phenomenology, and in which we expected
supersymmetry to potentially arise as well). The procedures for extracting the input vocabulary and
for choosing the hyper-parameters are described in detail in sup. mat. S3.1 and S3.2 respectively. Deux
methodological contributions can be highlighted. D'abord, we included informative n-grams matching pre-
defined syntactic patterns in the vocabulary in order to preserve more semantic information. Deuxième, nous
made a prudent and balanced use of perplexity and topic coherence measures in order to recognize the
advantages and limitations of both these kinds of measures for assessing the quality of topic models and
choosing the best hyper-parameters. The procedure resulted in the extraction of 75 topics (see sup. mat.
S3.4 for the full list).

21 “Full list of PACS numbers”, Physics-Uspekhi, https://ufn.ru/en/pacs/all/
22 Notable examples are Nichols 2014; Hall et al. 2008; Griﬀiths and Steyvers 2004; see Malaterre et al. 2022 for a more
recent application in the context of History and Philosophy of Science, and Allen and Murdock 2022 for an assessment of
the potential and limitations of these methods in the field.

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3.3.2 Interpretation and validation

Once the model was trained, we manually assigned a label to each topic, by inspecting and interpreting
their top-words and the categories from the PACS classification of the physics literature that were most
correlated to each topic23. Informing our interpretation of each topic with these correlations rather
than the sole top-words help overcome issues associated with the interpretation of fat-tailed topic-word
distributions based on a handful of top-words (Chang et al., 2009; Allen & Murdock, 2022). We failed
to provide a meaningful label for some topics, but this had little impact on the rest of the analysis.
Enfin, in order to assess the meaningfulness of the metrics produced by the model (the document-topic
distributions and the topic-word distributions), we performed an additional validation procedure using
the PACS classification of the literature and the input of independent experts (see sup. mat. S3.3).

In section 4.2, the model is applied to a number of tasks: the evaluation of the contexts (c'est à dire. topics)
in which supersymmetry occurs in the literature, the extent of the correlation between these contexts
and finally the trends in research involving supersymmetry since the start of the LHC.

3.4 Locating trades across scientific cultures

Dans cette section, we elaborate a longitudinal methodology for locating trades between scientific cultures,
which we use to assess the ability of supersymmetry to enhance trades between the theoretical and
phenomenological cultures of HEP throughout time. Trading zones can manifest themselves in a myriad
of ways, some of which are readily prone to a quantitative analysis. Par exemple, citing the example
of quantum chromodynamics, a theory of the strong interaction, Galison notes that “the contact be-
tween the experimenters and the phenomenological theorists had grown to the point where Andersson
[a theorist] and Hofmann [an experimentalist] could coauthor a Physics Letter” (Galison, 1997, p. 655).
In that sense, a paper co-authored by scientists from different cultures is indicative of a trading zone,
such that co-authorship data can in principle be used to probe trades across scientific cultures. Another
manifestation of trading zones can be found in the citation network, which encodes exchanges of knowl-
edge across publications, and sometimes across subcultures. En effet, that a phenomenological publication,
par exemple, cites a theoretical paper, indicates that phenomenologists can acknowledge the value and
significance of certain theoretical constructs (that are present in this specific paper) in their enterprise.
Although in principle both the citation networks and the collaboration networks could be used for our
but, the present analysis will rely on the former. En effet, the citation graph preserves more infor-
mation about the directionality of the exchanges involved, thus supporting the trade metaphor in Yan
et autres. 2013. Intuitively, it is also less vulnerable to non-epistemic factors as is the case with authorship
(e.g. physicists authoring papers they did not contribute to as is frequent in large collaborations in the
field). En outre, for validation purposes, we show in the supplementary material S4 (figue. S3) that the
citation network can indeed reveal the relative autonomy (self-reliance) of HEP subcultures, mais aussi
the special role of the phenomenological subculture in sustaining the unity of HEP by channeling trades
across theory and experiment (which hardly communicate directly otherwise). This further supports the
use of the citation graph use as a means of locating trades.

In order to assess the ability of supersymmetry to facilitate trades between theorists and phenomenol-
ogists, we develop a method that combines two important aspects of Galison’s trading zones: their locality
and their linguistic component (the “inter-language”). En particulier, we look for scientific concepts that
are most likely to be involved in trades between these subcultures throughout time. To this effect we
perform the analysis on a subset of the citation graph, such that the nodes are limited to theoretical
and phenomenological papers, excluding cross-listed papers (those that belong to both these categories).
For each of these two theoretical cultures, we derive a list of informative keywords from the abstracts
of the papers by extracting n-grams (n ≥ 2) matching certain syntactic patterns. We retain the top N
keywords (sorted by decreasing unithood) such that at least 95% of the abstracts contain at least one of
the N keywords; this yields N = 1370 keywords specific to the phenomenological culture and N = 1770
keywords specific to the theoretical culture. From this we derive a bag of words bik for each publication
such that bik = 1 if keyword k is present in abstract i, and bik = 0 otherwise. We then evaluate the
probability that the keyword occurs in an abstract given the paper is involved in a trade between a
theoretical and a phenomenological paper at a time t, which we write P (bk = 1|tradei→j, t). We consider
trades in both directions: phenomenological papers citing theoretical papers (th→ph), then in a second
time theoretical papers citing phenomenological papers (ph→th). To what extent supersymmetry helps

