Category talk:History of science

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I want to streamline the categorization of history of science articles and subcategories. Here is what I propose:

We shoud try to limit to 50 - 100 articles (numbers up for discussion) in Category:History of science. Only the most significant articles for the overall history of science should be included; the very most outstanding scientists, the main articles for History of the broadest disciplines (biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, maybe natural philosophy and natural history), the broadest time periods or cultural divisions (Renaissance science, Islamic science, etc.) and the really important ideas (Scientific Revolution, Big Science, etc.).
The subcategories should be reduced to the following 12 (with example sub-subcategories):

1.Category:History of physics

Category:Foundational quantum physics
Category:History of classical dynamics
Category:History of thermodynamics

2.Category:History of earth sciences

3.Category:History of medicine

4.Category:History of chemistry

Category:History of organic chemistry
Category:History of molecular biology

5.Category:History of biology

Category:History of neuroscience
Category:History of molecular biology (some things cross category boundaries and need double listing)

6.Category:History of astronomy ~~(maybe, or put under physics)~~

7.Category:History of mathematics

Category:History of logic

8.Category:History of technology

9.Category:History of social sciences

10.Category:History of ideas (unless we can find a better place within another subcategory)

Category:Obsolete scientific theories

11.Category:Historiography of science (to include all the theoretical/philosophical things like Paradigm shift, as well as everything to do with history of science and related fields as academic disciplines)

Category:Historians of science

12.Category:Cultures of science or similar (to include subcategories like scientific instruments, scientific societies and institutions, articles like history of philosophy of science, history of scientific method, and anything else that doesn't fit elsewhere)

Subcategories should contain further subcategories if appropriate, but also the most notable articles from within those subcategories, the same way Category:History of science would contain only the very most notable within all the categories.

--ragesoss 01:33, 10 January 2006 (UTC), revised--ragesoss 02:36, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

why don't you leave Category:History of medicine in there too? and a few of the others; leaving things like Category:Scence museums around dosn't seem all that terrible. While its good to clean up a bit, trying to make things spotless can lead to contortions. Its ok to leave some of the hard-to-subclassify stuff around. linas 02:15, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, medicine and some others. I looked it back over and expanded it a little more. Of course, there may be still some things that just don't fit, but I think with the 12 categories I now have up there, nearly everything would.--ragesoss 02:39, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

this seems to be a bit early for a cleanup of this magnitude. why don't we just leave things alone until the content gets shuffled out a bit more. as i was looking at some of your recategorizations, and not everyone would agree with what you put into historiography of science... right now, i doubt anyone other than experts in the field are going to be looking for that in anycase, and an encyclopedia like wikipedia isn't really built for experts to find things using expert languages. keep it simple. --Buridan 03:59, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Maybe "historiography of science" is a bad name for it. I wanted a category for all the things related to history of science as a discplines (as opposed to actual historical articles and topics), so that it wouldn't be in mixed up with the history itself. Maybe "history of science (discipline)"? (although more discipline that history of science write about the history of science, so that might be objectionable) I'll stop moving things into the historiography category for now.--ragesoss 04:05, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

History of Astronomy and History of Physics should absolutely be separate categories, as they were relatively independent until the time of Newton. After that time, it's a little more up for debate, but ancient figures like Aristarchus and Hipparchus have a great deal to do with the history of Astronomy, and have very little to say about Physics. --Dantheox 18:35, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tentative list of most important history of science articles

These are the articles that will be categorized History of science as well as their proper subcategories. Please give input and add suggestions.--ragesoss 04:05, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Scientists