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I find the introductory section to "Scientific practice" confusing. For reference, I cut and past it here:
1. First, do we need this quote by Bacon? Maybe something has gotten lost in translation through time, but to my reading it is kind of silly. If you begin with doubt, you end with certainty? Really? One might think that one could start with doubt and still end up with doubt.
2. Then, the first paragraph: First sentence is hard to understand: "A skeptical point of view, demanding a method of proof, was the practical position taken ...". I'm not sure what that means. Also who is demanding "proof"? What is so "practical" about this? My confusion with what is written extends all the way to the last sentence: "The use of measurements, for example, is a practical approach to settle disputes in the community." Who is to say anybody would be satisified using measurement to settle a dispute? Maybe I'm missing something here, is all of this text some sort of quote from a famous text, one where the context has been spelled out, or maybe a translation from some other language?
3. Next paragraph, first sentence: "Ziman points out that intersubjective pattern recognition is fundamental to the creation of all scientific knowledge." Maybe I have to go read about " intersubjective pattern recognition" to understand this. Then, there is a reference to Needham 1954, where the reader is actually pointed to an illustration on a page facing 164. It seems to me to ask a lot for a reader of Wiki to actually track that down and have a look.
For discussion, here, I suggest that all of this material in the introductory section be removed. Isambard Kingdom ( talk) 01:37, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
Back to Faraday: the italized part of the following quote is emblazoned on a rafter of one of my schools: "Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature; and in such things as these experiment is the best test of such consistency.
Laboratory journal entry #10,040 (19 March 1849)" When the group of us were building this article 10 years ago, our hope was we might attract others, that we might work alongside them, and (speaking as one of the group, because this was all unvoiced) that Faraday's practices could still work. I have no problem with rewrite. Let's do this. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 13:45, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
Ancheta, can I suggest that we get comments on this section from a larger community of editors. I've never before put in an RFC, but maybe that would be worthwhile. Isambard Kingdom ( talk) 15:09, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
I just realized that outline of science could be placed at Draft talk:science page as a template/scaffold for the outline of the draft page. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 18:31, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
So, @ User: Isambard Kingdom, I can still remove the text under Draft: Science page#Science practice to remove distracting elements. OK?
In that vein, I think/believe any item in draft space is fair game for change. OK? -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 19:46, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
Think it's important to mention they were wrong. That said Aristotle is the name that matters from his day down to modern science. It is his theories and methods that inspire others and this is reported by every source on the subject. Ptolemy was also a giant in pre modern science his system was the ruling one down to Copernicus. Galen (and Hippocrates via Galen) was also a major player. J8079s ( talk) 20:46, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
There is more, of course, in exhaustive detail which was extremely convincing to Christendom. In fact, by the 1400s Alhacen was preached from the pulpits.
I guess I ought to poll for backup while redressing the imbalance. I will use, as general theme
Would anyone else care to watch over my fixes to Alhazen? We might need backup there. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 17:17, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
If we were to count previous sections as Spiral 0: #History of optics and its position in the development of science, Spiral 1: #Pre-Modern "science", and this section as Spiral 2 (where I use a constructivist methodology), then I propose that this article 'walk back' some claims, using the guidance of A. Mark Smith's citations (e.g., Smith 2001):
Ancheta, I appreciate your interest in the history of science. Would this attention also be well-directed at the page on the History of science? Isambard Kingdom ( talk) 20:50, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
Problems pointed out by Smith:
Proposed updates to fix
Citations
As Spiral 3, I propose to instantiate these changes in the Medieval science section, where they might well be moved to child pages upon consensus.
OK? --
Ancheta Wis
(talk
| contribs)
00:23, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
Those of you interested in this page might also check out the Nature page. If you ask me, that page is a challenge, and I'm not convinced that it is properly balanced for content, but it should be somehow complementary to this page on Science. Can this be discussed here (and/or there)? Isambard Kingdom ( talk) 14:41, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
Possibly relevant to this discussion is that some years ago the Nature article was split, and the material considered too philosophical was moved to Nature (philosophy).-- Andrew Lancaster ( talk) 08:50, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
There is a misleading sentence in the Renaissance section: "All aspects of scholasticism were criticized in the 15th and 16th centuries; one author who was notoriously persecuted was Galileo, who made innovative use of experiment and mathematics. " I wouldn't call Galileo a scholastic. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 01:12, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
Hi There,
There is a paper about developing a process model of science (or scientific study) by Luk, R.W.P.[1]. Perhaps, it is worth citing this paper and mentioning that science can be modeled in the Wiki Science Page!
[1] Luk, R.W.P. (2010) Understanding scientific study via process modeling. Foundations of Science 15(1): 49-78.
Angelababy00 ( talk) 04:05, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
First, I appreciate that other editors are using the JSTOR citations. This note is further explanation of a statement which is disputed, namely that Alhacen had an Aristotelian viewpoint, which was orthodoxy for his time. I quote from Smith, A. Mark (1981), "Getting the Big Picture in Perspectivist Optics" Isis 72(4) (Dec., 1981). via JSTOR: p.580 (Use the thumbnails to navigate)
"... the perspectivists had it both ways. They could exploit Aristotle's causal analysis. ... Yet by reducing that analysis to microscopic scale, they were able to exploit the ray model."
The Perspectivists got their optics from Alhacen. Alhacen was the authoritative Latin text for optics from c.1220-1230. It was cited in Bartolomeo Anglicus' De proprietatibus rerum (On the Property of Things) to 1604 (when Kepler overturned its model of vision). Alhacen's sources were 'the philosophers' (Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates), 'the mathematicians' (Ptolemy & Euclid), and 'the healers' (Galen). Alhacen lived 200 years before the Perspectivists. But he fit right into their views: His Book III p573 2.25 "Moreover everything we have discussed can be tested so that we will attain certainty over it."
In other words, Alhacen used Aristotle's empirical, inductive method and also Ptolemy & Euclid's deductive, logical method to learn. Galen's discovery of the optic chiasm directly affected an experiment of both Ptolemy & Alhacen. Alhacen used what he learned to disprove Ptolemy's theory of vision. He used Aristotle's forms to model the optical image, and to justify the fact that we see things right-side up, which Kepler disproved. That was the end of Aristotle's forms.
I think this suffices to show that Alhacen furthered the Aristotelian viewpoint, at least til 1604. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 14:57, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
Here is a citation to remind us that Alhacen was a true advocate for experimental method:
Optics book 7, chapter 2, para [2.2]: p.220 via JSTOR says to round off a bronze register plate with a lathe, and to grind it down.
Note the technology that he had 1000 years ago, near, or at, Cairo's Al Azhar university, Smith says, all in support of the optics of refraction: mechanism, glass-blowing, metalwork. [All the technical details that Aristotle preferred not to mention as below the class of a man of leisure, Alhacen forthrightly mentions. An Italian contributor to this page, from over 5 years ago, notes, in the same way, a visit to the museums of Rome will reveal plumbing parts in the displays that look like 'modern' items, except that they are thousands of years old, and made of plumbum (lead).]
And the Europeans were listening; witness Durer's man with a Lute, using taut strings to model optical raytracing, Vesalius' accurate engraving of a brain (far more detailed anatomy than even Alhacen's diagrams of the optic chiasm from 500 years before), perhaps most importantly, there were dozens of scholars (Smith counts 23 manuscripts), using a common language and heritage, studying his work, so a critical mass was in place. The diagrams differed in the manuscripts, and Smith was able to pick from an array of diagrams for his critical edition. That is one of the difficulties for the Arabic-to-English critical edition, not enough texts survive to choose from, in order to produce Books 4, 5, 6, 7. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 15:11, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
There is a request for comment about capitalization of the word universe at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Capitalization of universe - request for comment. Please participate. SchreiberBike talk 00:47, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
I think the previous definition of science in the wiki page is inaccurate to say that science is an enterprise that organizes and build knowledge in the form of explanations and predictions. I think the knowledge is in the form of theories and models rather than the outcomes like explanation and prediction. A (scientific) theory cannot be an explanation because it does not have the context to specify the explanation. For example, Newton's second law: F = ma, what is the explanation? There is no context for F=ma. One has to create an experiment to specify the context of F=ma, then it can explain things. I think the general statement is more like a property that people can use to build mechanical models. When we apply the theory to specify the model, then some statements in the theory may be able to explain the situation. Therefore, a (scientific) theory cannot be an explanation. Also, how can science be about prediction knowledge? A prediction is only applicable after the situation is known, so you would need to build or specify a model in order to arrive at a prediction that you can test in the experiment.
Angelababy00 ( talk) 08:09, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
In the Middle East during the medieval period foundations for scientific method were laid. [1] [2] [3] [4] Moorrests ( talk) 03:28, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
As far as I understand isn't Ibn al-Haytham the first person to conduct reproducible experiments and gather data from them as far as the historical records goes that have survived. This is the first step toward scientific method and it is ~200 years before Roger Bacon. I have provided five historians of science who back this fact. They all have advance degrees in history of science. Moorrests ( talk) 03:05, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
y 2015 (UTC)
Alhacen's Theory of Visual Perception: A Critical Edition, with ..., Book I 91 Volume 1
Alhacen book I, II, III
But Ptolemy's comments are briefer with not as much 'this means that' ... as Alhacen. This might be due to Admiral Eugene's lack of facility with Latin. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 06:39, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
yes, after all, it is Smith who is doing all the work here. And Lindberg etc. Before JSTOR we couldn't get to the good citations. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 06:52, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
The evidence for Ptolemy's experiments will be in these sources. It's going to have to be each historian, one by one, in turn: I found one of them, for example in HENDRIX, John, and Charles H. CARMAN. (Eds.) Renaissance Theories of Vision. (x + 245 pp.; ill.; bibl.; index.) Farnham, Surrey, England; Burlington,
VT: Ashgate, 2010. ISBN: 9781409400240. Contents: John S. HENDRIX and Charles H. CARMAN, “Introduction,” 1–10; Nader EL-BIZRI, “Classical Optics and the Perspectivae Traditions Leading to the Renaissance,” 11–30 [ref. 909];
Hendrix and Carman might be OK for a review sentence of El-Bizri's contribution.
