Talk:The Art of War

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[edit] Missing link

The Art of War (http://nanguo.chalmers.com.au/~robert/Publishing/China/suntzu/) translated by Thomas Cleary (1991)

-link does not work. Anyone know where the site has moved?

I wouldn't be surprised if it's hard to find it online again since his translation is still in print. --Mrwojo 17:54, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] New external link

The Denma translation

Is this some sort of book advertisement? If so, it shouldn't be here. --SunTzu2 09:42, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Duplicate of Sun Zi

This article is a duplicate of Sun Zi. This is what the Germans think w:de:Sun Zi and what I think as well after reading the book. This article should be merged into Sun Zi and redirected. --Francois Genolini 07:42, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hmm...Doesn't look like a duplicate to me... :-/ --SunTzu2 09:39, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Is this book meaningful? .....I don't exactaly think so. It is a bit old right?

[edit] Modern Military Applications

I heard that Art of War is still used in some military schools (including in the US, along with On War by Karl von Clausewitz). But I can't confirm this. Can anyone help? --SunTzu2 05:47, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Also this comment was just added: "In the United States Marine Corps, it is required reading for intelligence personnel and officially recommended for all Marines.". I'm not convinced. Does anyone have a source for this? --Lawrence Lavigne 00:53, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

The Navy War College uses the text "On War" by Von Clauswitz but, I don't think they use "The Art of War". FrankWilliams 19:09, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

On the back of the book I have it says the Art of War is a pocket favorite of the US army, in this article it tells you how it was used in modern sitations.

[edit] Overview

Personally, I'd like to see some sort of overview of basic principles that mirrors the level of detail seen on The Prince. I'm confident that I could write such a summary, but what I'm wondering is if other people agree.

Also, I'm currently working on a Table of Contents for the book.

I totally agree with such a suggestion. This article definitely needs expansion. It is arguably one of the most influencial written texts in history. I also believe that there needs to be things written about how the Art of War can be applied in the business world as well. --Colipon+(T) 04:36, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Title

The article has the literal translation of the title as "Sun Tzu's Military Strategy". "Bing1" = soldier and "fa3" = laws/rules/guidelines, so would it be more accurate to read "bing1 fa3" as "soldier's rules/guide" or "rules for soldiering"? --siafu 23:39, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

兵法 (bing1 fa3) is a word in Chinese, although archaic. People today would use 战略 (zhan4 lue4). You may look it up in a Chinese word dictionary. Word by word, it would be similar to what you mentioned. --Voidvector 04:46, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism?

Can someone add a bit more criticism to this article? I remember complaints that the AoW is intentionally vague and open to interpretations, so the success of 'users' are more to do with their own skill, making the book's power something of a myth. --137.205.68.193 14:49, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The text isn't really vague, it's just not completely relevant to the modern military "paradigm". That is, it worked well in the Warring States period of China with armies meeting in formation in pitched battles, etc., but abstracting the text to provide insight into modern issues results in the introduction of "vagueness". --siafu 15:55, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Uncertainties of Origin?

Should there be mention of the uncertainties of who wrote it and when it was written as mentioned in Sun Tzu? --Rissole 04:36, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Something on the attribution question would be great. I think I can find a source or two on that also, if you don't have one. siafu 04:55, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't really have any expertise on The Art of War, I made the comment because after reading both articles I thought that they contradicted each other. So if you could write something it would be much better than me writing something :) Rissole 07:35, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

The Griffith translation goes into great detail on the uncertainty of the author and the time period of The Art of War (and concludes that the book was written during the Warring States period, much later than traditionally thought), and I would think it would be a great addition to the article. --70.49.90.175 21:58, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Book of Five Rings

Although The Book of Five Rings (Musashi) was written much later (17th Century), this book is often placed in that same category as The Art of War (Sun Tsu). So perhaps it ought to be mentioned or at least added to "Related topics", to please the curious reader. PJ 10:02, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Outline

Maybe an outline of the main themes in the book could be useful.

[edit] bold

someone please unbold the opening paragraph. i dont know how. thanks

It's the zh-cpl template that for some reason is screwing up all the text following it. I stripped it for the time being, but after looking at the template page I don't know why it's doing that. Hopefully someone will fix it, though I have to admit it doesn't seem overwhelmingly useful. siafu 18:53, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] TV reference?

am I right when I say that The Art of War was referenced in the show Firefly? I don't remember too clearly... Robin Chen 02:18, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

No, in War Stories (Firefly episode), Niska quotes Shan Yu, a fictional character. I'm pretty familiar with both Art of War and Firefly, and that's as close as the two come. EVula 03:24, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I'm kinda surprised.

That there isn't any criticism about the book's name, like how can you call war an "art". I guess it's not notable enough.--80.227.100.62 11:37, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I've always thought what is remarkable about the book is how Sun Tzu turns war into an art form.

