User:SteveMcCluskey/sandbox

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[edit] Scientists, Philosophers, and Historians

Is this article an appropriate place to discuss the different ways that Scientists, Philosophers, and Historians approach the history of science? I sense that some of the contributors to HoS pages are not communicating well because they are not aware of / do not accept the approaches of those in different disciplines.

A quick and dirty outline (open to changes) would include:

  • Scientists
    • Tend to focus on the achievements of the field that led to present theory
    • Tend to accept the present norms of their scientific discipline as universally valid
    • May judge past science
      • by how closely its methods follow present scientific practice
      • by how closely its results correspond with present findings
  • Philosophers
    • Tend to accept that science has a special claim to truth
      • May deal with how institutions producing this objective knowledge developed
    • May evaluate past science as to whether it follows present norms of scientific method
    • Often try to distinguish science from non science (the demarcation problem)
  • Historians
    • Tend to have an inclusive definition of what is science
      • Accept scientific inquiries in other times and cultures as legitimate
      • Try to understand the results of other investigations into nature on their own terms
      • Try to understand the internal logics and social roles of other ways of knowing
    • Question special claims to truth by past (and present) scientists

These are, admittedly, stereotypes, but we could find examples for many of them. --SteveMcCluskey 15:01, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Primary and Secondary Sources in History of Science

Since, as an encyclopedia, Wikipedia has a policy of not publishing original research. As a consequence, policy discourages reliance on primary sources and favors presenting the scholarly opinions provided in the secondary literature.

In history of science, the distinction between primary and secondary sources depends, to a certain extent, on the kind of article we are writing.

  • When writing an article about a scientific topic, the writings of Watson and Crick or Gamow are acceptable as secondary sources, since they reflect the judgements of important members of the scientific community.
  • When writing an article about the history of science, the same writings are primary sources and do not speak directly about the development of science without the same kind of problems of interpretation as any other primary source.

As a consequence, editors writing articles about the historical development of science should cite secondary historical literature in order to present the interpretations of important members of the historical community. --SteveMcCluskey 19:22, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The places I've been

Place of birth:
Spent more than one year:
Spent one month or more:
Days or weeks:

[edit] Original Research on History Pages

Maybe I'm misreading the concept of original research, but after a few months reading a range of history articles in Wikipedia, I see that many of them only cite primary sources and fail to cite reputable historical research. An example of this problem is the History of Creationism article, which ignores the many excellent historical studies of the rise of creationism, (I found 103 entries when I searched "Creationism" in the History of Science Society online Bibliography) but instead cites books by advocates and opponents of creationism. That is the way to do original research in history; it is not the way to write an encyclopedia article.

To the extent that primary sources may be selected to advance a particular point of view, this goes beyond the No Original Research policy into the Neutral Point of View policy.

Should the History Project take the lead in drafting some standards about how the No Original Research policy applies to history?

Off the top of my head, at a minimum historical articles should cite a range of reliable secondary historical studies on the topic under study. Primary sources may be used to illustrate and document a position but should not stand alone without citation of suitable secondary literature.

Personally, I'd argue that secondary literature should play the predominant role in any historical article. Specifically, every fact that is not common knowledge should be supported by citation of at least one specific secondary source and that the secondary source may be supplemented by citation or quotation of a primary source.


[edit] Peer Review needs citations

[edit] Scientific Revolution

Rather than just gripe about it, I thought I'd put up an outline for a new article.
I've also decided to copy the present article to User:SteveMcCluskey/Scientific Revolution where everyone is invited to engage in radical revisions. I'll be away the rest of today so I won't make many changes until tomorrow.
"The desire to edit is a basic human need."
--SteveMcCluskey 15:05, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Present Outline

  • Introduction
  1. Emergence of the revolution
  2. Early and medieval views of science
  3. Infusion of classical texts
  4. New scientific developments
  5. Theoretical developments
  6. Methodological developments
    1. Mechanization
    2. Empiricism
  7. Postmodern critiques