23 We used pointwise mutual information (see equation (1), sup. mat. S3.3) as the measure of correlation.

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Lucas Gautheron 1,2, Elisa Omodei 3

sustain the trading zone between these theoretical cultures is roughly measured by P (bk = 1|trade, t)
for those keywords k related to supersymmetry. In this analysis, we explore 3.7M citations appearing in
papers published between t = 2001 and t = 2019 (covering similar ranges prior and after the start of
the LHC). We included all cited papers from 1980 onwards (180k total)24. Cependant, since cross-listed
papers, which we excluded, have become much more common in the database starting from 2010 pour
spurious reasons (a change in the classification procedure), we ran a separate analysis in order to assess
the robustness of our results. In this second analysis, we included cross-listed papers and assigned them
only one category based on their authors’ primary subfield (the subfield to which they contribute the
most). We found both analyses to produce similar results. In the following we report the results obtained
by excluding cross-listed papers.

4 Results

4.1 Theory and phenomenology as distinct subcultures

Let us now examine our first claim that “theory” and “phenomenology” should be regarded as distinct
subcultures within high-energy physics. The claim requires that these categories mobilize distinct bodies
of knowledge which manifest themselves through distinct vocabularies. As shown in Table 1, it is indeed
possible to predict with reasonable accuracy whether a paper belongs to either one of these categories
based on the vocabulary in its abstract. The accuracy is higher than 90% for “theory” and reaches 86% pour
“phenomenology”, far above what one would obtain from assigning the most probable class irrespective
of the contents, purely based on their frequency. This conclusion holds throughout the whole historical
period considered (see sup. mat. S2). This supports the existence of a linguistic divide between these
two theoretical cultures over the years 1980 à 2020.

Theory

Phenomenology

Experiment

Model accuracy
Baseline

91%
55%

86%
51%

92%
84%

Tableau 1 Accuracy of the model for predicting which categories HEP papers belong to. The precision of the
model for each category is estimated based on the test corpus. For reference, the accuracy of a naive model that assigns
the most likely class irrespective of any information about the papers is given (baseline). The size of the vocabulary used
for the predictions is set to 500 words and expressions.

Our model also unveils the expressions that are most capable of discriminating between theory and
phenomenology, as shown in Table 2. One striking difference between theory and phenomenology appears
to be the importance of space-time related concepts in theory (“space-time”, “geometry”, “manifold”,
“dimension”, “coordinate”, etc.). The objects (entities) of interest also differ, which signals an ontological
divergence: on the pure theory side, “black hole[s]” and “strings” are prominent entities, while particles
(“quark”, “neutrino”, “gluon”, “hadron”, “nucleon”, etc.) belong to the realm of phenomenology. Parmi
those terms most specific to phenomenology but absent in pure theory, we also find the notions of model
(“mssm”, “standard model”), and effective field theories (“effective theory”, “chiral perturbation theory”)
which are approximate theories emerging from more fundamental theories. De plus, the mention of
“experimental data” is a distinctive feature of phenomenology: theory is not directly committed to
establishing a connection with empirical results. Fait intéressant, one aspect of supersymmetry (the MSSM)
appears as markedly phenomenological, while “supergravity” is specifically theoretical.

24 It is unlikely that recent papers would cite publications from before 1980.

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How research programs come apart: the example of supersymmetry and the disunity of physics

Tableau 2: Vocabulary specific to phenomenology (left column) versus
théorie (right column).

Vocabulary specific to phenomenology

Vocabulary specific to theory

quark, lhc, qcd, neutrino, experimental data,
mssm, dark matter, extra dimension, parton,
phenomenology, gluon, color, mixing, stan-
dard model, electroweak, collider, nucleon, ef-
fective theory, sensitivity, new physic, high en-
ergy, hadron, chiral perturbation theory, next-
to-leading order, impact, neutrino mass, reso-
nance, signal, processus, accuracy, collaboration,
distribution, flavor, decay, effective field the-
ory, determination, violation, evolution, ac-
count, meson, element, baryon, higgs, contri-
bution, gamma

algebra, manifold, geometry, spacetime, parti-
tion, modulus space, gravity, théorie, branes,
correspondence, central charge, deformation,
action, chern-simons, duality, string, horizon,
supergravity, ad, quantum, space-time, yang-
mills, coordinate, entropy, conformal field the-
ory, sitter, field, construction, surface, dimen-
sion, boundary, transformation, black hole,
solution, mechanic, espace, conjecture, type,
class, quantization, dirac, formulation, back-
ground, connection, massless

De la même manière, keywords that discriminate the most between experiment and phenomenology are shown
in Table 3. They confirm the theoretical ( “model”, “scenario”, “effective theory”, “implication”) et
computational (“estimate”, “approximation”, “contribution”, “numerical result”, “correction”) nature
of phenomenology, as opposed to the empirical, “fact-based” dimension of experiment (“measurement”,
“search”, “experiment”, “event”, “result”, “evidence”, “data”).