法 is usually translated as "method" or "law", but in the title of the book it's translated as "art". I think the Art of War sounds a lot better than Sun Tzu's Military Methods/Strategy, as on the front page. --64.231.220.4 19:19, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Follow-on sentence

From the article:

It was believed by some that the long-lost Sun Bin Bing Fa, or Sun Bin's The Art of War cited in the Book of Han, was actually Sun Tzu's The Art of War, but in April 1972, archaeologists discovered a tomb in Linyi County, Shandong Province, that contained several fragments of important scrolls buried during the Han Dynasty. Among the scrolls were a copy of the Sun Bin Bing Fa and a copy of Sun Tzu's The Art of War, thus removing any doubt.

Maybe I'm a little blonde today, but I'm discovering that these two follow-on sentences have made it increasingly unclear whether the two previously mentioned scrolls are from the same source. In the interests of increasing clarity and improving disambiguaties, could someone kindly state which of the two alternatives doesn't corresponds to the doubt which was removed? Thanks :)

see Yinqueshan Han Slips.--Skyfiler 22:05, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Page move

The article was moved by The Crying Orc this morning without discussion, with the rationale that Machiavelli shouldn't "play second fiddle" to Sun Tzu. However, I reverted this move since Machiavelli's Art of War is a rather little-known work by an otherwise famous other, and it has a much shorter article. The Bing Fa is by far the more recognized book by the name "Art of War" (lending its name to movies and albums, &c.). siafu 14:19, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

In certain circles, maybe. Others choose to discount Sun Tzu, and would not agree that Machiavelli's work is 'little known' (in their circles). However, it is not up to us to decide such matters. The point is that there is nothing wrong with having an 'art of war' disambiguation page, with the two books by that title (in English) each having their article's title qualified by the author's name. Anything else is systemic bias. The Crying Orc 16:58, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

We do have a The Art of War (disambiguation) page. We are also not concerned with "certain circles" but with the world in general; as The Art of War (Machiavelli) states in the very first sentence, it is "one of the lesser-read works" of Machiavelli. Most non-scholars do not even know it exists, and the work by Sun Tzu is vastly more well-known and referenced. This is born out by the simple Google test also-- "Art of War" Machiavelli yields 170,000 results. "Art of War" Sun Tzu yields 1,490,000. There is simply no contest, and in particular because Sun Tzu's book is so famous it serves us quite well to have it in the place of the just "Art of War" as most often that is what a user means when typing "Art of War" into the search box; doing so is not systemic bias. siafu 18:10, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Addendum: You may want to have a look at [1], or Wikipedia:Disambiguation under the "Page naming conventions" section and the "Primary topic" heading it states:

When there is a well known primary meaning for a term or phrase (indicated by a majority of links in existing articles and consensus of the editors of those articles that it will be significantly more commonly searched for and read than other meanings), then that topic may be used for the title of the main article, with a disambiguation link at the top. Where there is no such clearly dominant usage there is no primary topic page.

Just so we're clear about this decision vis a vis systemic bias: there is in this case very obviously a clearly dominant usage. siafu 18:14, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

One book was written in the 6th century BC, the other was written between 1519 and 1520. I really fail to see how picking Sun Tzu's text counts as bias, especially when coupled with siafu's above comments. EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:50, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

It's only appropriate to unilaterally move a page when the move is clearly non-controversial. If the move is controversial, it should be proposed at WP:RM.

WP:DAB#Primary_topic says:

When there is a well known primary meaning for a term or phrase (indicated by a majority of links in existing articles and consensus of the editors of those articles that it will be significantly more commonly searched for and read than other meanings), then that topic may be used for the title of the main article, with a disambiguation link at the top.

As mentioned above, one quick way to determine if that rule applies here is to compare relative notability with a google search:

"art of war" "sun tzu": 1,450,000 Google hits.

"art of war" "Machiavelli": 167,000 Google hits.

Another interesting test is to search amazon.com for "The Art of War" in the category "Books", ranked by "Relevance". The first three items, and most of the first 36, are various editions of Sun Tsu. The first listing for Machiavelli doesn't show up until item #37. -- Jim Douglas ^(talk) _(contribs) 22:06, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Phew, how many nails can we fit in this coffin? :-) EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:16, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Just one more: The page history is now trashed: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Art_of_War&action=history -- Jim Douglas ^(talk) _(contribs) 16:36, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Whoever moved it back here should have done so properly...the history is still here. My guess is that when moving it back, they just did a copy/paste instead of a proper page move. The Crying Orc 16:43, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. Man, we should get an admin to come in here and fix this... aww, crap. Be right back... EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:00, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Okay, the false AoW article was deleted and The Art of War (Sun Tzu) moved to The Art of War, restoring the page history. This talk page, however, got equally screwed over; however, its seen a lot more action than the main article. Should I do the same thing? I can restore all of our comments easily enough, but a bit of history will be lost. Not sure which is most important... EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:08, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Sure, if you can sort it out, go for it! -- Jim Douglas ^(talk) _(contribs) 17:12, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Headline text

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