[edit] Proposed Outline

  • Introduction
  1. Significance of the "Revolution"
  2. Ancient and medieval background
  3. Transformational developments and their reception
    1. Copernicus's De revolutionibus
    2. Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica
  4. New Approaches to Nature
    1. The Mechanical Philosophy
    2. The Chemical Philosophy
    3. Empiricism
    4. Mathematization
  5. Subsequent Developments
    1. The New Astronomy
      1. Kepler
      2. Brahe
      3. Galileo
    2. The New Physics
      1. Galileo
      2. Newton's Principia
  6. Institutional changes
    1. The changing role of patronage
    2. Networks of communication
      1. Printing
    3. Scientific societies

[edit] Newton and Inertia

[edit] References

Cohen, I. B., "'Quantum in se est': Newton’s concept of inertia in relation to Descartes and Lucretius" in Notes and Records of the Royal Society 19(1964):131-155.

Volume 19 not in J-STOR

Hall, A.R., and M. B. Hall, Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, 1962).

See Hall and Hall 1962:309-311; cf. Cohen 1964.

[edit] Logicus's contributions

I've about given up on Logicus. He is repeating the same unorthodox interpretation of Aristotle's view of inertia on Talk:Scientific Revolution that he raised a year ago on Talk:Inertia and other venues—and he seems to have been succesful in getting a line or two on the article on Inertia to present his interpretation of Aristotle. We seem to have a fringe interpreter of primary sources whose work clearly meets Jimbo Wales' criterion[7] for deletion on the grounds of NOR.

Judging from the outcome on Inertia, I don't think he's amenable to rational discourse. He expressed his frustration that he was unable to convince I. B. Cohen of his errors. I think his edits should be watched carefully and, as appropriate, deleted, reverted, or otherwise edited. It doesn't seem wise to encourage further debate by replies.

Bachmann's Law: Trolls are the driving force of Wikipedia. The worst trolls often spur the best editors into creating a brilliant article with watertight references where without the trollish ecapades we would only have a brief stub.[8]
LSE event Tuesday 3 Feb 2004
London School of Economics; Centre for Philosophy of the Natural and Social Sciences
Deconstructing Modernity: Did Newton Really Overthrow Aristotle?
5.30pm, T206, Lakatos Building
Speaker: Alex Bellamy
LSE Library Archives Catalogue
Bellamy; Alex C. (fl 1973-)
LAKATOS/12 Selected correspondence 1959-1974
LAKATOS/12/3 Philosophy of Science 1960-1974
...
92 Letter from Alex Bellamy to Lakatos, undated.
LAKATOS/15/3 Correspondence: Bellamy, Alex 1973
Description: Note from Alex Bellamy to Lakatos on the reverse of a translation of John Buridan, 'Questions on the Eight Books of the Physics of Aristotle' (photocopy from Clagett, 'A Collection of Medieval Documents' (1961)). The note relates to Kuhn and Murdoch's views on the medieval tradition. AccessStatus Open
LAKATOS/16/3 Paper by A C Bellamy [1970s]
Description: 'How Galileo 'discovered' that freely falling bodies are permanently accelerated: a critical case study in the methodology of scientific discovery', paper by A C Bellamy, nd [1970s]. This paper is discussed in Lakatos' correspondence with Alex Bellamy (see 16/65). AccessStatus Open
LAKATOS/16 Additional papers deposited by Alex Bellamy, 1964-1970s. [1964-1973]
Description: This series consists of: a folder of papers regarding Lakatos in the 1960s; a CD of an Open University programme featuring Lakatos, 1973; and, a paper on Galileo by A C Bellamy, 1970s. AccessStatus Open

[edit] Minority Views History

[edit] Origins of NOR Policy

At 16:10, 15 September 2006, Logicus (User:80.6.94.131) said " you apparently prefer 'authority' rather than reason in determining the truth." This reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the encyclopedic nature of Wikipedia and its No Original Research policy.

Let's try to get at the heart of the No Original Research policy by tracing its origins. It began with an e-mail on the wikien-l where Jimbo Wales expressed his reaction to an editor who was advocating an unorthodox criticism of special relativity on the article by that name. That view was generalized to cover topics other than physics and became the original version of the No Original Research policy and is still included in the much larger current version.