Tableau 3: Vocabulary specific to phenomenology (left column) versus
experiment (right column).

Vocabulary specific to phenomenology

Vocabulary specific to experiment

factorization, effect,

experimental data, qcd, mssm, quark, dark
matter,
lhc, color, phenomenology, gluon,
plasma, new physic, heavy ion collision, ac-
count, inflation, parton, evolution, high en-
implication, sce-
ergy,
nario, potential, approche, contribution, elec-
troweak, processus, mixing, model, estimate, nu-
merical result, accuracy, integral, approxima-
tion, neutrino, unification, higgs, possibility,
bound, neutrino mass, calculation, case, early
universe, sensitivity, generator, extra dimen-
sion

detector, sample, measurement, recherche, en haut-
per limit, confidence, experiment, atlas, tar-
get, cm, luminosity, event, proton-proton col-
lision, evidence, resolution, fraction, result,
gev, first time, beam, expectation, yield, tev,
monde, top quark, branching, range, technique,
muon, limit, étude, construction, data, reac-
tion, recent result, mev, système, enquête,
section, papier, observation, respect, differen-
tial cross section, electron, experimental result

What about the “demographic component” of the divide between theory and phenomenology? Do
these categories have social counterparts? The results of our social analysis are shown in Figure 2.
Chiffre 2 is a ternary diagram in which each red dot represents a physicist and is positioned according
to the relative prevalence of each category (among experiment, phenomenology and theory) among the
papers they authored or co-authored. The majority of the dots are clustered near vertices, which means
that most physicists dedicate themselves to mostly one of these categories. En particulier, the inner part
of the ternary diagram, which corresponds to physicists with balanced contributions to each category,
is almost empty. We do find that some authors are scattered along the experiment-phenomenology
edge and the phenomenology-theory edge; still, our results suggest that the category of phenomenology
does feature a “demographic” counterpart as well, although it is more porous than experiment or pure
théorie. Donc, phenomenologists do, to some extent, constitute a social group distinct from that of
theorists (and experimentalists); cependant, phenomenology seems to play a special role in sustaining some
form of cooperation between experimentalists and theorists. Dans l'ensemble, we find that 81% of high-energy
physicists publish more than 80% of their papers in just one of these categories, which is clear evidence
of specialization.

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figue. 2 Relative fraction of articles from any of the categories “Experiment”, “Phenomenology” and “The-
ory”, pour 2,500 HEP physicists. Each physicist among those sampled is represented by a red dot on the diagram,
positioned according to the estimate of (pi,exp, pi,ph, pi,ème), the probability that any of his articles belong to those three
catégories. The dashed lines, along the direction of the arrows, form a grid along which one can read the relative importance
of each category for every physicist (
). Physicists near the vertices of the triangle contribute almost exclusively to
one category; those near an edge contribute quasi-exclusively to two categories. Most physicists are located near a vertex,
thus contributing to mostly one category.

pij∑

k pik

Our quantitative analysis supports our claim that, at least over the years 1980 à 2020, theory and
phenomenology should be regarded as distinct subcultures with partially distinct languages. Conse-
quently, strategies ought to be devised for them to properly communicate and coordinate their efforts,
as long as physicists believe it to be necessary or worthwhile. It follows that their unity should not be
assumed; instead, why a trading zone may be successfully worked out remains to be explained. Before
we turn to the ability of supersymmetry to sustain the coordination between these subcultures, we will
address the plurality of supersymmetry research itself.

4.2 The plurality of supersymmetry

In this section we apply our methods to address our second claim regarding the plurality of supersymme-
try research and the recent decline in phenomenological supersymmetry research as a response to LHC
résultats.

Topic models are able to link one word to several topics, thus allowing us to unveil different aspects
of supersymmetry, c'est à dire. different contexts25 in which this concept may occur. For three words w that

25 Like Allen and Murdock (2022), we caution that these “topics” may not be as coherent as the common understanding
of the word may suggest and that they should really be understood as different “contexts”, although we use both terms
interchangeably below.

