Talk:History of science

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Contents

[edit] More thoughts on pruning

After going through the article, here are some of my thoughts on how we can prune this article to about half of its present length.

  1. Pre-experimental science section is fairly large and can be made into a seperate article of its own, to which people can add more details. We should keep about 3 paragraphs or so which summarizes this section.
  2. In the histroy section, keep the prehistoric times sub-section. The rest of the ancient civilizations can again get an article titled for ex science in ancient civilizations. We should again keep 3-4 paragraphs which will summarize the main contributions of each major civilizations. The paragraphs can be divided by continents or some other criteria like that.
  3. The middle ages sections can be kept or if people want to expand it can again get an article like science in the middle ages.
  4. We seriously need to prune the contemporary science part. All the subsections have their own articles and should all be cut out with any information which is unique here to be merged with the parent article for that subsection. What i think should be in this section is a very brief description of the beginings of the various fields of science in modern times, along with the people who are credited as the founders of these fields. It can also contain at the most 1-2 major discoveries in these fields which have played a role in defining the fields themselves. This section can be divided into 3-4 subsections on pyhsical sciences, social sciences etc each containing a paragraph for the various fields like physics, chemistry etc. This is certainly going to be the most difficult part of the process.
  5. All the articles being spun off should then appear as links in the infobox, which should also be displayed in all the other history of science articles.

well feel free to comment and modify this. talk , kaal 05:15, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I tend to agree with most of your suggestions. Basically, these changes will convert the present article to a meta-article with short information on all aspects of the history of science, with links to separate entries that contain detailed information. -- Cugel

See, for example, Talk:History of science/Summary style; the prose which has found a home in other articles has been pruned. Please feel free to add items, or to move text to other articles as you see fit. Ancheta Wis 08:49, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC) -- Perhaps this summary could be the overview section in the navbox. Please feel free up add to it. It is addressed to the ADD audience (lots of pictures), but is taken from the main article, which is currently over 66KB, and growing. I find the main article easy to read, but maybe thats just me. Certainly, the length is not onerous right now. The Summary-style view is less than 30KB in the editor. Ancheta Wis 11:06, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If I correctly understand, kaal, you are proposing that that this same infobox should be used in all other history of science articles. I think it would be probably better that he infobox is adapted for different sciences. Each science should have the infobox that would point the reader to the history of its own different subfields.
For example, the "history of medicine" article could have an infobox that would point the reader to history of anatomy, history of physiology, history of oncology, history of pediatrics and so on. The physics infobox would contain links to astrophysics; atomic, molecular and optic physics; particle physics and condensed matter physics.
For the moment, I inserted the current infobox into the history of medicine article. Please feel free to substitute one which fits your concept. The current navbox has been inserted into only the articles which it lists, that are currently named history of .... That is, the Geology article has a History section, so I did not insert the navbox into those articles. Please feel free to implement your concepts. Ancheta Wis 18:35, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Another thing, I also support splitting the article into different subarticles. I would propose that history of science in Middle Ages indeed gets its own article, as some years ago by chance I read a book on this topic about 500 pages long, so there is plenty of material. Also emerging sciences would deserve their own article.
One has been added. Please feel free to implement your concepts. Ancheta Wis 18:35, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Development of contemporary science should be described not only by fields, but also there should be something written about general development of science in the present. In the article there is a part of the section "Science as a social enterprise" that speaks about this and in my opinion, should be transferred under the heading "Contemporary science". --Eleassar777 09:02, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I did some more shortening work and streamlining and the article is now 39 KB large. Much better than it used to be. Ancheta, what do you think still needs to be done to the article? I think the sections on physics and chemistry could be further shortened a little but otherwise I don't know. I believe this is getting near FA standard. -- Cugel 07:24, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

There is some candidate prose for the physics and chemistry sections in Talk:History of science/Summary style which I pruned. To get the summary prototype page to 30KB, I had to omit entire paragraphs from the 39KB version. You are welcome to use the summary physics and chemistry paragraphs, of course. Ancheta Wis 11:33, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I would not worry about that last 9K. The 30K "suggestion" is not binding and I don't think we should make the article too lifeless. Cugel's pruning has been pretty merciless as it is! (I think he/she has done a good job) --Fastfission 17:03, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
(I'm a he, by the way) -- I've been merciless, but this article needs to be concise and needs to point at all the different resources that are out there (as it is now doing, thanks to the great general indexing by Ancheta). On the test talk page, I condensed the text on chemistry to two short sections, but I feel that I did too much there. I do believe we're getting there, maybe in a few days someone can put it up for a featured article again. -- Cugel 21:34, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)
I think you're doing fine at it, don't get me wrong. I'm a naturally over-verbose person so anyone willing to come through and slice and move what I've written is welcome by me! If you want an especially nasty monster, you could edit down some of what I've put at History of nuclear weapons so far.. it is becoming ridiculously large and I'm not half-way done with it. --Fastfission 22:45, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Missing material

Please help improve this article or section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.
This article has been tagged since January 2007.