Here's Jimbo's view, transposed from physics to history:

What do mainstream [history] texts say on the matter? What do the majority of prominent [historians] say on the matter? Is there significant debate one way or the other within the mainstream [historical] community on this point?
If your viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts.
If your viewpoint is held by a significant [minority of historians], then it should be easy to name prominent adherents, and the article should certainly address the controversy without taking sides.
If your viewpoint is held by an extremely small minority, then whether it's true or not, whether you can prove it or not, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia, except perhaps in some ancilliary article. Wikipedia is not the place for original research.
Remember, I'm not much interested in "is it true or not" in this context. We could talk about that forever and get nowhere. I'm only interested in the much more tractable question "is it encyclopedic and NPOV or not"? And this question can be answered in the fashion I outlined above.
--Jimbo

Since this is the official Wikipedia framework, we cannot determine whether a claim belongs in Wikipedia by debating whether it's true that Aristotle maintained a theory of inertia (or that seventeenth-century natural philosophers believed that Aristotle held a theory of inertia). Instead, our goal is to determine whether these views are held by a majority, a significant minority, or an extremely small minority of historians. To do that, we need to identify specific passages in which historians state these views and similar passages where historians state alternative views (such as that Aristotle believed that bodies are moved by some motive cause or that Galileo, Descartes, or Newton believed that their concepts of inertia or impetus contradicted the views of Aristotle).

[edit] Historians on Inertia in Aristotle

Well, lets try to tally up the views of the historical community on Aristotle having a view of inertia as reported by Logicus / A. Bellamy

Pro Isaac Newton. unspecified manuscript ca. 1690?, (Hall and Hall 1962)
Pro Thomas Heath. Mathematics in Aristotle
Con Alexandre Koyré. Galilean Studies
Con Pierre Duhem. unspecified source, perhaps his Le Systeme du Monde
Con Thomas Kuhn. unspecified source, perhaps his Copernican Revolution
Con Herbert Butterfield. The Origins of Modern Science
Con I. Bernard Cohen. Various
Con Emile Meyerson. Identity and Reality
Con Anneliese Maier. unspecified source, perhaps her Anneliese Maier, "Galileo and the Scholastic Theory of Impetus"
Con Stillman Drake. unspecified source

We could then add all the opposed views cited already in the article:

Con Edward Grant, The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages, pp. 55-63, 87-104

[edit] Sorabji

Richard Sorabji, Matter, Space, and Motion: Theories in Antiquity and Their Sequel, (London: Duckworth, 1988), p. 227.

What [Philoponus] introduced was an alternative to Aristotle's dynamics, and he started with the motion of projectiles.
Aristotle had been puzzled as to what makes a javelin continue to move after it has left the hand. Its 'natural' motion is only downward. Its 'forced' or 'unnatural' motion onwards is produced for the first few feet by tha hand of the thrower who graps it. But after its release, Aristotle thinks another cause must be sought which like the hand is external to it, and yet in contact with it. He decides (Phys. 8.10, 267a2-12; cf. Cael. 3.2, 301b23-30) that by pushing the air, the thrower imparts to successive pockets of air behind the javelin the power to move it onwards.... In effect, the pockets of air are unmoved movers, although Aristotle does not say it that way.... Philoponus' inovation is to suggest that a force ... can be implanted by the thrower directly into the javelin, and need not remain external to it in the air. The force came to be called an impetus and was still a commonplace in the time of Galileo.
Aristotle's theory of projectiles was ripe for replacement. He does not explain sufficiently why air should sometimes help motiojn, as with projectiles, while at other times (Phys. 4.8, 215a24-216a11) it creates resistance to motion and reduces speed.

[edit] Ligatures

[edit] Scope

This guideline is about standard letters (a-z/A-Z) with diacritics, existing in languages of which the native script is based on the Latin alphabet:

As a Wikipedia:Naming conventions guideline, this guideline is about article names, not about the use of alternate versions with or without diacritics in the body of the Wikipedia articles.