0.00.20.40.60.81.01.00.80.60.40.20.00.00.20.40.60.81.0pexppexp+pph+pthpphpexp+pph+pthpthpexp+pph+pthTheoryPhenomenologyExperimentFractionof(co-)authoredpublicationsforeachcategory(théorie,phenomenology,experiment)

How research programs come apart: the example of supersymmetry and the disunity of physics

explicitly refer to supersymmetry (“supersymmetry”, “supersymmetric”, “susy”26), we evaluated the
probability P (z|w) that these words occur in the context of a topic z according to:

P. (z|w) =

P. (w|z)P. (z)
P. (w)

(4)

Where P (w|z) is frequency of the term w within the topic z, P. (z) is the marginal probability of
topic z, and P (w) is the overall term-frequency of w. The five most probable topics for each of the
words “supersymmetry”, “supersymmetric”, and “susy” are shown in Figure 3 (for the other topics, le
probability P (z|w) for w ∈ { “supersymmetry”, “supersymmetric”, “susy” } is residual). We can see that
each of these terms may indeed occur in relation to a variety of topics: “supersymmetric theories” (lequel
entail supersymmetry in string theory, or supersymmetric gauge theories in general), “sigma models
(?)», “Higgs sector beyond the SM”, “supergravity”, “Higgs boson”, “supersymmetric particles”, “flavor
physics”. The meaning of the “sigma models” context is unclear, although it comprises most occurrences
of terms relating to superspaces and superfields. These concepts are directly tied to supersymmetry.
They arise from the abstract extension of space by introducing extra anti-commuting coordinates. That
supersymmetry spans across distinct topics constitutes evidence for the diversity of its uses. It is also
notable that several of these topics are in fact dominated by supersymmetry (“supersymmetric theories”,
“supergravity” and “supersymmetric particles”). This stresses the importance of supersymmetry in the
high-energy physics literature.

De plus, although all these words (“supersymmetry”, “supersymmetric” and “susy”) should refer
to the same concept, we find that they are in fact related to different topics: “supersymmetry” seems to
encompass more theoretical aspects of supersymmmetry (e.g. supergravity) while “susy” is more likely to
occur in relation to supersymmetric particles (phenomenological supersymmetry). En fait, we find that
60% of papers mentioning “supersymmetry” belong to theory (versus ∼40% to phenomenology) alors que
only 30% of papers mentioning “susy” in their abstract belong to “theory” (versus 70% to phenomenol-
ogy).

That these topics are at least partially independent can be assessed by inspecting the covariance
matrix Σ of the Correlated Topic Model from which they were derived. We therefore compute the
correlation matrix27 between the seven topics most commonly associated with supersymmetry; the results
can be found in Figure 4. Overall the correlations are close to 0, which suggests that these topics are
rather independent, with a few exceptions. En particulier, pairs of topics that belong to the same kind
(theoretical or phenomenological) are moderately correlated; pairs of topics that are directly tied to
supersymmetry (par exemple., supergravity and phenomenological supersymmetry) but of different nature (dans
this case, theoretical and phenomenological, respectivement) are less correlated. Further visual evidence is
provided in Figure S2 (sup. mat. S3.5).

From these results, one can see that supersymmetry is itself a diverse concept. It arises in a variety of
partially independent contexts. En particulier, theoretical and phenomenological aspects of supersymmetry
are quite independent. How have these different aspects of supersymmetry evolved after the negative
results of the searches for supersymmetric particles at the LHC?

In order to address this question, we evaluate the evolution of supersymmetry research in HEP since
the first results of the LHC (2011) until today. For that, similarly to Hall et al. (2008), we assess the
relative importance ˆθz,y of each topic z for every year y from 2011 à 2019:

P. (z|oui) =

1
Dy

∑

d∈y

P. (z|d)

(5)

Where Dy is the amount of articles first submitted in year y. We then selected the three topics
with the highest increase (rising topics) and decrease (declining topics) in magnitude over this period.
For that, P. (z|oui) was fitted to a linear time trend (P. (z|oui) = azy + bz), discarding topics for which the
correlation was not significant (c'est à dire. R = 0 is excluded from the 99% CI). Alors, the topics were sorted
according to the best fit value of az, the rate of increase of its magnitude per year (similarly to what was
done in Griﬀiths and Steyvers 2004). We apply the procedure to all papers mentioning at least one of
the words “supersymmetric”, “supersymmetry” or “susy” in their title or abstract in the years following
the start of the LHC. The results are shown in Figure 5.

26 Short for “supersymmetry”
27 The Pearson correlation coeﬀicients Rij can be deduced directly from the covariance matrix Σ of the CTM model –

cf. equation (2) – according to Rij =

Σij√

ΣiiΣjj

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figue. 3 The many uses of supersymmetry. For three terms w refering to supersymmetry (“supersymmetric”, “super-
symmetry”, and “susy”), the five topics z that are most likely to have led to their occurrence and their respective conditional
probability P (z|w) are shown. “Supersymetry” and “supersymmetric” have similar distributions, and mostly occur within
theoretical topics. “Susy”’s topic distribution is much more peaked, and most often occurs within phenomenological topics.