Looking at Obsolete scientific theory, I find some things missing from our treatment of the history of science and pre-science:

-- Beland 06:08, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Granularity and threading

So we are currently presenting things chronologically under huge headings like "physics" and "chemistry". I think it would be a lot easier to follow if we consolidate around threads in the same subfield. For example, in physics, we shouldn't go back and forth between unrelated things, like thermodynamics and electricity. In trying to break things down into fine-grained threads, I've noticed that there's a lot of splitting, merging, and meandering of a subfield between e.g. physics and chemistry. I'm not sure if that means that the major field headings are too problematic to keep...whatever makes things coherent and avoids too much duplication of material.

Below is a very quickly thrown together partial outline to give an idea of what I mean. -- Beland 05:58, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

One of the ideas of the Sony corporation, in its mission statement, was "break down the artificial distinction between physics and chemistry". A similar idea in electrical engineering is "artificial distinction between random access memory and boolean logic circuits". Ancheta Wis 13:37, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC) We are seeing this in the interdisciplinary topics.
Cross-cutting is the name of the term for this type of writing style of splitting, merging, and meandering. Crosscutting helps to keep up the interest in a topic. It gets used in movies, for example. We are in a fortunate position, to be able to be talking about writing style. In the lists below, it would probably be helpful to give an introductory paragraph, detailing the bulleted items below, and then to crosscut from one viewpoint to the next, sticking to one theme in an arc of development. Would that be OK with you? Ancheta Wis 13:37, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
For example, in the first two main bullets below, one arc of development could be to talk cosmology, and end in modern cosmology, with several possible endings, including the dark matter story.
In the 3rd and 4th main bullets below, one arc of development could be to talk atomic theory, and culminate in the gas of particles concept (5th bullet and beyond), particularly a gas of photons in the stars.
The crosscutting technique could help the ADD reader by telling a story which might keep his interest. One problem is names of people. When there is a conflict, such as between Galileo and the Inquisition, the names are part of the story. But the discoverer of oxygen doesn't quite get the same interest (except as the name in a footnote), because there are almost 200 elements. When we get to relativity, etc., the topic gets non-human very quickly, with timescales and masses that defy the imagination. So people get left out of the story very quickly.
That suggests a natural divide in the article at the social sciences. Ancheta Wis 13:37, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yes, that sounds like what I was suggesting. I guess some of us need to start trying this out and we'll see how well it works. -- Beland 05:09, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The following section "Granularity and subthreads" is the list from Beland:

[edit] Granularity and subthreads

  • Cosmology and gravity
    • Mythological explanations
    • Flat earth theory
    • Earth-centric physical theories
    • Heliocentric theories
    • Newtonian mechanics
    • Relativity
  • Modern cosmology
    • Steady-state theory
    • Big Bang theory
    • Dark Matter and Dark Energy
  • Atomic theory
    • Continuum vs. atomistic debate
    • Platonic solids
    • Plagiston theory
    • Discovery of modern elements and periodic properties - see History of chemistry
    • Explanation for Brownian motion
  • History of chemistry
    • Alchemy
    • Discovery of the periodic table
    • The Chemical Revolution
    • (etc.)
    • Plastics
    • Semiconductors
    • Quantum chemistry
  • Thermodynamics
    • Antiquity
    • Caloric theory
    • Development of the modern laws of thermodynamics
  • Behavior of gases
    • Antiquity
    • Modern gas laws
  • The nature of light, electricity and magnetism
    • Antiquity
    • Emitter theory (light propagation)
    • Newtonian optics
    • Light as electromagnetic waves
  • Subatomic and 20th Century physics
    • Discovery of the electron, nucleus, proton, neutron
    • Einstein - light is a particle and a wave
    • Relativity
    • Quantum mechanics

[edit] Science sampler

Beland and I propose a series of samplers, which trace an idea in a few words, of wide scope, intended to entice an ADD reader into an article. The idea is that a sampler could be placed at a standard spot in the History of science article, with content that rotates on some basis. A sampler addresses a difficulty with adding even more content to the main article. We could write some prose such as:

The science sampler attempts to trace a thread of ideas from the history of science, where an idea started, and where it might be going. The idea is to state the thread in as few words as possible, but to be as fair to the topic as possible, as well. For more detail, see the main articles:
  1. Cosmos -- limits of our imagination.
  2. Materials -- the basis of quality in a product.
  3. Growth -- the law of growth.
  4. Disease -- where to draw the line between it and health.
  5. Health -- an evolving concept.
  6. The coming epidemic -- diabetes.
  7. The discovery of the subatomic particles.
  8. Dark matter and dark energy.
  9. Light -- lightwave or not?

