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This article describes robotics as one of the formal sciences. Is this description incorrect? Jarble ( talk) 04:46, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
This, in my humble opinion, would be a splendid addition to the article. Although the article does dedicate a section to the history of formal sciences, the article has no section on the history of the term and conception. If I ever find an authoritative source or a few about this, I'll be sure to cite it and summarize its content in the article, but I'd hope that someone else might have an idea as to how and what to look for. This usage of the adjective "formal" can clearly be traced as far back as Plato's doctrine on " Forms", but Plato's contemporaries did not differentiate between formal and empirical sciences. Therefore, I suspect that the phrase "formal sciences," as a unified lexical item and a term of arts, did not begin appearing in literary circulation until much later, plausibly the late 19th or 20th century, when significant paradigmatic shifts occurred in the philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science, especially within the positivist context of early analytic philosophy. Arthur E. Stewart ( talk) 15:55, 15 August 2020 (UTC)
Assuming that the term formal sciences can be established as a de facto standard, the word formal seems (to me, at least) to be unavoidably loaded towards the view of mathematics put forward by Hilbert and others, known as formalism. Moreover, the text seems to echo that view, perhaps through endeavouring to be faithful to the literal elements of the title. It omits alternative views on the Philosophy of Mathematics such as the importance of intuition expressed by L. E. J. Brouwer and Henri Poincaré. The final sentence seems especially contentious within mathematics. Eg. it contradicts Kant when it claims that "theories in formal sciences contain no synthetic statements; all their statements are analytic."
Baldly stating that maths is a priori (in this case in harmony with Kant and many others) might give the reader the disempowering impression that maths is necessarily divinely ordained, rather than a human endeavour with messy origins in such unelevated concerns as taxation, gambling, eugenics and warfare (I'm ranting a bit). It also conflicts with the natural realism of the philosopher Quine who (I believe) viewed maths as part and parcel of the empirical sciences, thereby standing or falling alongside them. Stanford's article on Non-Deductive Methods is also a good source for an alternative view. NeilOnWiki ( talk) 16:30, 9 November 2020 (UTC) (PS: I realise this isn't a philosophy page! NeilOnWiki ( talk) 16:33, 9 November 2020 (UTC))
Does it include Data Science? I'm not Formalist but am okay with 'formal science' term (and kind of like it) though as someone criticized, there might be better future terms. Should Scientific formalism link here and vice versa?-- dchmelik ( t| c) 11:14, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
A large amount of this article was not only unreferenced but also, in my view, likely false. The history of "formal science" as a discipline, per the "philosopher's stone" paper linked in the references, likely only dates back to the 1950s, so the claims that it dates back to Ancient Sumer were too preposterous to be salvageable.
Given the number of other editors who have raised objections over the years, and the complete lack of work done to address the issues over more than a decade, I believe that none of this should be reinstated without references to independent, secondary sources. - car chasm ( talk) 18:38, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
What is the purpose of this quote? How is Einstein's opinion that mathematics is "absolute" and "certain" relevant to the approach regarding it distinct from other sciences not because of this but because it is formal? 24.56.247.67 ( talk) 02:08, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
MathematicsAndStatistics and Mathematics and statistics and Mathematics and Statistics both redirect here. Jusr removing the hatnote notice does not change that fact. You have to change the redirects if you think this "strange" result should not redirect here. Removing the hatnote just makes readers who arrived via these redirects even more confused. The article is targetted by these redirects through a WP:RFD redirects for discussion closure on 5 October 2023. So changing this requires a new RFD or a WP:DRV discussion review -- 65.92.247.66 ( talk) 22:18, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
I see that cryptography was deleted as being a branch of computer science. This appears wrong; ciphers, cryptograms, cryptography and cryptology has existed since ancient times, long before electronic computers. -- 65.92.247.66 ( talk) 07:10, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Formal science article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1 |
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This article describes robotics as one of the formal sciences. Is this description incorrect? Jarble ( talk) 04:46, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
This, in my humble opinion, would be a splendid addition to the article. Although the article does dedicate a section to the history of formal sciences, the article has no section on the history of the term and conception. If I ever find an authoritative source or a few about this, I'll be sure to cite it and summarize its content in the article, but I'd hope that someone else might have an idea as to how and what to look for. This usage of the adjective "formal" can clearly be traced as far back as Plato's doctrine on " Forms", but Plato's contemporaries did not differentiate between formal and empirical sciences. Therefore, I suspect that the phrase "formal sciences," as a unified lexical item and a term of arts, did not begin appearing in literary circulation until much later, plausibly the late 19th or 20th century, when significant paradigmatic shifts occurred in the philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science, especially within the positivist context of early analytic philosophy. Arthur E. Stewart ( talk) 15:55, 15 August 2020 (UTC)
Assuming that the term formal sciences can be established as a de facto standard, the word formal seems (to me, at least) to be unavoidably loaded towards the view of mathematics put forward by Hilbert and others, known as formalism. Moreover, the text seems to echo that view, perhaps through endeavouring to be faithful to the literal elements of the title. It omits alternative views on the Philosophy of Mathematics such as the importance of intuition expressed by L. E. J. Brouwer and Henri Poincaré. The final sentence seems especially contentious within mathematics. Eg. it contradicts Kant when it claims that "theories in formal sciences contain no synthetic statements; all their statements are analytic."
Baldly stating that maths is a priori (in this case in harmony with Kant and many others) might give the reader the disempowering impression that maths is necessarily divinely ordained, rather than a human endeavour with messy origins in such unelevated concerns as taxation, gambling, eugenics and warfare (I'm ranting a bit). It also conflicts with the natural realism of the philosopher Quine who (I believe) viewed maths as part and parcel of the empirical sciences, thereby standing or falling alongside them. Stanford's article on Non-Deductive Methods is also a good source for an alternative view. NeilOnWiki ( talk) 16:30, 9 November 2020 (UTC) (PS: I realise this isn't a philosophy page! NeilOnWiki ( talk) 16:33, 9 November 2020 (UTC))
Does it include Data Science? I'm not Formalist but am okay with 'formal science' term (and kind of like it) though as someone criticized, there might be better future terms. Should Scientific formalism link here and vice versa?-- dchmelik ( t| c) 11:14, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
A large amount of this article was not only unreferenced but also, in my view, likely false. The history of "formal science" as a discipline, per the "philosopher's stone" paper linked in the references, likely only dates back to the 1950s, so the claims that it dates back to Ancient Sumer were too preposterous to be salvageable.
Given the number of other editors who have raised objections over the years, and the complete lack of work done to address the issues over more than a decade, I believe that none of this should be reinstated without references to independent, secondary sources. - car chasm ( talk) 18:38, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
What is the purpose of this quote? How is Einstein's opinion that mathematics is "absolute" and "certain" relevant to the approach regarding it distinct from other sciences not because of this but because it is formal? 24.56.247.67 ( talk) 02:08, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
MathematicsAndStatistics and Mathematics and statistics and Mathematics and Statistics both redirect here. Jusr removing the hatnote notice does not change that fact. You have to change the redirects if you think this "strange" result should not redirect here. Removing the hatnote just makes readers who arrived via these redirects even more confused. The article is targetted by these redirects through a WP:RFD redirects for discussion closure on 5 October 2023. So changing this requires a new RFD or a WP:DRV discussion review -- 65.92.247.66 ( talk) 22:18, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
I see that cryptography was deleted as being a branch of computer science. This appears wrong; ciphers, cryptograms, cryptography and cryptology has existed since ancient times, long before electronic computers. -- 65.92.247.66 ( talk) 07:10, 20 February 2024 (UTC)