But JSTOR has a moving wall protecting the more recent publications, like this one. Someone is going to have to get to a library with access to it. Then post the relevant passage in a quote, to allow discoverability for the global user, to be able to use it in an article. See all the Smith citations; you can actually read content by using the links. Use the thumbnails to get to each relevant page to read it. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 12:59, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
I just remembered: in Fred Hoyle (1955) Frontiers of Astronomy there is a large photograph showing grass-skirted tribesmen in Borneo using a native version of a gnomon to determine whether it was the right day of year to plant their crops. That is a citation which documents a reproducible experimental procedure which is clearly thousands of years old. And there are Egyptian sundials which are 3500 years old. (Caution: to get the time of day, you have to know your latitude, a detail which was forgotten when a Chinese observatory was moved during the Ming dynasty, rendering the astronomical instruments useless. ( Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China) ) -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 13:42, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
History_of_science#Islamic_world: —
- Muslim scientists placed far greater emphasis on experiment than had the Greeks. [1] This led to an early scientific method being developed in the Muslim world, where significant progress in methodology was made, beginning with the experiments of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) on optics from c. 1000, in his Book of Optics. The law of refraction of light was known to the Persians. [2] The most important development of the scientific method was the use of experiments to distinguish between competing scientific theories set within a generally empirical orientation, which began among Muslim scientists. Ibn al-Haytham is also regarded as the father of optics, especially for his empirical proof of the intromission theory of light. Some have also described Ibn al-Haytham as the "first scientist" for his development of the modern scientific method. [3]
Moorrests ( talk) 17:02, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
I took this out again WP:Undue weight
During the [[middle ages]] foundations for [[scientific method]] were laid in the [[middle east]].<ref group=nb> "Arab scientists, using Indian, Iranian, and Syrian sources as well as their own genius, revised the Greek sciences, transforming them into the Islamic sciences, that historically served as the main basis for what little science there was in Western Europe in the twelfth and following centuries ..." p.555, [http://www.jstor.org/stable/234257 Pingree, David (Dec., 1992) "Hellenophilia versus the History of Science" ''Isis'' '''83''' (4) , pp. 554-563 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society via JSTOR] *[[Nader El-Bizri|El-Bizri, Nader]], "A Philosophical Perspective on Ibn al-Haytham's Optics", ''[[Arabic Sciences and Philosophy]]'' '''15''' (2005-08-05), 189–218 *[[Kenan Malik|Malik, Kenan]] (2010-10-22). "Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science, By Jim Al-Khalili". The Independent. Retrieved 2014-10-22. *[[Nomanul Haq|Haq, Syed]] (2009). "Science in Islam". Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages. ISSN 1703-7603. Retrieved 2014-10-22. *[[A. I. Sabra|Sabra, A. I.]] (1989). The Optics of Ibn al-Haytham. Books I–II–III: On Direct Vision. London: The Warburg Institute, University of London. pp. 25–29. ISBN 0-85481-072-2.</ref>
Consensus is against this in the lead J8079s ( talk) 18:27, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
Pingree is a WP:Fringe source, self declared. It looks like a good source for source mining.
For the sciences I study are those related to the stars, and they include not only various astronomies and the different mathematical theories they employ, but also astral omens, astrology, magic, medicine, and law(dharmasaistra)All of these subjects,I would argue,were or are sciences within the contexts of the cultures in which they once flourishedor now are practiced. As such they deserve to be studied by historians of science with as serious and thorough apurposeasarethetopicsthatwe usuallyfinddiscussedin history of science classrooms or in the pages of Isis. This means that their intel- lectual content must be probed deeply, and not simply dismissed as rubbish or interpreted in the light of modern historical mythology;and that the intellectual content must be relatedto the culture that produced and nourished each, and to the social context within which each arose and developed
We will need to wait until they are studied and published. His article does not support the text as written and in the big picture of "science" WP:Undue weight in the mean time WP:Assume Good Faith J8079s ( talk) 23:22, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
Moonrest the section you say you are summarizing was added by /info/en/?search=User_talk:Teaksmitty a sock of /info/en/?search=User_talk:Batsgasps#Sockpuppet_investigation who made this same edit at /info/en/?search=Talk:Scientific_method/Archive_21#Sockpuppetry_by_Batsgasps where it is discussed. J8079s ( talk) 22:56, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
By the diagrammatic title I mean to suggest that just as the development of optics has illuminated the development of science, so too can the development of medicine. There are some parallels:
When Galen studied medicine, he studied with the Empiricist physicians, the Logicist (also called Dogmatist) physicians, and the Methodists. Note the parallels with scientific thought and thinkers.
A medicine-related digest of Isidore of Seville's 20-volume Etymologiae (via JSTOR) is available. This digest and translation is by William D. Sharpe (1964) on "Isidore of Seville: The Medical Writings. An English Translation with an Introduction and Commentary" Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 54(2), pp. 1-75. Published by: American Philosophical Society http://www.jstor.org/stable/1005938
Sharpe starts with the Dark Ages in Western Europe, and the compression of scholarship down to Latin encyclopedias, and the loss of Greek in Western Europe. This compression began in Roman times, and continued in medieval times.
Isidore of Seville lived just before the rise of Islam, when the various ethnicities of the Spanish principalities still included the Visigoths, and the forerunners of the Mozarabs. It was a time when the schools were for educating clergy (just as they were for Islam), and the chief scholar was the Bishop, as was Isidore. The uniform Carolingian schooling of Western Europe had not yet arisen.
Isidore's Etymologiae was a dictionary at its barest, with extended commentary for some items. He does manage to capture descriptions of some diseases, but medicines remained herbal. Isidore does denounce magic rite.
-- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 16:18, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
If we use the older definition of science, would engineering be classified as a science? One of the well known philosopher of science, Dr Chalmer, wrote a book called "what is this thing called science?" I guess even the expert has some difficulties here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Angelababy00 ( talk • contribs) 13:17, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
It seems that this Science wiki page does not say anything about applied science. Is applied science a science? If so, we may need to change the "builds and organizes knowledge in the form of explanations and predictions" to "builds, organizes and applies knowledge in the form of explanations? and predictions?". I think it sounds odd to apply explanations and apply predictions. I think it is better to apply theories and models to produce explanations, predictions and solves problems etc 223.18.108.48 ( talk) 13:07, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
According to the Science wikipedia web page, the first sentence defines science as the enterprise that builds or organizes knowledge ... about nature and the universe. Formal science may not be concerned with nature and the universe, so how does it fit to be a science according to the Science wikipedia web page? Why don't we just call it mathematics or logic? Why does it have to be some kind of science? Fundamentally, this goes back to the heading: do you know what is science?
When C. S. Peirce first wrote ' How we make our ideas clear' (1878), he listed some stages in the development of a scientific statement:
He thought about this for the next 30 years: A neglected argument is on Wikisource.
It is not helpful for us to talk past each other. Morrest stated a goal quite clearly (see the edit summaries). We should work this out. Step by step. Talking is the next stage in the protocol.
-- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 21:29, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
@ user:J8079s, to set your mind at ease, it may be helpful for you to know that Peirce studied Aristotle with his father (who was a scientist as well). Peirce was quite conversant with the classics, Greek, and Latin, as well as the nineteenth century program of science study. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 21:41, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
Given the current interdependence of science and technology, would it be useful to introduce the two in parallel--either separately or in both articles? This might also clarify the relations of pure and applied science and engineering, debated above, distinguishing the product from the enterprise. Here are possible parallel intros: SCIENCE currently means either systematic inquiry to discover general principles in special-case observations, or the stock of principles discovered by that inquiry. The word comes from the Latin word scientia, which meant “knowledge”[2 in the traditional interpretation of absolutely certain truth. TECHNOLOGY currently means either systematic inquiry to discover special-case applications of scientific principles, or the stock of applications discovered by that inquiry. The word comes from the Greek τέχνη, techne, which identified the "art, skill, cunning of hand” of the handicraft workman. TBR-qed ( talk) 18:24, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
@ user:J8079s, I followed the timeline link which you suggested, and have some initial reactions:
-- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 17:27, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
Link. Sunrise ( talk) 23:20, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
The lead skips medieval science section completely. No mention of it. I think we should mention at least a sentence summarizing this important Era. What do you think? Dude9949949 ( talk) 19:32, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
Alhacen's text: And all these points become clear with experimentation
You need JSTOR. Follow the link. Click Thumbnails. Select the page for [6.38] (I think Smith uses Sabra's numbering scheme). When I just looked, it was p.367 for the thumbnails. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 20:50, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
Here is a citation for reproducibility:
Smith's work is a critical edition, both translation and commentary. Smith has characterized Alhacen's approach as "essentially hypothetico-deductive" (this is cited in the article). If you read the translation, I believe you would agree with Jim Al-Khalili, who has noted that Alhacen's Book of Optics reads like a modern science textbook of today. He might have set the style! (Alhacen was used as a text in the middle ages. Certainly students of visual perception and optics would have profitted from reading it. Kepler (1604) read the Alhacen and Witelo sections of the Risner edition. Kepler then used Giambattista della Porta's water-filled glass spheres to model the eye, with an aperture, to model the entrance pupil of the eye. Kepler, Johannes (1604) Ad Vitellionem paralipomena, quibus astronomiae pars opticae traditur (Supplements to Witelo, in which the optical part of astronomy is treated). See scientific revolution: Kepler overturned the theory of vision from medieval optics, in an example of the self-correcting character of science.)