According to these results, the most rapidly declining topics among articles that mention super-
symmetry are Higgs-sector related topics and phenomenological supersymmetry, c'est à dire. phenomenological
aspects of supersymmetry. Par contre, two of the (relatively) increasingly active topics are very theoret-
ical (in particular, Supergravity and Conformal Field Theory). In order to understand these dynamics, it
is therefore necessary to distinguish theoretical supersymmetry from phenomenological supersymmetry.
As physicist Mikhail Shifman argued in an early assessment of the first results of the LHC in 2012,

[Theoretical supersymmetry] is an example of a complete success story. I use the word ‘theoretical’
to differentiate from ‘phenomenological’ supersymmetry […] lequel […] at the moment has a rather
murky status. Theoretical supersymmetry proved to be a powerful tool with which to deal with
quantum field theory, especially at strong coupling, a regime which was considered intractable for
decades[…]. Progress in this line of research […] is absolutely steady (Shifman 2012, p. 6)

Shifman’s assessment strikingly converges with the patterns that emerge from our analysis. Topic
models reveal the plurality of supersymmetry in high-energy physics. They support that supersymmetry
arises in different contexts, some theoretical and others phenomenological. They allowed us to demon-
strate that these “faces” of supersymmetry have responded differently to the absence of evidence for
supersymmetric particles at the LHC. En effet, although phenomenologists find supersymmetry to be
much less valuable in the light of the most recent experimental findings, theorists may still rely on it
for their own endeavor. This supports that cultures can “trade” certain concepts (according to Galison’s

HiggssectorbeyondtheSMSupersymmetrictheoriesSigmamodels(?)SupergravityHiggsboson0.00.10.20.30.40.50.60.7ProbabilityP(z|w)thatwoccursaspartofatopicz“supersymmetric”SupersymmetrictheoriesSigmamodels(?)HiggssectorbeyondtheSMSupergravityHiggsboson“supersymmetry”SupersymmetricparticlesHiggssectorbeyondtheSMSigmamodels(?)FlavourphysicsSupersymmetrictheories“susy”

How research programs come apart: the example of supersymmetry and the disunity of physics

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figue. 4 Correlation between the topics most associated to supersymmetry. The Pearson correlation is comprised
entre -1 (perfect anti-correlation) et 1 (perfect correlation). A correlation close to 0 means that a pair of topic is
partially independent, c'est à dire. that they can arise or not in variable proportions in a paper.

terminology) while retaining much of their autonomy, including in their own appraisal of the usefulness
of these concepts28.

Dans la section suivante, we investigate the contribution of supersymmetry to sustaining the trading zone

between these theoretical traditions throughout time.

4.3 Supersymmetry in the trading zone between theory and phenomenology

Which concepts sustain trades within HEP? As proposed in Section 3.4, we measure the ability of certain
concepts (keywords) to sustain trades through time in terms of the probability that each of these concepts
occurs in citations across theory and phenomenology. The results are shown in Figures 6 et 7.

Both these figures show the probability of occurrence of the five most common keywords (left side)
and the five most common supersymmetry-related keywords (right side) involved in trades across these
subcultures (excluding redundant keywords). Chiffre 6 shows those probabilities for trades where phe-
nomenological papers draw from theoretical papers. Three main trends are revealed: the fall of trades
involving extra-dimensions (hypothesized spatial dimensions beyond the 4 space-time dimensions for
which we have direct evidence); the increase in trades involving black-holes; et, directly relevant to
our third claim, the decline of trades involving supersymmetry, despite a short increase after the start
of the LHC in 2010. Fait intéressant, in the early 2000s, “supersymmetric model[s]” had a trade-ability on
par with that of the keywords most involved in these trades. De plus, “low energy” appears to be one
of the most frequent keywords in phenomenological imports of theoretical papers, which makes sense

28 “trading partners can hammer out a local coordination, despite vast global differences.” (Galison, 1997, p. 783)

SupersymmetrictheoriesSigmamodels(?)HiggssectorbeyondtheSMSupergravityHiggsbosonSupersymmetricparticlesFlavourphysicsSupersymmetrictheoriesSigmamodels(?)HiggssectorbeyondtheSMSupergravityHiggsbosonSupersymmetricparticlesFlavourphysics0.09-0.010.120.010.030.020.090.000.090.020.040.03-0.010.00-0.020.200.130.110.120.09-0.020.010.030.020.010.020.200.010.040.040.030.040.130.030.040.040.020.030.110.020.040.04−1.00−0.75−0.50−0.250.000.250.500.751.00

Lucas Gautheron 1,2, Elisa Omodei 3

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figue. 5 Declining and rising topics among those that mention supersymmetry since the first results of the
LHC (2011-2019). On the left, the three topics that are declining the fastest “Supersymmetric particles”, “Higgs sector
beyond the SM” and “Higgs boson”. On the right, the three fastest rising topics are “Supergravity”, “Amplitudes and
Feynman Diagrams”, “Conformal Field Theory”.

