Sophontology

The study of the sentient and intelligent (sophont) beings that populate the galaxy is known as Sophontology. Among only a few of the many divisions and specialised fields of study of this science are:

anthropology - the study of hominid bionts (of interest mostly on;y to baseline and nearbaseline hu, and specialists from other clades and categories)
biontology - the study of bionts and biont societies
cultural sophontology - the comparative study of sophont societies
developmental sophontology - the study of the various means by which natural and artificial life-forms evolve intelligence
evolutionary sophontology - the evolution of sophont beings
palaeosophontology - the study of the ancient or extinct sophonts and civilizations
physical sophontology - the study of the physiological makeup of intelligent life
psychology - the study of mind, including of intelligence (cognitive psychology)
systematic sophontology - the systematic arrangement of the various types and categories of sophont beings
toposophic sophontology - the study of transapient sophonts
toposophy - the nature of toposophic states
vecology - the study of vecs and vec societies
xenology - the study of non-terragen sophonts

Each of these fields of knowledge can in turn be divided into numerous specialised subdisciplines.

The diversity of sophont beings is great indeed. Some schools of systematic sophontology classify sophonts taxonomically in terms of kingdom, origin, category, and clade. These can be explained as follows:

Kingdom in this context refers to Toposophic kingdom or singularity. Each higher toposophic constitutes a new and more encompassing and potent mode of functioning. The situation is even more complex when one considers dendrotoposophy, a branching series of toposophic states.

Origin refers to where the sentient originated, whether terragen or belonging to one of a large number of xenobiont evolutions, or a hybrid of the two. Several dozen unique and fully sophont origins are known within the terragen sphere alone. There is no evidence of any "progenitor race" so it is assumed that intelligence arises spontaneously whenever conditions are right.

Category/Phyle constitutes one of the major functional divisions of sentient beings, the way in which intelligence varies according to its embodied medium or substrate. Although borders between categories vary according to interpretation, most schemas have about half a dozen major primary So:1 (sapient) categories (biont, artificial, virtual, etc), and a larger number of combined categories (cyborgs, symachinics, etc), as well as a number of specific transapient phyla (hyperturings, posthumans, etc).

Clade in this context refers to a unique evolutionary branch of mindkind, defined by having a single common ancestor or common template (or both) which serves as the distinguishing characteristics for all members of that clade. There are literally billions of different sophont clades throughout known space.

Sentience, Sapience, Sophonce -a disambiguation page concerning these related terms

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Design Notes: the term sophont was coined by Poul Anderson and dates to at least 1963 [ref Eric S. Raymond's SF Glossary]. The term has been used many times since [ref Science Fiction Citations for the OED], perhaps first by David Brin (Sundiver, 1980). Hence sophontology. The terms Sophont and Sophontology were also adopted with a few further developments by Marc Miller and his co-workers in their roleplaying game Traveller. The terms "sophont" "sapient", and "sentient" are briefly defined in Trent Shipley's on-line Galactic Library (database derived from David Brin's Uplift universe). MAK felt these terms to be preferable to the more widely used but ambiguous term "sentient", since "sophont" (as defined above) specifically implies a sapient, self-aware being.