Please see Smith's summary if all this is too long. A. Mark Smith (2004) "What is the history of Medieval Optics Really About?" via JSTOR
If you are looking for secondary or tertiary sources, they exist in abundance already (some are in the article already), especially for Alhacen. But also consider Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī's explanation of the rainbow, modelling water droplets by a water-filled glass sphere (ala Kepler), and who came after Alhacen; or Al-Farabi, who came before Alhacen, and who read Aristotle's Metaphysics 40 times without understanding it (which shows that the Islamic world sincerely accepted their Hellenist heritage), he was a student of a Christian teacher, and he was teacher of Maimonides. Also, ibn Sahl, of refraction fame. One poignant note shows up about Sabra's translation of Kitāb al-Manāẓir (Book of Optics) from Arabic: we need more scholars to help out on the English translation of books 4,5,6, and 7. The Latin scholars helped out with multiple diagrams from multiple manuscripts, which helped Smith (he counted 17 complete, with about a half-dozen fragments). But Sabra, now deceased, had trouble getting multiple manuscripts in Arabic. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 02:41, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
Experimental setup: See Smith's commentary, p.lxxvi (you can also use JSTOR's thumbnail tab to navigate to this page, and you can use JSTOR's 'next page'/'previous page' vertical bars which allow you to read this 819 page volume in a natural, responsive way) on the experimental setup for studying diplopia.
To put the experiment about visual perception into perspective: our eyes are part of the experimental setup, and our experience of double vision is part of the experimental data. The plaque that Alhacen describes has a notch for our nose. We move little wax pegs of different colors along specific lines on the plaque, and observe whether we see double or not. Now compare our visual perception to Alhacen's statement about its reproducibility, from Ptolemy 800 years before him, to our time, 1000 years after him: "[6.86] and this can be tried at anytime." -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 12:31, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
While Smith does say that Alhacen's method was essentially "hypothetico-deductive" else where he says; "Was Alhacen in fact following the hypothetico-deductive method in his experiments dealing with the equal-angles law of reflection and the rules governing refraction? It is difficult to imagine that he was, since all evidence suggests that he never conducted those experiments at all, or at least not as described. In addition,those experiments were designed not to test but to confirm hypotheses already accepted a priori." think that we should give as much weight to this quote. J8079s ( talk) 21:21, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
An RfC has been commenced at MOSCAPS Request for comment - Capitalise universe.
Cinderella157 ( talk) 03:23, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
I see the second sentence got removed. I can understand the reasoning. Maybe one concern with that is that our opening lines miss the word "methodical" (or similar)? Instead we DO have the word "systematic". It is tempting to replace it with methodical, but I believe we have that word because of a source we are citing.-- Andrew Lancaster ( talk) 14:48, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
Side comment. I just want to make a procedural comment on recent reversions of the 2nd sentence. I don't want to get into an edit war, but I did make one last reversion of Sunrise's reversion of my edit, on principle, to make the point that WP:BRD should not be used as a reason for reverting an edit. Reversions have to be based on a reason other than WP:BRD. In fact, if you look at the WP:BRD, it says very clearly that "BRD is not a valid excuse for reverting good-faith efforts to improve a page simply because you don't like the changes. Don't invoke BRD as your reason for reverting someone else's work or for edit warring: instead, provide a reason that is based on policies, guidelines, or common sense." As for the "original state," I did restore this article to its "original state." The second sentence was a bold edit, which I reverted, and which we are discussing. If there are administrators watching this page, any adjudication of this issue would be most welcome. danielkueh ( talk) 23:07, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
I don't mind dropping the procedural discussion. But as I'm sure you know, WP:CCC. :-)
First, I'd like to clarify which sentences we're talking about:
In the version you reverted, the second sentence was instead: "Scientific knowledge is built up methodically using experiments and observations, and resulting in proposed scientific facts, scientific models, or scientific theories." This had only been in the article for a couple of days, and I agree that it was redundant, which was why I restored the previous version instead. I'm only considering this other version, and I don't see how the reasoning you gave in the edit summary applies to it. I don't see anything that is obviously redundant, and it seems that it would have sufficient weight to be placed here. On the flow of the paragraph, of course tastes may differ in style, but I think that having so much of the first paragraph (and the second, for that matter) be about older meanings of the word "science" is itself undue (description of what science is needs to have priority; this was an issue in the previous lead as well). I also think that, for example, having no mention of scientific theories in the lead is a problem of due weight.
Those are the main points that I would make. For the broader discussion, while I agree that science is difficult to define, we should still be as concrete as we can - e.g. talking about concepts rather than words, but this applies more generally as well. I don't read the second sentence as defining science at all; I see that as having been finished in the first sentence, with the second merely relating an important fact about science: specifically, that there are several forms that scientific knowledge can take. If this is too narrow, what is being excluded? (Do we have examples of scientific knowledge that was not in some sense gained via the scientific method - bearing in mind that the definition of the scientific method is itself extremely flexible? We have examples such as Kekulé's dream that inspired him about the structure of benzene, but I assume that we couldn't have called it scientific knowledge until it was empirically verified - before then, it was just a thought.)
I would also note that when I read the term "scientific model," I read it in the sense of Bohr model. To take psychology as an example, searching just for "models of cognition" turns up many uses, e.g. [6] [7], as well as the WP article Cognitive models. (And this is not yet considering that some interpretations also hold that all scientific knowledge consists of models in some sense.)
I do also agree that an argument can be made against "systematic." However, the term is in both versions (since the first sentence is the same in both versions), so that seems to me to be a separate discussion. I think perhaps the intervening edits confused the issue. Sunrise ( talk) 08:49, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
Comment. I seem to come away with two impressions from this discussion. On the one hand, we all agree that it is difficult to define science in very specific concrete terms. But at the same time, we agree that the present lead is unbalanced because it gives too much weight to the historical development of science. I agree that there is certainly more in this article than just history, which should be in the lead. I agree that we should focus on rewriting the lead as a *summary* that gives proportional weight to the various sections of this article ( WP:lead). I think that would be more productive than just discussing the first few sentences. danielkueh ( talk) 12:07, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
I have interpolated a timestamped sig to mark the boundary of a reply, but there is one subsection which could be a Sunrise edit or a Danielkueh edit. It is delineated by indentation, but Which is which? I have made a guess here. It appears a collapsed section was created, and then uncollapsed. One possible approach to this might be to delineate the start of a reply with @to-name-here, and end that reply with your signature. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 13:45, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
I'll respond to the comments above soon - I just wanted to put this up for criticism. :-) This is a very rough outline I've drawn up for my thoughts on the first two paragraphs. I've presented this in table format, following the previous discussion, but this isn't meant to be interpreted as something that's highly developed. (Among other things, I probably lean towards being too restrictive, so please correct me if that's the case!) Please note that the comments contain additional proposed text - especially for the first paragraph, the left-hand side mainly constitutes a basic outline, and a final version would include more.
First paragraph:
Sentence | Text | Comments |
---|---|---|
1st | Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. [facet 1] | Same as the current first sentence. [facet 2] |
2nd | Examples of scientific disciplines include physics, chemistry, geology, and biology. [facet 3] | I'm using
Life as the guide here. This seems that it could be a fairly uncontroversial statement that is likely to have high information content for the reader, as long as we agree that the examples we use are unambiguously scientific disciplines. This is the set of examples currently in the lead, but we could add or remove examples as desired (e.g. adding a social science).
[facet 4]
We could also add something like "people who study scientific disciplines are called scientists" since "scientist" is an important term, though I think it sounds awkward if phrased that way. |
3rd | The definition and characteristics of science have been the subject of dispute. [facet 5] | This is also where we could add description of the dispute, e.g. a reference to
demarcation problem and/or mentioning one or two notable demarcation criteria might be useful.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
An additional possibility is to include the definition "a body of knowledge of the type that can be rationally explained and reliably applied," from the current lead, as an example.
|
4th | In modern usage, science refers to a way of pursuing knowledge as well as the knowledge itself.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
|
From the current lead. Could add "often restricted to those branches of study that seek to explain the phenomena of the material universe," also from the current lead.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
|
Second paragraph:
Sentence | Text | Comments |
---|---|---|
1st | For much of its history, science was closely associated with philosophy, and
natural science was called
natural philosophy.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
|
From original lead, with minor rewording. Could add "was sometimes called philosophy of nature" as in the current lead.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
|
2nd | Modern science emerged during the
Scientific Revolution, which began in
Europe towards the end of the
Renaissance period and continued through the late 18th century.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
|
Text from
Scientific Revolution, since the origin of modern science is probably the most important part of the history with reference to the science of today. The timing could be replaced by any other details as well.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
|
3rd | In the 18th century, science became increasingly associated with the
scientific method, a body of techniques for investigating
phenomena, acquiring new
knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
|
The first part of this is from the current lead.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page). The second part is the definition from
Scientific method, although it seems to me that a simpler description would probably be better for stylistic reasons.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
|
4th/5th | Although procedures vary from one
field of inquiry to another, identifiable features are frequently shared in common between them. The overall process involves making
hypotheses, deriving
predictions from them as logical consequences, and then testing them by conducting
experiments.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
|
From
Scientific method (2nd sentence slightly paraphrased); this begins the description of modern science. I think hypothesis, prediction, and experiment are all terms that should probably be mentioned in the lead.