since the low-energy limit of theories of, say, strings and quantum gravity is what matters most from
a phenomenological standpoint (it is what can be observed). Turning to Figure 7 – trades involving
theoretical references – , we get an even more striking picture of the demise of “extra dimensions”, lequel
were involved in about 30% of the trades in 2001 and went down to 5% only. De la même manière, “weak-scale”
which refers to the domain of phenomena targeted by the LHC, have become much less frequent in the
“trading zone” (from ∼10% of trades to ∼2%). This suggests that phenomenological models dedicated to
this domain of phenomena have become much less useful to the “theoretical” subculture over time. Sur
the other hand, “dark matter”29 is increasingly common in the phenomenological papers theorists draw
depuis. This suggests dark matter is deemed valuable for the theoretical enterprise as well. This figure also
confirms the overall decline of supersymmetry in the trading zone, thus providing further support to our
third claim: supersymmetry does not connect developments from the theoretical programs to progress
in the phenomenological program as much as it did prior to the LHC. Astrophysical topics, on the other
main, seem to be taking up an increasing proportion of the trading zone.

5 Discussion

5.1 Conceptually informed methods in quantitative science studies

Before exploring the implications of this case-study, we want to emphasize that Galison’s conceptual
framework has been a fruitful guide for our quantitative approach. The linguistic component of his
notion of subculture led us to build a bag-of-words model for measuring the extent of the divide between
two theoretical cultures, and for unveiling the concepts that are specific to these cultures as well as their
methodological and ontological differences. The social autonomy of these subcultures, aussi, can be readily

29 Dark matter refers to the observation that a significant fraction of the mass of the universe is currently unexplained.

20122014201620180.0100.0150.0200.0250.0300.0350.040Averagerelativecontributionofeachtopicperyear(¯θz)SupersymmetricparticlesHiggssectorbeyondtheSMHiggsboson2012201420162018SupergravityAmplitudesandFeynmanDiagramConformalFieldTheoryDecliningtopics(gauche)andrisingtopics(droite)–supersymmetry,2011-2019

How research programs come apart: the example of supersymmetry and the disunity of physics

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figue. 6 Inside the trading zone: probability that certain keywords appear in the abstract of a theoretical
paper involved in a trade (a phenomenological paper citing a theoretical paper). To the left, the five keywords
are those with the highest peak probability of occurrence; À droite, are the five keywords with the highest probability of
occurrence among supersymmetry related keywords. Redundant keywords (which normalized pointwise mutual information
with a more frequent keyword exceeds 0.9) are excluded.

quantified from authorship data. En outre, the notion of trading zone invited us to explore citations
quantitatively (as a proxy of scientific “trades”) while devising ways to determine their “location” in the
semantic space. We also found that topic models can reveal the plurality of contexts in which a concept
may arise, and how the dynamics of these contexts compare throughout time. Although we have applied
our topic model approach to supersymmetry, in principle it can be applied to any kind of “boundary
object”, understood in the broad sense of a shared notion that allows some coordination to be achieved
while preserving the distinctness of the scientific cultures at play. À la fin, these methods illuminated
our study of supersymmetry in high-energy physics, and provided further grounds for Galison’s claim
that unity is a contingent matter.

5.2 Unity challenged?

The two theoretical subcultures we have distinguished – pure “theory” and phenomenology – no longer
seem to value supersymmetry equally. Supersymmetry indeed fails to provide equally satisfying solu-
tions to the heterogeneous commitments of HEP physicists, which poses a challenge to the unity of the
field. En effet, the example of supersymmetry shows that what drives theoretical progress may not drive
phenomenological progress – in contrast with the expectations of the community regarding supersym-
metry prior to the LHC as surveyed by Mättig and Stöltzner (2019, 2020) – and developments in these
subcultures may become quite orthogonal.

Bien sûr, supersymmetry is not the only channel of coordination between the theoretical and phe-
nomenological cultures in their search for “new physics”. Another channel, par exemple, has been the
notion of extra dimensions (see Figures 6 et 7), which dominated trades in the early 2000s to an ex-
tent we did not expect before conducting this analysis. Extra-dimensions are required by string theory,
but they are also subject to trades with phenomenologists interested in their observable consequences.
Cependant, no evidence for extra-dimensions was found at the LHC. This further supports that the goals
that drive theoretical research programs such as string theory (like the search for a quantum description
of gravity) may not serve the phenomenologists’ agenda so well.

20052010201510−210−1P(bk=1|trade)extradimensionlowenergystandardmodelblackholescalarﬁeld200520102015P(bk=1|trade)supersymmetricgaugesupersymmetricstandardsupersymmetrictheorysupersymmetricyang-millssupersymmetricmodel

Lucas Gautheron 1,2, Elisa Omodei 3

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figue. 7 Inside the trading zone: probability that certain keywords appear in the abstract of a phenomeno-
logical paper involved in a trade (a theoretical paper citing a phenomenological paper). To the left, the five
keywords are those with the highest peak probability of occurrence; À droite, are the five keywords with the high-
est probability of occurrence among supersymmetry related keywords. Redundant keywords (which normalized pointwise
mutual information with a more frequent keyword exceeds 0.9) are excluded.