This guideline does not apply to redirect pages, which can (and should) use diacritics to ensure that all popular variations of a name's spelling, still redirect to the proper article. Conversely, in those cases, like Charlotte Brontë, where English and Wikipedia use the diacritic, a redirect from the simple form (Charlotte Bronte) is a necessary service to the reader. For those cases where a word with a diacritic and its diacritic-less variant usually have a different meaning (canon/cañon; Vitória/Vitoria;...), see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision).

[edit] Other types of diacritics, non-standard letters and ligatures

The majority of this guideline is about "standard" letters with diacritics as are seen in the section above. This guideline, however, does not apply to the following letters:

  • Ð/ð - The upper case variant of this letter is a D with a diacritic, but the lower case variant is a completely different character (not the regular form of a d (as in a-z));
  • ɨ - and other IPA-specific glyphs containing what looks like a diacritic;
  • ί, ἰ, ύ, and other diacritics used in languages for which the standard notation doesn't use the Latin alphabet;
  • Diacritics used in some romanization/transliteration systems (e.g. Pinyin);
  • Ligatures like Œ (for Æ see above);
  • ß - found in the German alphabet;
  • þ - used, for example, in Icelandic;
  • Ə/ə - found in the Azeri alphabet
  • Signs used to indicate metre schemes in poetry (see for example Dactylic hexameter).

For special-case characters such as þ, ð and ß, because of the limited geographic regions in which these letters are used, English-speakers in other parts of the world (especially those for whom English is a second language) often find these symbols incomprehensible and unpronounceable. Difficulties also arise in terms of how to alphabetize them, since most English speakers, even those for whom English is their native language, do not know where to place them in a standard alphabet. As a result, this guideline recommends that their use be avoided in article titles.

[edit] Discussion

Medievalists may wish to join the discussion of the use of Æ (æsc) in article names at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (standard letters with diacritics)

[edit] Nasr

[T]he idea of unity is not only the basic presupposition of the Islamic arts and sciences: it dominates their expression as well. The portrayal of any individual object would become a "graven image," a dangerous idol of the mind, the very canon of art in Islam is abstraction.... Thus we come to the central issue. Can our minds grasp the individual object as it stands by itself? or can we do so only by understanding the individual object within the context of the universe? In other words, from the cosmological point of view, is the universe the unity, and the individual event or object a sign (phenomenon, "appearance") of ambiguous and uncertain import? Or is it the other way around? Of these alternatives, which go back to the time of Plato, the Muslim is bound to accept the first -- he gives priority to the universe as the one concrete reality, which symbolizes on the cosmic level the Divine Principle itself,... Herein one can already see why mathematics was to make such a strong appeal to the Muslim: its abstract nature furnished the bridge that Muslims were seeking between multiplicity and unity.


Seyyed Hossein Nasr has argued that there is a distintly Muslim approach to science, flowing from Islamic monotheism and the related theological prohibition against portraying graven images. In science, this is reflected in a philosophical disinterest in describing individual material objects, their properties and characteristics and instead a concern with the ideal, the Platonic form, which exists in matter as an expression of the will of the Creator. Thus one can "see why mathematics was to make such a strong appeal to the Muslim: its abstract nature furnished the bridge that Muslims were seeking between multiplicity and unity."[1]

[edit] Medieval Impetus vs Modern Inertia

One of the first historians of medieval science, the French physicist, Pierre Duhem, saw precursors of the modern idea of inertia in the impetus theory of Jean Buridan. Duhem (1861 – 1916) wrote in his posthumously published Le Système de Monde (I will quote the French rather than make you trust my translations):

La Mécanique de Galilée, c'est, peut-on dire, la forme adulte d'une science vivant dont la Mécanique de Buridan était la larve. (VIII, 200)

Duhem spelled out the nature of Buridan's embryonic form of the new physics in the following terms:

La loi de l'inertie n'a donc pas encore reçu de Jean Buridan son énoncé complet et définitif. Mais la part de vérité que de maître a reconnue est déja bien grande, assez grande pour bouleverser les fondements mêmes de la Philosophie péripatéticienne.
Tout la Dynamique dÁristote repose sur set axiome:
« Tout ce qui est en mouvement est nécessairement mû par quelque chose....»
A cette formule. voice que Buridan substitue cette autre:
Après qu'un corps a été mis en mouvement, il n'a plus pour se mouvoir, besoin d'aucun moteur extrinsèque: l'impetus qu'il a reçu une fois pour toute y suffit....
Voilà donc que s'écroule toute la Dynamique d'Aristote. (VIII, 338-9)

In Duhem's view Buridan had not yet definitively proclaimed the law of inertia, but his ideas had overthrown the foundations of peripatetic philosophy and brought about the collapse of Aristotle's dynamics.

Anneliese Maier, who approached the same texts as Duhem from the perspective of a student of medieval philosophy, saw a different picture. She agreed with Duhem that the late scholastics "prepared the way for the law of inertia" but she insisted that "from the outset, however, we must recognize that we are dealing with an analogue to the law of inertia, not an exact parallel to it. An exact parallel is out of the question, since late scholastic thinkers assumed that uniform motion is caused by a special kind of motive force called impetus, while modern mechanics postulates that uniform motion does not require any kind of force to make it continue..." (Maier, On the Threshold of Exact Science, (1982), pp. 77-8; translation of her 1955 Die naturphilosophische Bedeutung der scholastischen Impetustheorie.)

Subsequent historians of medieval science, such as Marshall Clagett, shared Maier's view that impetus was only "a kind of analogue to inertia." (Clagett, The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages, (1959), p. xxviii). In his detailed discussion, Clagett notes that Buridan

spoke of [impetus] as a motive force and as the reason for the continued movement,... One cannot help but compare Buridan's impetus with Galileo's impeto and Newton's quantity of motion (momentum), even though on the face of it they are ontologically different from impetus considered as a kind of force. But while the affirmed ontology of impetus would seem to differentiate it from later concepts, yet the terms of its measure as presented by Buridan make an analogue with momentum,... (Clagett, p. 523).

Edward Grant came to much the same conclusion, which he concisely summarized in his Physical Science in the Middle Ages (1971):

Buridan seized upon quantity of matter and speed as means of determining the measure of impetus, the same quantities which served to define momentum in Newtonian physics, although in the latter momentum is usually conceived as a quantity of motion or a measure of the effect of a body's motion, whereas impetus is a cause of motion. Indeed, impetus was viewed as an internalization of the cause of motion which Aristotle had made external. It seemed a better way of adhering to Aristotle's dictum that everything that is moved is moved by another." (p. 50).

Grant repeated his earlier judgment, in almost the same words, in his The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages, (1996), pp. 95-6.

In a nutshell, Duhem's 90-year old discovery of medieval anticipations of the principle of inertia has been greatly modified by subsequent research. The three major historians of medieval science who have looked closely at the scholastic texts that attracted Duhem's attention all come to similar conclusions. Impetus and inertia are operationally similar, in that they are measured in the same terms, but ontologically distinct, in that impetus is a cause of continued motion within an Aristotelian dynamical framework while inertial motion needs no cause.

There are signs that impetus theory may have contributed to the later development of the theory of inertia. Galileo, for example, used impetus theory in his youthful De motu. (Clagett, pp. 666-7) but the crucial step was abandoning the Aristotelian notion that "everything that is moved is moved by another." This step took place during the course of the Scientific Revolution.

[edit] Linguistic nationalism

Linguistic nationalism may refer to:

[edit] Miscellaneous Labels

Scientia donum dei est, unde vendi non potest.
Knowledge is a gift of God, therefore it cannot be sold.
Medieval aphorism.
Copyright protection under this title is not available
for any work of the United States Government.
U.S. Code, Title 17, Chap. 1, Sec. 105.
If we would begin to worry about the desolate backwaters
of Wikipedia's 1,5 Mega-articles, we'd never sleep again.
Be content to fight entropy on those articles on your watchlist.
dab 20:47, 3 December 2006 (UTC).
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