Does anyone see this as too restrictive? It's meant to refer to the scientific method only (and this text avoids identifying the scientific method with science), mentions the diversity of the procedures, and is circumspect (cf. "involves") about what may actually occur.Cite error: There are |
6th | Modern science also emphasizes reproducibility and when possible, the use of scientific controls, in order to reduce the effects of chance occurrences and personal biases. [facet 6] | From Andrew's recommendation; based loosely on text from Scientific method, though that text is not well cited (any suggested sources?). Also, I'm not sure about the wording - are there any counterexamples to this? |
By this point (the end of paragraph 2) I've included all the content I think would be useful from the current lead. The third and fourth paragraphs would deal with the rest of how science is practiced today (Scientific practice second half, and Scientific community) as well as Science and society. Thoughts? Sunrise ( talk) 10:10, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
To elaborate what I had in mind, here's my suggestion for the new lead:
This is a tentative list that I think adequately summaries the scope of this article. danielkueh ( talk) 02:53, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
Just a quick comment for now:
OK, what about
To separate this thread from the previous, I document my findings from H. Floris Cohen (2010) How Modern Science Came Into The World: four civilizations, one 17th century breakthrough, which is a 'big-picture' survey, based on his (1994) The Scientific Revolution: a Historiographical Inquiry, upon which he builds, except for its last chapter, which was his 1994 view, and which is the basis of his 2010 book.
His overall conclusion is that 'Scientific Revolution' is a unitary process, having lasted 400 years so far, and unlikely to ebb, as previous scientific revolutions (note the lower case) have in the past.
0: H. Floris Cohen notes that history of science mixes the influences on 'science' into such a large pot, that its study has become inconclusive (Needham says 'bankrupt'). He argues that previous translations of primary sources, which translate a word as 'science', ought to translate it as 'nature-knowledge' instead. I use keywords that should allow others to replicate my findings, hopefully without the large numbers of echoes from sites that follow us.
Cohen uses Francis Bacon (1620) Novum Organon, I aphorism 95= XCV to label the influences, or tendencies: 'ants, spiders, and bees', which he subdivides further: 'Athens, and Alexandria'. He examines civilizations which are likely to have conclusively influenced science and its past development, (and likely its future): Chinese civilization, Islamic civilization, European civilization, and now global (which includes American civilization in the 20th c. -- see the Wikipedia outlook as an example of this type of outlook) civilization. He winnows outliers, which I forbear from naming from the anticipated backlash -- read the book.
Briefly, many civilizations including Chinese civilization developed science, independently of European civilization which stemmed from 'Athens, and Alexandria' via Islamic civilization. Islamic civilization is a descendant of 'Athens, and Alexandria', due to a translation effort from Greek to Arabic, which was taken by European civ from Arabic, and Greek, to Latin. 'Athens, and Alexandria' serve as Cohen's labels for natural philosophers, and mathematical scientists, respectively. The 'ants' are the experimental and empirical workers, fact-based, who differ from the 'spiders', who theorize. Instead, Francis Bacon called for 'bees', who had not yet influenced science. There also needed to be a transition from 'coercive empiricism'.
The 'bees' are 'Athens, and Alexandria'-plus, a fusion of ants and spiders: for the natural philosophers (Athens), 'Athens-plus' became experimentalist as well; the mathematical scientists (Alexandria), 'Alexandria-plus' became realist as well. In particular, the transition from 'coercive empiricism' to modern science is documented for Europe. The tipping points occurred science by science, with names well-known to us. The result, 'modern science' is a tag invented by historians to denote the subject of the first two paragraphs of the article.
I propose that the historical sections be summarized, using the historiographical approach, which takes a big-picture viewpoint, by civilization, and by naming people who tipped the balance, from one trend/factor to the next.
1: I propose that the current historical sections be pushed to subpages, such as 'Historiography of A', ...'B', ...'C', etc.
2: I propose that the scientific revolution section be subsumed into the Scientific revolution article.
Comment: 'transition from 'coercive empiricism' -- For the natural sciences, 'coercive empiricism' is unnecessary, in the sense of John Locke. In philosophical terms, the 'webs' spun by the spiders needed to be validated by the ants, without explicit requirement (which coerces a result) to arrive at a result (which is to come naturally, for the natural sciences). But note that certainty is a casualty, for the spiders now are hostage to the ants (think Large Hadron Collider). Thus for the social sciences, the empirical requirement requires funding and legitimacy. It is certainly possible for a system to create reality, until the funding runs out. In Islamic civ and in European civ, the funding agencies were the political rulers. New funding mechanisms have since arisen.
Comment: Our current scientific method article does not address the issues of acceptance, or legitimacy. Science policy funds or founds the communities which study the sciences. This may explain why Alhazen was not followed up in Islamic civilization for 200 years, by which time he was taken up by the Europeans in Latin translation. Scientific method is only a component of the demarcation problem; there are scholars, such as Imre Lakatos, who proposed that scientific method demarcate science. However there is a component, Rhetoric of science which is not part of scientific method which also requires skill and judgment. Cohen records that Galileo, in particular, was skilled in persuasion, among his other talents in science. Newton and his Royal Society membership go hand-in-hand (in other words, his Royal Society membership gave him access to a community which was essential for his acceptance -- I learned this from Mara Beller via JSTOR. As I reread Beller, I see that scientists as diverse as Alhazen and Rosalind Franklin would have benefited from dialog over their work, which Watson & Crick enjoyed by their collaboration over DNA.).
Comment: Ludwik Fleck (1935) The Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact points out that specialized words (denkstil) are needed for scientific communities (denkkollectiv) to communicate among themselves in a precise way. For example, the 'ants, spiders, and bees' of Bacon, or 'mass, and force' of Galileo and Newton, or 'light ray' of Euclid and Ptolemy. Thus in Fleck's view, the common acceptance of terminology is a step forward in the development of a science by a community.
Comment: I hope it is clear that it is possible to embark on a rewrite, including documented, cited facts for the ants, and cited theories for the spiders, and cited risks, benefits and projections for the bees, with relatively little fuss. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 16:53, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
Comment: I think the history should pay a bit more attention to the role played by environments that allowed people to develop ideas and collaborate with others. Europe for instance would not have been able to take up Islamic science at all easily if it did not have the tradition of schools and monastic colleges from which its universities sprung and which preserved and applied much of the Roman and Greek knowledge. Dmcq ( talk) 10:02, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
Working scientists usually take for granted a set of basic assumptions that are needed to justify the scientific method: (1) that there is an objective reality shared by all rational observers; (2) that this objective reality is governed by natural laws; (3) that these laws can be discovered by means of systematic observation and experimentation.
This passage strikes me as rather odd, as if those things just went on by unquestioned. Of course one can always argue that (1) is just an assumption, but it surely is a reasonable one. Actually we all discover this when we are toddlers, and settle with it for the rest of our lives. Hard solipsism is simply irrational. Then, that "this objective reality is governed by natural laws" is actually a conclusion based on experimental data and observations, so (2) is not an assumption as well. And (3) is just another reasonable conclusion based on (1).
Scientific method works, and that's all you need to justify it. It seems like that line was added by some premise keeper whose sole purpose was sticking to the notion "Science can't touch X!" (where X are deities, ghosts, ESP, karma, etc.). Well, actually it can, if X has any potential effect on the experience of the observers whatsoever. Science is simply our best effort to represent reality.
One could argue that the previous section is about Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, but inverted. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 11:33, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
Hello,
i would like to request to place a link or list of academic disciplines into the Head of the article. Academic disciplines are essential for the meaning of science and an oversight for them is missing in the article. I would suggest to place a link inside an infobox at the start of the article or a placement where it is easy to recognize. The infobox that is already placed does not give a good overwiev related to a structured list. It should also be placed above the picture. Thank you.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.220.223.49 ( talk • contribs) 22:34, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
"2. For whereas the Egyptians were formerly addicted to different customs, and despised one another's sacred and accustomed rites, and were very angry one with another on that account, Abram conferred with each of them, and, confuting the reasonings they made use of, every one for their own practices, demonstrated that such reasonings were vain and void of truth: whereupon he was admired by them in those conferences as a very wise man, and one of great sagacity, when he discoursed on any subject he undertook; and this not only in understanding it, but in persuading other men also to assent to him. He communicated to them arithmetic, and delivered to them the science of astronomy; for before Abram came into Egypt they were unacquainted with those parts of learning; for that science came from the Chaldeans into Egypt, and from thence to the Greeks also." Josephus.
http://www.biblestudytools.com/history/flavius-josephus/antiquities-jews/book-1/chapter-8.html
Can someone add this into the main article that science starts prior to ancient Greece? Sellingstuff ( talk) 13:35, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
Science has been used to justify systemic oppression since researchers first tried to rationalize their tribalist mindset. It is still being justified in fact. Very interesting that all of you seem to think citing a laundry list of accomplishments is more relevant to the history of Science than what actually effects people in the real world. Omgtotallyradical ( talk) 01:04, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 |
I find the introductory section to "Scientific practice" confusing. For reference, I cut and past it here:
1. First, do we need this quote by Bacon? Maybe something has gotten lost in translation through time, but to my reading it is kind of silly. If you begin with doubt, you end with certainty? Really? One might think that one could start with doubt and still end up with doubt.