Eventually, the LHC provided “a test of the unity of physics”30, and its verdict was ruthless. Dans
l'avenir, will the field strive to regain unity (possibly to the detriment of certain research programs),
or will the socially entrenched divergences between these “cultures” of high-energy physics prevail? Nous
may assume that the challenge is merely transitory, and that theorists will eventually move to other
theories which will be more successful from an empirical or phenomenological standpoint. Cependant, le
divergence between these theoretical cultures has become axiological (Camilleri & Ritson, 2015; Laudan,
1984), in the sense that they prioritize different epistemic goals31; and this divergence may persist as
long as their differences in aims persist; as Galison puts it, “there is no teleological drive towards ever-
greater cohesion”, and “fields previously bound [may] fall apart” (Galison, 1997, p. 805). As illustrated in
Chiffre 1, the aims of the theorists is to achieve the unification of the fundamental forces and a coherent
theory of quantum gravity. Par contre, the aim of phenomenologists is to guide the experiment towards
promising directions where evidence of “new physics” may be found. Both these aims may seem well-
founded; cependant, there is no reason to expect that a simultaneous solution can be worked out. Le
apparent failure of supersymmetry to provide such a simultaneous solution does not undermine by itself
the relevance of the “theorists”’ aims, nor does it undermine the methodology they deploy for addressing
their goals (e.g. their trust in certain theoretical constraints, cf. Galison 1995). It does, cependant, challenge
the belief that such methods can provide grounds for progress to the field as a whole; en effet, unification
and quantum gravity might eventually not provide much reliable guidance to the experimental side.
Inversement, it can very well be that the details of the theory “at high energy”, where quantum effects
matter to gravity, cannot be extrapolated from our knowledge of the low-energy theory, c'est à dire. the one
that we can probe in our experiments. Par conséquent, Dawid (2013) argues for recourse to meta-empirical
assessment of theories in theoretical physics, given that empirical input under-determines the directions

30 Wilson (1986, p. 29) (cited in Cat 1998, p. 292) used this expression in reference to the now aborted Super-Conducting
Supercollider, also in reference to supersymmetry.
31 Laudan (1984) refers to disagreements in the goals of scientific inquiry as axiological disagreements. Camilleri and
Ritson 2015, par exemple, have argued that certain controversies around string theory could be understood in terms as an
instance of axiological disagreement.

20052010201510−310−210−1P(bk=1|trade)darkmattergaugeinteractionweakscalestandardmodelextradimension200520102015P(bk=1|trade)supersymmetricparticlesoftsupersymmetrysupersymmetricmodelsupersymmetrictheorysupersymmetricstandard

How research programs come apart: the example of supersymmetry and the disunity of physics

of potential progress in quantum gravity. Disagreements in the aims of a scientific enterprise may not
always be resolved on purely epistemic ground, and a resolution, provided it occurs, may involve some
sort of negotiation instead. As long as theorists believe in the feasibility of their aims, they may pursue
these aims even if it further isolates them from other cultures32. Alternativement, they could decide that
the schism should be resolved; as Galison puts it, distinct scientific cultures “can […] understand that the
continuation of exchange is a prerequisite to the survival of the larger culture of which they are part”
(Galison, 1997, p. 803). Entre-temps, the trading zone between theory and phenomenology is shifting from
collider physics to astrophysics (whether it concerns dark matter, black-holes, or the early universe).

5.3 Trading zones as a mean to sustain diversity

Plus généralement, the example of HEP and supersymmetry demonstrates how disunity can be endogenously
produced in the fabric of science. Even initially tightly bound scientific cultures can diverge into quite
distinct and autonomous programs, with different ontologies, methodologies and aims, as new domains
of inquiry open up (e.g. quantum gravity) and warrant new modes of knowing. The extent of the co-
ordination between disciplines will in general depend on epistemic factors (depending on how fruitful
certain “trades” turn out to be), but also on non-epistemic factors: par exemple, it may depend on the
institutional setting, or whether such exchanges are incentivized or “coerced” (Collins et al., 2010).

Paradoxically, it can be noted that trading zones can stabilize the heterogeneity of cultures within a
field, by sustaining the practitioners’ beliefs that, in spite of the large differences in what they are doing,
their respective efforts somehow support each other. If that is the case, there is no perceived need for a
profound re-alignment of their respective practice. Trading zones can contribute, donc, to a mutual
process of legitimization of heterogeneous scientific practices, which is not necessarily tantamount to
further ontological unity. In order to further emphasize that, it is useful to come back to the example
of HEP, and most particularly that of string theory, a highly theoretical research program driven by
the pursuit of a consistent theory of quantum gravity. String theorists such as Matt Strassler have
argued that even if string theory did not directly provide testable predictions to phenomenologists and
experimentalists, it generated mathematical tools that could be useful to their practice, e.g. for predicting
the behavior of quark-gluon plasma (Ritson, 2021). Consequently phenomenologists may have a low
appraisal of string theory in terms of its ability to generate models for testing its assumptions about
nature, while still recognizing the usefulness of what string theorists do for them, since some of their
work is effectively “applicable”. As Ritson and Camilleri (2015) put it, “if string theory has proved so
useful for branches of physics whose scientific status is not in question, it can be argued it forms a
legitimate part of physics”. Supersymmetry itself may be experiencing the same fate, considering that
“supersymmetry as a tool for exploring gauge dynamics at strong coupling […] is taking precedence
over phenomenology” (Shifman 2020, p. 7–8). Such trades do support the usefulness of the theoretical
program to other endeavors, without necessarily implying further integration of the subcultures of HEP
(ontological unity); just like successful interdisciplinary work does not necessarily amount to further
integration of disciplines (Grüne-Yanoff, 2016).

