An area of
study within metascience that examines everything that exists within and between the sciences—the relationships, interactions, boundaries, and exchanges that connect different scientific disciplines and communities. Mesoscience asks how knowledge flows across fields, how methods translate between disciplines, how boundaries are maintained or crossed, and how interdisciplinary
work actually happens. It studies the space between sciences: the collaborations that succeed, the translations that
fail, the concepts that migrate, and the practices that remain
local. Mesoscience reveals that
science is not a unified enterprise but a complex ecosystem of interacting communities, each with its own culture, methods, and standards—and that understanding science requires understanding these interactions.
Example: "His mesoscience
research traced how a concept from
physics migrated into
biology, transforming along the way. The idea changed, the methods changed, and the communities changed—that's what happens in the space between sciences."