2. Then, the first paragraph: First sentence is hard to understand: "A skeptical point of view, demanding a method of proof, was the practical position taken ...". I'm not sure what that means. Also who is demanding "proof"? What is so "practical" about this? My confusion with what is written extends all the way to the last sentence: "The use of measurements, for example, is a practical approach to settle disputes in the community." Who is to say anybody would be satisified using measurement to settle a dispute? Maybe I'm missing something here, is all of this text some sort of quote from a famous text, one where the context has been spelled out, or maybe a translation from some other language?
3. Next paragraph, first sentence: "Ziman points out that intersubjective pattern recognition is fundamental to the creation of all scientific knowledge." Maybe I have to go read about " intersubjective pattern recognition" to understand this. Then, there is a reference to Needham 1954, where the reader is actually pointed to an illustration on a page facing 164. It seems to me to ask a lot for a reader of Wiki to actually track that down and have a look.
For discussion, here, I suggest that all of this material in the introductory section be removed. Isambard Kingdom ( talk) 01:37, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
Back to Faraday: the italized part of the following quote is emblazoned on a rafter of one of my schools: "Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature; and in such things as these experiment is the best test of such consistency.
Laboratory journal entry #10,040 (19 March 1849)" When the group of us were building this article 10 years ago, our hope was we might attract others, that we might work alongside them, and (speaking as one of the group, because this was all unvoiced) that Faraday's practices could still work. I have no problem with rewrite. Let's do this. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 13:45, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
Ancheta, can I suggest that we get comments on this section from a larger community of editors. I've never before put in an RFC, but maybe that would be worthwhile. Isambard Kingdom ( talk) 15:09, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
I just realized that outline of science could be placed at Draft talk:science page as a template/scaffold for the outline of the draft page. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 18:31, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
So, @ User: Isambard Kingdom, I can still remove the text under Draft: Science page#Science practice to remove distracting elements. OK?
In that vein, I think/believe any item in draft space is fair game for change. OK? -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 19:46, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
Think it's important to mention they were wrong. That said Aristotle is the name that matters from his day down to modern science. It is his theories and methods that inspire others and this is reported by every source on the subject. Ptolemy was also a giant in pre modern science his system was the ruling one down to Copernicus. Galen (and Hippocrates via Galen) was also a major player. J8079s ( talk) 20:46, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
There is more, of course, in exhaustive detail which was extremely convincing to Christendom. In fact, by the 1400s Alhacen was preached from the pulpits.
I guess I ought to poll for backup while redressing the imbalance. I will use, as general theme
Would anyone else care to watch over my fixes to Alhazen? We might need backup there. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 17:17, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
If we were to count previous sections as Spiral 0: #History of optics and its position in the development of science, Spiral 1: #Pre-Modern "science", and this section as Spiral 2 (where I use a constructivist methodology), then I propose that this article 'walk back' some claims, using the guidance of A. Mark Smith's citations (e.g., Smith 2001):
Ancheta, I appreciate your interest in the history of science. Would this attention also be well-directed at the page on the History of science? Isambard Kingdom ( talk) 20:50, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
Problems pointed out by Smith:
Proposed updates to fix
Citations
As Spiral 3, I propose to instantiate these changes in the Medieval science section, where they might well be moved to child pages upon consensus.
OK? --
Ancheta Wis
(talk
| contribs)
00:23, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
Those of you interested in this page might also check out the Nature page. If you ask me, that page is a challenge, and I'm not convinced that it is properly balanced for content, but it should be somehow complementary to this page on Science. Can this be discussed here (and/or there)? Isambard Kingdom ( talk) 14:41, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
Possibly relevant to this discussion is that some years ago the Nature article was split, and the material considered too philosophical was moved to Nature (philosophy).-- Andrew Lancaster ( talk) 08:50, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
There is a misleading sentence in the Renaissance section: "All aspects of scholasticism were criticized in the 15th and 16th centuries; one author who was notoriously persecuted was Galileo, who made innovative use of experiment and mathematics. " I wouldn't call Galileo a scholastic. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 01:12, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
Hi There,
There is a paper about developing a process model of science (or scientific study) by Luk, R.W.P.[1]. Perhaps, it is worth citing this paper and mentioning that science can be modeled in the Wiki Science Page!
[1] Luk, R.W.P. (2010) Understanding scientific study via process modeling. Foundations of Science 15(1): 49-78.
Angelababy00 ( talk) 04:05, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
First, I appreciate that other editors are using the JSTOR citations. This note is further explanation of a statement which is disputed, namely that Alhacen had an Aristotelian viewpoint, which was orthodoxy for his time. I quote from Smith, A. Mark (1981), "Getting the Big Picture in Perspectivist Optics" Isis 72(4) (Dec., 1981). via JSTOR: p.580 (Use the thumbnails to navigate)
"... the perspectivists had it both ways. They could exploit Aristotle's causal analysis. ... Yet by reducing that analysis to microscopic scale, they were able to exploit the ray model."
The Perspectivists got their optics from Alhacen. Alhacen was the authoritative Latin text for optics from c.1220-1230. It was cited in Bartolomeo Anglicus' De proprietatibus rerum (On the Property of Things) to 1604 (when Kepler overturned its model of vision). Alhacen's sources were 'the philosophers' (Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates), 'the mathematicians' (Ptolemy & Euclid), and 'the healers' (Galen). Alhacen lived 200 years before the Perspectivists. But he fit right into their views: His Book III p573 2.25 "Moreover everything we have discussed can be tested so that we will attain certainty over it."
In other words, Alhacen used Aristotle's empirical, inductive method and also Ptolemy & Euclid's deductive, logical method to learn. Galen's discovery of the optic chiasm directly affected an experiment of both Ptolemy & Alhacen. Alhacen used what he learned to disprove Ptolemy's theory of vision. He used Aristotle's forms to model the optical image, and to justify the fact that we see things right-side up, which Kepler disproved. That was the end of Aristotle's forms.
I think this suffices to show that Alhacen furthered the Aristotelian viewpoint, at least til 1604. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 14:57, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
Here is a citation to remind us that Alhacen was a true advocate for experimental method:
Optics book 7, chapter 2, para [2.2]: p.220 via JSTOR says to round off a bronze register plate with a lathe, and to grind it down.
Note the technology that he had 1000 years ago, near, or at, Cairo's Al Azhar university, Smith says, all in support of the optics of refraction: mechanism, glass-blowing, metalwork. [All the technical details that Aristotle preferred not to mention as below the class of a man of leisure, Alhacen forthrightly mentions. An Italian contributor to this page, from over 5 years ago, notes, in the same way, a visit to the museums of Rome will reveal plumbing parts in the displays that look like 'modern' items, except that they are thousands of years old, and made of plumbum (lead).]
And the Europeans were listening; witness Durer's man with a Lute, using taut strings to model optical raytracing, Vesalius' accurate engraving of a brain (far more detailed anatomy than even Alhacen's diagrams of the optic chiasm from 500 years before), perhaps most importantly, there were dozens of scholars (Smith counts 23 manuscripts), using a common language and heritage, studying his work, so a critical mass was in place. The diagrams differed in the manuscripts, and Smith was able to pick from an array of diagrams for his critical edition. That is one of the difficulties for the Arabic-to-English critical edition, not enough texts survive to choose from, in order to produce Books 4, 5, 6, 7. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 15:11, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
There is a request for comment about capitalization of the word universe at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Capitalization of universe - request for comment. Please participate. SchreiberBike talk 00:47, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
I think the previous definition of science in the wiki page is inaccurate to say that science is an enterprise that organizes and build knowledge in the form of explanations and predictions. I think the knowledge is in the form of theories and models rather than the outcomes like explanation and prediction. A (scientific) theory cannot be an explanation because it does not have the context to specify the explanation. For example, Newton's second law: F = ma, what is the explanation? There is no context for F=ma. One has to create an experiment to specify the context of F=ma, then it can explain things. I think the general statement is more like a property that people can use to build mechanical models. When we apply the theory to specify the model, then some statements in the theory may be able to explain the situation. Therefore, a (scientific) theory cannot be an explanation. Also, how can science be about prediction knowledge? A prediction is only applicable after the situation is known, so you would need to build or specify a model in order to arrive at a prediction that you can test in the experiment.
Angelababy00 ( talk) 08:09, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
In the Middle East during the medieval period foundations for scientific method were laid. [1] [2] [3] [4] Moorrests ( talk) 03:28, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
As far as I understand isn't Ibn al-Haytham the first person to conduct reproducible experiments and gather data from them as far as the historical records goes that have survived. This is the first step toward scientific method and it is ~200 years before Roger Bacon. I have provided five historians of science who back this fact. They all have advance degrees in history of science. Moorrests ( talk) 03:05, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
y 2015 (UTC)
Alhacen's Theory of Visual Perception: A Critical Edition, with ..., Book I 91 Volume 1
Alhacen book I, II, III
But Ptolemy's comments are briefer with not as much 'this means that' ... as Alhacen. This might be due to Admiral Eugene's lack of facility with Latin. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 06:39, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
yes, after all, it is Smith who is doing all the work here. And Lindberg etc. Before JSTOR we couldn't get to the good citations. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 06:52, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
The evidence for Ptolemy's experiments will be in these sources. It's going to have to be each historian, one by one, in turn: I found one of them, for example in HENDRIX, John, and Charles H. CARMAN. (Eds.) Renaissance Theories of Vision. (x + 245 pp.; ill.; bibl.; index.) Farnham, Surrey, England; Burlington,
VT: Ashgate, 2010. ISBN: 9781409400240. Contents: John S. HENDRIX and Charles H. CARMAN, “Introduction,” 1–10; Nader EL-BIZRI, “Classical Optics and the Perspectivae Traditions Leading to the Renaissance,” 11–30 [ref. 909];
Hendrix and Carman might be OK for a review sentence of El-Bizri's contribution.