5.4 Limitations and future work

Before concluding we would like to hint at several directions for future work that could overcome certain
limitations of the present methodology and further inform the question of the disunity of science.

D'abord, none of our semantic methods distinguished between different kinds of words, c'est à dire. which words
refer to, say, méthodes (such as computation techniques) rather than entities (e.g. strings, particles, etc.).
It would be interesting to evaluate to what extent the coordination between theoretical cultures in-
volves ontological or mere methodological trades, depending on whether the constructs of high-theory
are referred to as the proper description of nature or as mere mathematical tools, and how this may
have changed throughout time. This might uncover evidence for a shift from an ontological to a more

32 More drastically, Cao and Schweber (1993) expressed the view that the theories at different energy scales (c'est à dire. corre-
sponding to different ranges of phenomena) are irreducible, and they argued for a “pluralist view of possible theoretical
ontologies” while challenging the possibility of achieving a “ultimate stable theory of everything” (p. 69–71). According to
this view, the plurality of ontologies in physics is not an accident but the result of partially disconnected “phenomenological
domains” through which knowledge cannot be deduced from one another. For criticisms of this view, see Castellani 2002
and Rivat and Grinbaum 2020.

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Lucas Gautheron 1,2, Elisa Omodei 3

methodological coordination between the subcultures of high-energy physics, as the arguments for su-
persymmetry and string theory as “tools” rather than accurate accounts of the natural world suggest.

Another direction of future work involves the topic model approach. Although the topic model used
in this work yielded seemingly acceptable results overall, some topics were diﬀicult to interpret. In that
respect, we made several improvements compared to previous works, by training the model on not just
single words but also n-grams matching specific and presumably semantically informative syntactic pat-
terns and by informing our interpretation of topics using correlations with a standard classification (rather
than the top-words only). Encore, further improvements could be made. D'abord, vocabulary selection could
be enhanced by a better handling of mathematical expressions, for instance by parsing LaTeX formulas.
The NLTK library picked up some of these expressions, and since they captured some information about
the documents, we did not exclude them from the vocabulary; cependant, this way of proceeding does not
preserve the underlying mathematical structure, although it may be valuable to distinguish references
à, say, specific particles, or certain symmetry groups, based on their mathematical notations. We may
also want the model to learn to discard uninformative words such as “result”, “parameter”, “model”,
etc.. In our case, we found such vague words to be clustered in three topics that we labeled as “jargon”
which correlated very poorly with the standard classification (see Tables S1 and S2), but they should
ideally not emerge as distinct topics on par with more meaningful topics. To this end, we may want to
build on Griﬀiths et al. 2004, which provides a model that is able to distinguish between “semantic” and
purely “syntactic” clusters of words without prior knowledge of the language. A more critical limitation
of topic models pertains to the challenge of hyper-parameters’ tuning, considering it is unclear which
performance metric should be maximized in the process. Although we proposed a procedure for choosing
these parameters that accounts for known limitations to the reliability of perplexity or topic coherence
metrics, non-parametric methods may provide a better answer to this fundamental issue (Gerlach et al.,
2018).

Enfin, the historical scope of our analysis was limited by our database. En particulier, we were only
able to analyze the theory/phenomenology divide over a restricted time range (1980–2020), and we could
not reveal how such a divide has historically emerged. Par contre, Galison has proposed a number of
explanations for the earlier decoupling of theory and experiment, such as increased specialization and
the increased time-scales of experiments (Galison, 1987, p. 138).

Acknowledgements We would like to thank Olivier Darrigol for his extremely insightful comments regarding the concept
of trading zones; Arianna Borrelli for commenting on the work that led to this publication; Thomas Heinze and Radin
Dardashti for their comments and continuous support; Alexander Blum for his consideration and his suggestions; et
Elizabeth Zanghi for her corrections. Enfin, we thank all reviewers for their in-depth comments.

Funding

The authors acknowledge support from the Open Access Publication Fund of the University of Wuppertal.

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Data availability

All the data and code used to derive the results of this paper can be accessed from the following reposi-
tory using the DataLad software (Halchenko et al., 2021): https://github.com/lucasgautheron/trading_zones_
matériel. A permanent archive of the code is available at the following URL: https://doi.org/10.5281/
zenodo.7970559.

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