First of all, it is important to understand that academic subjects in general do not exist. This is a very important point. Academic subjects do not exist, but are instituted by universities. They are instituted by universities because universities have to pay their professors. And in order to pay their professors they have to appoint them. And so there has to be a certain fiction that one appoints a person who is an expert in a subject. And since he is supposed to be an expert in a subject, the subject itself must somehow exist. But all of this is a fiction. What really exist are problems—not subjects but problems. And when someone is interested in a problem and wants to solve it, then there is something that is really serious. Subjects, like history or economics, are merely conveniences for university administrators: they are really more or less arbitrarily chosen collections of problems that have been ordered merely for the purpose of administering universities and examining students!a function that I think a university should not fulfil, though that is another matter.
- Karl Popper: Lecture on the Scientific Method