But JSTOR has a moving wall protecting the more recent publications, like this one. Someone is going to have to get to a library with access to it. Then post the relevant passage in a quote, to allow discoverability for the global user, to be able to use it in an article. See all the Smith citations; you can actually read content by using the links. Use the thumbnails to get to each relevant page to read it. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 12:59, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
I just remembered: in Fred Hoyle (1955) Frontiers of Astronomy there is a large photograph showing grass-skirted tribesmen in Borneo using a native version of a gnomon to determine whether it was the right day of year to plant their crops. That is a citation which documents a reproducible experimental procedure which is clearly thousands of years old. And there are Egyptian sundials which are 3500 years old. (Caution: to get the time of day, you have to know your latitude, a detail which was forgotten when a Chinese observatory was moved during the Ming dynasty, rendering the astronomical instruments useless. ( Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China) ) -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 13:42, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
History_of_science#Islamic_world: —
- Muslim scientists placed far greater emphasis on experiment than had the Greeks. [1] This led to an early scientific method being developed in the Muslim world, where significant progress in methodology was made, beginning with the experiments of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) on optics from c. 1000, in his Book of Optics. The law of refraction of light was known to the Persians. [2] The most important development of the scientific method was the use of experiments to distinguish between competing scientific theories set within a generally empirical orientation, which began among Muslim scientists. Ibn al-Haytham is also regarded as the father of optics, especially for his empirical proof of the intromission theory of light. Some have also described Ibn al-Haytham as the "first scientist" for his development of the modern scientific method. [3]
Moorrests ( talk) 17:02, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
I took this out again WP:Undue weight
During the [[middle ages]] foundations for [[scientific method]] were laid in the [[middle east]].<ref group=nb> "Arab scientists, using Indian, Iranian, and Syrian sources as well as their own genius, revised the Greek sciences, transforming them into the Islamic sciences, that historically served as the main basis for what little science there was in Western Europe in the twelfth and following centuries ..." p.555, [http://www.jstor.org/stable/234257 Pingree, David (Dec., 1992) "Hellenophilia versus the History of Science" ''Isis'' '''83''' (4) , pp. 554-563 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society via JSTOR] *[[Nader El-Bizri|El-Bizri, Nader]], "A Philosophical Perspective on Ibn al-Haytham's Optics", ''[[Arabic Sciences and Philosophy]]'' '''15''' (2005-08-05), 189–218 *[[Kenan Malik|Malik, Kenan]] (2010-10-22). "Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science, By Jim Al-Khalili". The Independent. Retrieved 2014-10-22. *[[Nomanul Haq|Haq, Syed]] (2009). "Science in Islam". Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages. ISSN 1703-7603. Retrieved 2014-10-22. *[[A. I. Sabra|Sabra, A. I.]] (1989). The Optics of Ibn al-Haytham. Books I–II–III: On Direct Vision. London: The Warburg Institute, University of London. pp. 25–29. ISBN 0-85481-072-2.</ref>
Consensus is against this in the lead J8079s ( talk) 18:27, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
Pingree is a WP:Fringe source, self declared. It looks like a good source for source mining.
For the sciences I study are those related to the stars, and they include not only various astronomies and the different mathematical theories they employ, but also astral omens, astrology, magic, medicine, and law(dharmasaistra)All of these subjects,I would argue,were or are sciences within the contexts of the cultures in which they once flourishedor now are practiced. As such they deserve to be studied by historians of science with as serious and thorough apurposeasarethetopicsthatwe usuallyfinddiscussedin history of science classrooms or in the pages of Isis. This means that their intel- lectual content must be probed deeply, and not simply dismissed as rubbish or interpreted in the light of modern historical mythology;and that the intellectual content must be relatedto the culture that produced and nourished each, and to the social context within which each arose and developed
We will need to wait until they are studied and published. His article does not support the text as written and in the big picture of "science" WP:Undue weight in the mean time WP:Assume Good Faith J8079s ( talk) 23:22, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
Moonrest the section you say you are summarizing was added by /info/en/?search=User_talk:Teaksmitty a sock of /info/en/?search=User_talk:Batsgasps#Sockpuppet_investigation who made this same edit at /info/en/?search=Talk:Scientific_method/Archive_21#Sockpuppetry_by_Batsgasps where it is discussed. J8079s ( talk) 22:56, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
By the diagrammatic title I mean to suggest that just as the development of optics has illuminated the development of science, so too can the development of medicine. There are some parallels:
When Galen studied medicine, he studied with the Empiricist physicians, the Logicist (also called Dogmatist) physicians, and the Methodists. Note the parallels with scientific thought and thinkers.
A medicine-related digest of Isidore of Seville's 20-volume Etymologiae (via JSTOR) is available. This digest and translation is by William D. Sharpe (1964) on "Isidore of Seville: The Medical Writings. An English Translation with an Introduction and Commentary" Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 54(2), pp. 1-75. Published by: American Philosophical Society http://www.jstor.org/stable/1005938
Sharpe starts with the Dark Ages in Western Europe, and the compression of scholarship down to Latin encyclopedias, and the loss of Greek in Western Europe. This compression began in Roman times, and continued in medieval times.
Isidore of Seville lived just before the rise of Islam, when the various ethnicities of the Spanish principalities still included the Visigoths, and the forerunners of the Mozarabs. It was a time when the schools were for educating clergy (just as they were for Islam), and the chief scholar was the Bishop, as was Isidore. The uniform Carolingian schooling of Western Europe had not yet arisen.
Isidore's Etymologiae was a dictionary at its barest, with extended commentary for some items. He does manage to capture descriptions of some diseases, but medicines remained herbal. Isidore does denounce magic rite.
-- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 16:18, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
If we use the older definition of science, would engineering be classified as a science? One of the well known philosopher of science, Dr Chalmer, wrote a book called "what is this thing called science?" I guess even the expert has some difficulties here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Angelababy00 ( talk • contribs) 13:17, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
It seems that this Science wiki page does not say anything about applied science. Is applied science a science? If so, we may need to change the "builds and organizes knowledge in the form of explanations and predictions" to "builds, organizes and applies knowledge in the form of explanations? and predictions?". I think it sounds odd to apply explanations and apply predictions. I think it is better to apply theories and models to produce explanations, predictions and solves problems etc 223.18.108.48 ( talk) 13:07, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
According to the Science wikipedia web page, the first sentence defines science as the enterprise that builds or organizes knowledge ... about nature and the universe. Formal science may not be concerned with nature and the universe, so how does it fit to be a science according to the Science wikipedia web page? Why don't we just call it mathematics or logic? Why does it have to be some kind of science? Fundamentally, this goes back to the heading: do you know what is science?
When C. S. Peirce first wrote ' How we make our ideas clear' (1878), he listed some stages in the development of a scientific statement:
He thought about this for the next 30 years: A neglected argument is on Wikisource.
It is not helpful for us to talk past each other. Morrest stated a goal quite clearly (see the edit summaries). We should work this out. Step by step. Talking is the next stage in the protocol.
-- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 21:29, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
@ user:J8079s, to set your mind at ease, it may be helpful for you to know that Peirce studied Aristotle with his father (who was a scientist as well). Peirce was quite conversant with the classics, Greek, and Latin, as well as the nineteenth century program of science study. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 21:41, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
Given the current interdependence of science and technology, would it be useful to introduce the two in parallel--either separately or in both articles? This might also clarify the relations of pure and applied science and engineering, debated above, distinguishing the product from the enterprise. Here are possible parallel intros: SCIENCE currently means either systematic inquiry to discover general principles in special-case observations, or the stock of principles discovered by that inquiry. The word comes from the Latin word scientia, which meant “knowledge”[2 in the traditional interpretation of absolutely certain truth. TECHNOLOGY currently means either systematic inquiry to discover special-case applications of scientific principles, or the stock of applications discovered by that inquiry. The word comes from the Greek τέχνη, techne, which identified the "art, skill, cunning of hand” of the handicraft workman. TBR-qed ( talk) 18:24, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
@ user:J8079s, I followed the timeline link which you suggested, and have some initial reactions:
-- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 17:27, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
Link. Sunrise ( talk) 23:20, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
The lead skips medieval science section completely. No mention of it. I think we should mention at least a sentence summarizing this important Era. What do you think? Dude9949949 ( talk) 19:32, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
Alhacen's text: And all these points become clear with experimentation
You need JSTOR. Follow the link. Click Thumbnails. Select the page for [6.38] (I think Smith uses Sabra's numbering scheme). When I just looked, it was p.367 for the thumbnails. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 20:50, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
Here is a citation for reproducibility:
Smith's work is a critical edition, both translation and commentary. Smith has characterized Alhacen's approach as "essentially hypothetico-deductive" (this is cited in the article). If you read the translation, I believe you would agree with Jim Al-Khalili, who has noted that Alhacen's Book of Optics reads like a modern science textbook of today. He might have set the style! (Alhacen was used as a text in the middle ages. Certainly students of visual perception and optics would have profitted from reading it. Kepler (1604) read the Alhacen and Witelo sections of the Risner edition. Kepler then used Giambattista della Porta's water-filled glass spheres to model the eye, with an aperture, to model the entrance pupil of the eye. Kepler, Johannes (1604) Ad Vitellionem paralipomena, quibus astronomiae pars opticae traditur (Supplements to Witelo, in which the optical part of astronomy is treated). See scientific revolution: Kepler overturned the theory of vision from medieval optics, in an example of the self-correcting character of science.)
