Wikipedia talk:WikiProject History of Science

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Archive 1 (January 2006 - October 2006)


Contents

[edit] Request for peer review of Cyclol

Hi, I've been slowly drafting an article about the cyclol hypothesis, the first well-defined model of globular proteins. The theory is mainly of historical interest, since it was shown to be incorrect within a few years. Anyway, the article has reached the stage where I'm toying with the idea of submitting it as a featured article candidate and I'd really appreciate your suggestions and comments before I do that. Thanks muchly! :) Willow 17:49, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NEW ROSALIND FRANKLIN Portrait Uploaded

We have uploaded a newly painted portrait of Rosalind Franklin onto http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Rosalind_Franklin_DNA.jpg. We have made this new artwork available in the public domain and would like to link it to Rosalind Franklin pages, DNA History pages. If someone can give us a hand to do this we would be most grateful. We work in the art/science arena, and use our art to celebrate Frankln's achievements. Thank you very much. 10th November 2006

[edit] Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 03:29, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.

[edit] Eastern contributions to science are blown out of proportion

I mentioned this over on the main "history of science" discussion page, but I seriously think that there is too much emphasis on Eastern contributions to science. I do a lot of reading on the history of science in my spare time, and just about every trustworthy source I read contradicts many of the "facts" I have read on Wikipedia. First of all, the matter of Chinese "science" has been studied by so many scholars, to the point where hardly any credible researcher has really been able to prove that the Chinese really worked with any science in the same sense that Westerners worked with it. The Chinese developed remarkable technology but only for practical purposes. Westerners, on the other hand, tried to figure out the how and why behind the way things work, and as a result of this, they, unlike the Chinese, were really the only people to ever develop science as we now understand it as a subject.

Many of the current claims of the so-called advanced ancient Indian science are rather specious and when people try to equate their science with that of the Greeks, it only begs the question as to why it was not Indians instead of Westerners who created the modern world. Indians may have proposed things that we can remotely call "atomic theories" early on, but in any case, they were never able to separate their "science" away from superstition and religion and once again, like the Chinese, it was mainly used for practical purposes. The Greeks, and later other Westerners, were really to a great degree the only people in the world (or at least they were the first) to secularize science and they were also the first (and only) to actually study science just for the sake of studying it. It is for this reason that Westerners were the true creators of what we can really call "modern science". The Indians DID manage to advance math a little further than the Greeks before it came back to Europe (which is where it was modernized), but we don't need to start telling fibs about how they were the first to develop Calculus and rockets.

Islamic science is greatly overestimated on Wikipedia in many different articles, I have noticed. First of all, we need to recognize that much of Islamic science was derived from the Greeks, while much of Islamic math was derived from Greece, Persia, and India. Except in a few areas, we really can't say that Islam did much that was original. Second of all, it seems that there is some conspiracy going on among some Wikipedians (or it could just be one Wikipedian) to bring forth these false claims about how "Europeans are always trying to claim Islamic science as their own doing". I have seen some cases in some Wikipedia articles on the histories of different sciences, where statements as false as "Muslims were the true creators of the scientific method" are expressed. It really frustrates me that Wikipedia has let such revisionist statements go through on its website. I agree that there was once a time when Islam wasn't given the credit it deserved in Western history books, but it seems that now we are going in the complete opposite direction by giving Islam credit for discoveries that were really either Greek or post-Renaissance European.

On top of all of this, it really doesn't make any sense to me that Wikipedia decided to give so much space to each of the above pre-scientific civilizations while devoting hardly a single paragraph to Ancient Greece, the civilization that by itself formed so much of the foundation of our modern science. After the Greek civilization, there really wasn't much progress done until the European Renaissance. Is what I am saying Eurocentric? No, of course not. I acknowledge that non-Western civilizations made important contributions early on. However, nobody, after examining actual facts can deny that over 80% of human progress in science has been accomplished by the West, and it was also the West, and only the West, that developed what we can safely refer to as "modern science". I am only asking that Wikipedia start presenting the facts as they really are, instead of worrying about making sure every ethnic group is equally represented. Cftiger 19:13 27 November 2006

Although I sympathize, to some extent, with your concerns about nationalists trying to rewrite the history of a wide range of subjects to emphasize the achievements of their ancestors -- what I like to call the "How The Irish Saved Civilization" syndrome -- we ahould also remember that historians have to recount the contributions of a wide range of early civilizations. In those accounts it does little good to say that Indian philosophers developed modern physical concepts, when upon close examination, we find substantial differences between the ideas of medieval India and those of modern science. To credit these scholars for getting the "same idea" first overlooks the originality of the Indian (or Arab, or Greek) contributions.
I would caution you, however, that in writing the history of science we are not writing the history of "modern science," we are writing a history of the various investigations into nature that were carried out in different times and places. This diversity is an important element of history.
Finally, you've raised the question of what has been said about Ancient Greece. You may find your question answered in the article History of science in Classical Antiquity. --SteveMcCluskey 18:11, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A host of new and newly expanded articles

Students in my class recently completed their term paper assignments, which involved writing for Wikipedia. Most could use copy-editing, wikification, and/or images. These were the articles that were created or greatly expanded:

--ragesoss 04:54, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

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