Please see Smith's summary if all this is too long. A. Mark Smith (2004) "What is the history of Medieval Optics Really About?" via JSTOR
If you are looking for secondary or tertiary sources, they exist in abundance already (some are in the article already), especially for Alhacen. But also consider Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī's explanation of the rainbow, modelling water droplets by a water-filled glass sphere (ala Kepler), and who came after Alhacen; or Al-Farabi, who came before Alhacen, and who read Aristotle's Metaphysics 40 times without understanding it (which shows that the Islamic world sincerely accepted their Hellenist heritage), he was a student of a Christian teacher, and he was teacher of Maimonides. Also, ibn Sahl, of refraction fame. One poignant note shows up about Sabra's translation of Kitāb al-Manāẓir (Book of Optics) from Arabic: we need more scholars to help out on the English translation of books 4,5,6, and 7. The Latin scholars helped out with multiple diagrams from multiple manuscripts, which helped Smith (he counted 17 complete, with about a half-dozen fragments). But Sabra, now deceased, had trouble getting multiple manuscripts in Arabic. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 02:41, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
Experimental setup: See Smith's commentary, p.lxxvi (you can also use JSTOR's thumbnail tab to navigate to this page, and you can use JSTOR's 'next page'/'previous page' vertical bars which allow you to read this 819 page volume in a natural, responsive way) on the experimental setup for studying diplopia.
To put the experiment about visual perception into perspective: our eyes are part of the experimental setup, and our experience of double vision is part of the experimental data. The plaque that Alhacen describes has a notch for our nose. We move little wax pegs of different colors along specific lines on the plaque, and observe whether we see double or not. Now compare our visual perception to Alhacen's statement about its reproducibility, from Ptolemy 800 years before him, to our time, 1000 years after him: "[6.86] and this can be tried at anytime." -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 12:31, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
While Smith does say that Alhacen's method was essentially "hypothetico-deductive" else where he says; "Was Alhacen in fact following the hypothetico-deductive method in his experiments dealing with the equal-angles law of reflection and the rules governing refraction? It is difficult to imagine that he was, since all evidence suggests that he never conducted those experiments at all, or at least not as described. In addition,those experiments were designed not to test but to confirm hypotheses already accepted a priori." think that we should give as much weight to this quote. J8079s ( talk) 21:21, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
An RfC has been commenced at MOSCAPS Request for comment - Capitalise universe.
Cinderella157 ( talk) 03:23, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
I see the second sentence got removed. I can understand the reasoning. Maybe one concern with that is that our opening lines miss the word "methodical" (or similar)? Instead we DO have the word "systematic". It is tempting to replace it with methodical, but I believe we have that word because of a source we are citing.-- Andrew Lancaster ( talk) 14:48, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
Side comment. I just want to make a procedural comment on recent reversions of the 2nd sentence. I don't want to get into an edit war, but I did make one last reversion of Sunrise's reversion of my edit, on principle, to make the point that WP:BRD should not be used as a reason for reverting an edit. Reversions have to be based on a reason other than WP:BRD. In fact, if you look at the WP:BRD, it says very clearly that "BRD is not a valid excuse for reverting good-faith efforts to improve a page simply because you don't like the changes. Don't invoke BRD as your reason for reverting someone else's work or for edit warring: instead, provide a reason that is based on policies, guidelines, or common sense." As for the "original state," I did restore this article to its "original state." The second sentence was a bold edit, which I reverted, and which we are discussing. If there are administrators watching this page, any adjudication of this issue would be most welcome. danielkueh ( talk) 23:07, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
I don't mind dropping the procedural discussion. But as I'm sure you know, WP:CCC. :-)
First, I'd like to clarify which sentences we're talking about:
In the version you reverted, the second sentence was instead: "Scientific knowledge is built up methodically using experiments and observations, and resulting in proposed scientific facts, scientific models, or scientific theories." This had only been in the article for a couple of days, and I agree that it was redundant, which was why I restored the previous version instead. I'm only considering this other version, and I don't see how the reasoning you gave in the edit summary applies to it. I don't see anything that is obviously redundant, and it seems that it would have sufficient weight to be placed here. On the flow of the paragraph, of course tastes may differ in style, but I think that having so much of the first paragraph (and the second, for that matter) be about older meanings of the word "science" is itself undue (description of what science is needs to have priority; this was an issue in the previous lead as well). I also think that, for example, having no mention of scientific theories in the lead is a problem of due weight.
Those are the main points that I would make. For the broader discussion, while I agree that science is difficult to define, we should still be as concrete as we can - e.g. talking about concepts rather than words, but this applies more generally as well. I don't read the second sentence as defining science at all; I see that as having been finished in the first sentence, with the second merely relating an important fact about science: specifically, that there are several forms that scientific knowledge can take. If this is too narrow, what is being excluded? (Do we have examples of scientific knowledge that was not in some sense gained via the scientific method - bearing in mind that the definition of the scientific method is itself extremely flexible? We have examples such as Kekulé's dream that inspired him about the structure of benzene, but I assume that we couldn't have called it scientific knowledge until it was empirically verified - before then, it was just a thought.)
I would also note that when I read the term "scientific model," I read it in the sense of Bohr model. To take psychology as an example, searching just for "models of cognition" turns up many uses, e.g. [6] [7], as well as the WP article Cognitive models. (And this is not yet considering that some interpretations also hold that all scientific knowledge consists of models in some sense.)
I do also agree that an argument can be made against "systematic." However, the term is in both versions (since the first sentence is the same in both versions), so that seems to me to be a separate discussion. I think perhaps the intervening edits confused the issue. Sunrise ( talk) 08:49, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
Comment. I seem to come away with two impressions from this discussion. On the one hand, we all agree that it is difficult to define science in very specific concrete terms. But at the same time, we agree that the present lead is unbalanced because it gives too much weight to the historical development of science. I agree that there is certainly more in this article than just history, which should be in the lead. I agree that we should focus on rewriting the lead as a *summary* that gives proportional weight to the various sections of this article ( WP:lead). I think that would be more productive than just discussing the first few sentences. danielkueh ( talk) 12:07, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
I have interpolated a timestamped sig to mark the boundary of a reply, but there is one subsection which could be a Sunrise edit or a Danielkueh edit. It is delineated by indentation, but Which is which? I have made a guess here. It appears a collapsed section was created, and then uncollapsed. One possible approach to this might be to delineate the start of a reply with @to-name-here, and end that reply with your signature. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 13:45, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
I'll respond to the comments above soon - I just wanted to put this up for criticism. :-) This is a very rough outline I've drawn up for my thoughts on the first two paragraphs. I've presented this in table format, following the previous discussion, but this isn't meant to be interpreted as something that's highly developed. (Among other things, I probably lean towards being too restrictive, so please correct me if that's the case!) Please note that the comments contain additional proposed text - especially for the first paragraph, the left-hand side mainly constitutes a basic outline, and a final version would include more.
First paragraph:
Sentence | Text | Comments |
---|---|---|
1st | Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. [facet 1] | Same as the current first sentence. [facet 2] |
2nd | Examples of scientific disciplines include physics, chemistry, geology, and biology. [facet 3] | I'm using
Life as the guide here. This seems that it could be a fairly uncontroversial statement that is likely to have high information content for the reader, as long as we agree that the examples we use are unambiguously scientific disciplines. This is the set of examples currently in the lead, but we could add or remove examples as desired (e.g. adding a social science).
[facet 4]
We could also add something like "people who study scientific disciplines are called scientists" since "scientist" is an important term, though I think it sounds awkward if phrased that way. |
3rd | The definition and characteristics of science have been the subject of dispute. [facet 5] | This is also where we could add description of the dispute, e.g. a reference to
demarcation problem and/or mentioning one or two notable demarcation criteria might be useful.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
An additional possibility is to include the definition "a body of knowledge of the type that can be rationally explained and reliably applied," from the current lead, as an example.
|
4th | In modern usage, science refers to a way of pursuing knowledge as well as the knowledge itself.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
|
From the current lead. Could add "often restricted to those branches of study that seek to explain the phenomena of the material universe," also from the current lead.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
|
Second paragraph:
Sentence | Text | Comments |
---|---|---|
1st | For much of its history, science was closely associated with philosophy, and
natural science was called
natural philosophy.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
|
From original lead, with minor rewording. Could add "was sometimes called philosophy of nature" as in the current lead.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
|
2nd | Modern science emerged during the
Scientific Revolution, which began in
Europe towards the end of the
Renaissance period and continued through the late 18th century.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
|
Text from
Scientific Revolution, since the origin of modern science is probably the most important part of the history with reference to the science of today. The timing could be replaced by any other details as well.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
|
3rd | In the 18th century, science became increasingly associated with the
scientific method, a body of techniques for investigating
phenomena, acquiring new
knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
|
The first part of this is from the current lead.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page). The second part is the definition from
Scientific method, although it seems to me that a simpler description would probably be better for stylistic reasons.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
|
4th/5th | Although procedures vary from one
field of inquiry to another, identifiable features are frequently shared in common between them. The overall process involves making
hypotheses, deriving
predictions from them as logical consequences, and then testing them by conducting
experiments.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
|
From
Scientific method (2nd sentence slightly paraphrased); this begins the description of modern science. I think hypothesis, prediction, and experiment are all terms that should probably be mentioned in the lead.
Does anyone see this as too restrictive? It's meant to refer to the scientific method only (and this text avoids identifying the scientific method with science), mentions the diversity of the procedures, and is circumspect (cf. "involves") about what may actually occur.Cite error: There are |
6th | Modern science also emphasizes reproducibility and when possible, the use of scientific controls, in order to reduce the effects of chance occurrences and personal biases. [facet 6] | From Andrew's recommendation; based loosely on text from Scientific method, though that text is not well cited (any suggested sources?). Also, I'm not sure about the wording - are there any counterexamples to this? |
By this point (the end of paragraph 2) I've included all the content I think would be useful from the current lead. The third and fourth paragraphs would deal with the rest of how science is practiced today (Scientific practice second half, and Scientific community) as well as Science and society. Thoughts? Sunrise ( talk) 10:10, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
To elaborate what I had in mind, here's my suggestion for the new lead:
This is a tentative list that I think adequately summaries the scope of this article. danielkueh ( talk) 02:53, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
Just a quick comment for now:
OK, what about
To separate this thread from the previous, I document my findings from H. Floris Cohen (2010) How Modern Science Came Into The World: four civilizations, one 17th century breakthrough, which is a 'big-picture' survey, based on his (1994) The Scientific Revolution: a Historiographical Inquiry, upon which he builds, except for its last chapter, which was his 1994 view, and which is the basis of his 2010 book.
His overall conclusion is that 'Scientific Revolution' is a unitary process, having lasted 400 years so far, and unlikely to ebb, as previous scientific revolutions (note the lower case) have in the past.
0: H. Floris Cohen notes that history of science mixes the influences on 'science' into such a large pot, that its study has become inconclusive (Needham says 'bankrupt'). He argues that previous translations of primary sources, which translate a word as 'science', ought to translate it as 'nature-knowledge' instead. I use keywords that should allow others to replicate my findings, hopefully without the large numbers of echoes from sites that follow us.
Cohen uses Francis Bacon (1620) Novum Organon, I aphorism 95= XCV to label the influences, or tendencies: 'ants, spiders, and bees', which he subdivides further: 'Athens, and Alexandria'. He examines civilizations which are likely to have conclusively influenced science and its past development, (and likely its future): Chinese civilization, Islamic civilization, European civilization, and now global (which includes American civilization in the 20th c. -- see the Wikipedia outlook as an example of this type of outlook) civilization. He winnows outliers, which I forbear from naming from the anticipated backlash -- read the book.
Briefly, many civilizations including Chinese civilization developed science, independently of European civilization which stemmed from 'Athens, and Alexandria' via Islamic civilization. Islamic civilization is a descendant of 'Athens, and Alexandria', due to a translation effort from Greek to Arabic, which was taken by European civ from Arabic, and Greek, to Latin. 'Athens, and Alexandria' serve as Cohen's labels for natural philosophers, and mathematical scientists, respectively. The 'ants' are the experimental and empirical workers, fact-based, who differ from the 'spiders', who theorize. Instead, Francis Bacon called for 'bees', who had not yet influenced science. There also needed to be a transition from 'coercive empiricism'.
The 'bees' are 'Athens, and Alexandria'-plus, a fusion of ants and spiders: for the natural philosophers (Athens), 'Athens-plus' became experimentalist as well; the mathematical scientists (Alexandria), 'Alexandria-plus' became realist as well. In particular, the transition from 'coercive empiricism' to modern science is documented for Europe. The tipping points occurred science by science, with names well-known to us. The result, 'modern science' is a tag invented by historians to denote the subject of the first two paragraphs of the article.
I propose that the historical sections be summarized, using the historiographical approach, which takes a big-picture viewpoint, by civilization, and by naming people who tipped the balance, from one trend/factor to the next.
1: I propose that the current historical sections be pushed to subpages, such as 'Historiography of A', ...'B', ...'C', etc.
2: I propose that the scientific revolution section be subsumed into the Scientific revolution article.
Comment: 'transition from 'coercive empiricism' -- For the natural sciences, 'coercive empiricism' is unnecessary, in the sense of John Locke. In philosophical terms, the 'webs' spun by the spiders needed to be validated by the ants, without explicit requirement (which coerces a result) to arrive at a result (which is to come naturally, for the natural sciences). But note that certainty is a casualty, for the spiders now are hostage to the ants (think Large Hadron Collider). Thus for the social sciences, the empirical requirement requires funding and legitimacy. It is certainly possible for a system to create reality, until the funding runs out. In Islamic civ and in European civ, the funding agencies were the political rulers. New funding mechanisms have since arisen.
Comment: Our current scientific method article does not address the issues of acceptance, or legitimacy. Science policy funds or founds the communities which study the sciences. This may explain why Alhazen was not followed up in Islamic civilization for 200 years, by which time he was taken up by the Europeans in Latin translation. Scientific method is only a component of the demarcation problem; there are scholars, such as Imre Lakatos, who proposed that scientific method demarcate science. However there is a component, Rhetoric of science which is not part of scientific method which also requires skill and judgment. Cohen records that Galileo, in particular, was skilled in persuasion, among his other talents in science. Newton and his Royal Society membership go hand-in-hand (in other words, his Royal Society membership gave him access to a community which was essential for his acceptance -- I learned this from Mara Beller via JSTOR. As I reread Beller, I see that scientists as diverse as Alhazen and Rosalind Franklin would have benefited from dialog over their work, which Watson & Crick enjoyed by their collaboration over DNA.).
Comment: Ludwik Fleck (1935) The Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact points out that specialized words (denkstil) are needed for scientific communities (denkkollectiv) to communicate among themselves in a precise way. For example, the 'ants, spiders, and bees' of Bacon, or 'mass, and force' of Galileo and Newton, or 'light ray' of Euclid and Ptolemy. Thus in Fleck's view, the common acceptance of terminology is a step forward in the development of a science by a community.
Comment: I hope it is clear that it is possible to embark on a rewrite, including documented, cited facts for the ants, and cited theories for the spiders, and cited risks, benefits and projections for the bees, with relatively little fuss. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 16:53, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
Comment: I think the history should pay a bit more attention to the role played by environments that allowed people to develop ideas and collaborate with others. Europe for instance would not have been able to take up Islamic science at all easily if it did not have the tradition of schools and monastic colleges from which its universities sprung and which preserved and applied much of the Roman and Greek knowledge. Dmcq ( talk) 10:02, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
Working scientists usually take for granted a set of basic assumptions that are needed to justify the scientific method: (1) that there is an objective reality shared by all rational observers; (2) that this objective reality is governed by natural laws; (3) that these laws can be discovered by means of systematic observation and experimentation.
This passage strikes me as rather odd, as if those things just went on by unquestioned. Of course one can always argue that (1) is just an assumption, but it surely is a reasonable one. Actually we all discover this when we are toddlers, and settle with it for the rest of our lives. Hard solipsism is simply irrational. Then, that "this objective reality is governed by natural laws" is actually a conclusion based on experimental data and observations, so (2) is not an assumption as well. And (3) is just another reasonable conclusion based on (1).
Scientific method works, and that's all you need to justify it. It seems like that line was added by some premise keeper whose sole purpose was sticking to the notion "Science can't touch X!" (where X are deities, ghosts, ESP, karma, etc.). Well, actually it can, if X has any potential effect on the experience of the observers whatsoever. Science is simply our best effort to represent reality.
One could argue that the previous section is about Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, but inverted. -- Ancheta Wis (talk | contribs) 11:33, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
Hello,
i would like to request to place a link or list of academic disciplines into the Head of the article. Academic disciplines are essential for the meaning of science and an oversight for them is missing in the article. I would suggest to place a link inside an infobox at the start of the article or a placement where it is easy to recognize. The infobox that is already placed does not give a good overwiev related to a structured list. It should also be placed above the picture. Thank you.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.220.223.49 ( talk • contribs) 22:34, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
"2. For whereas the Egyptians were formerly addicted to different customs, and despised one another's sacred and accustomed rites, and were very angry one with another on that account, Abram conferred with each of them, and, confuting the reasonings they made use of, every one for their own practices, demonstrated that such reasonings were vain and void of truth: whereupon he was admired by them in those conferences as a very wise man, and one of great sagacity, when he discoursed on any subject he undertook; and this not only in understanding it, but in persuading other men also to assent to him. He communicated to them arithmetic, and delivered to them the science of astronomy; for before Abram came into Egypt they were unacquainted with those parts of learning; for that science came from the Chaldeans into Egypt, and from thence to the Greeks also." Josephus.
http://www.biblestudytools.com/history/flavius-josephus/antiquities-jews/book-1/chapter-8.html
Can someone add this into the main article that science starts prior to ancient Greece? Sellingstuff ( talk) 13:35, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
Science has been used to justify systemic oppression since researchers first tried to rationalize their tribalist mindset. It is still being justified in fact. Very interesting that all of you seem to think citing a laundry list of accomplishments is more relevant to the history of Science than what actually effects people in the real world. Omgtotallyradical ( talk) 01:04, 5 May 2015 (UTC)