No foreseeable limit to the items. The prose is not meant to be a permanent part of the main article, only the location of the sampler would remain constant. But maybe if the prose were to be accepted into a child article, then it might live on.

[edit] What else needs to be added?

While the pruning effort has addressed one of the big issues raised during the first FAC, the other objection questioned the completeness of this article. Before this article goes back for another attempt at FA status I would like to ask "Are there any other fields of study that need to be included?".

Two possible canidates are Library science and military science. I personally feel library science is as much organizational philosophy and management as anything. Military science, on the other hand, probably has as much claim to inclusion as political science. I am not saying either of these should be included, but to address potential completeness concerns we probably need a discussion. --Allen3 talk 22:39, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

A few thoughts on this and other things:
    • I think something on "organizational science" in general would be germane though I don't think there is any unifying body of knowledge (library science, operations research, etc. all certainly exist but I don't think they'd necessary see each other as kin).
    • The sociology entry could be thoroughly improved (I think it is somewhat dubious as it currently stands). I don't know enough about it to do it myself, though.
    • I think another aspect might be to divorce a separate medicine entry out of biology -- they are in many ways not the same things, both in terms of content and in terms of professionalized disciplines.
    • Should something on mathematics be included? I'm not sure how separate it is. What about statistics?
    • Should archaeology and ethnography be incorporated into anthropology?
    • The entries on "Political science" and "Linguistics" seem to be not about the history of political science or linguistics, but rather "a political science point of view of science" or "a linguistic point of view of science." I think this is confusing and certainly not in the pattern of the main entries. I'm not entirely sure how "political science" fits into the history of science, either -- the science seems almost a consciously deceptive form of professionalization (I've never met a political scientist who ever thought of his or herself as a "scientist" in the formal sense). In any event, if it is included, it should be about the history of the discipline known as "political science." I don't know enough about the history of the discipline (I was always told, "it starts with Machiavelli", but that could just be what they tell history students) to do it myself, ditto with linguistics.
--Fastfission 05:01, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)


I think the list in the article Science is a good guide for what fields should be included. I added library and military science there. I think for the broad overview, it might not be a bad idea to lump all the computer and information sciences together...library science is something of a subset of information retrieval, though like every subfield or interdisciplinary field it has its own community of practitioners.

Looking at the current state of the info box, I think we may have too much subfield proliferation. I think the navbox should be used to tie together all the top-level subarticles, but subsubarticles should not be listed there. Otherwise, it gets too long. So there should probably be only one main article linked for health sciences and medicine, which itself summarizes the histories of the subfields. There's not enough room in the main "History of science" article to do anything but perhaps list the subsubfields by way of linking to the subsubarticles. I would say the same for earth sciences, which overlaps a lot with physics. "Communications studies" is not notable enough to be included here, I don't think. It also overlaps with psychology and information science, so any earth-shattering developments there should get coverage elsewhere already. Military science is OK to add, I guess, since it seems so different from anything else here. Planetary science drifts between earth sciences and astronomy, so I'm not sure about that. There are a number of enviroment-related sciences; perhaps there should be a "lump" for them as well. History is not a science; it belongs in the humanities, so "historiography" definitely does not belong in this series. I'll turn it into a See Also link.

Also note the section on "Missing material" above, which outlines some things which should probably be mentioned in the sections we already include. -- Beland 05:05, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • I agree that Nav box should only contain the top level articles. We should crop out all the sub-fields which can be included in a seperate infobox for that main field of science. Also i will try to crop the natural science sections esp physics and chemistry as they are really large compared to the rest of the sections and so much detail is probably not needed. We should also only link to history of the subfield articles and not to other articles from the nav-box. As of now the nav-box is huge and looks really bad. We should also merge the various subsections in the emerging disciplines as the subsections only have one or two sentences each. I will try to crop the nav-box later today. kaal 18:17, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Histories of biology and medicine overlap so much (particularly in the fields of physiology and microbiology) that I'm not sure whether or how they could be separated safely. As for the infobox, I agree that in this field the link to the "history of health sciences" could be the only link retained. The article itself should then have main subheadings "human medicine" (including "dentistry") and "veterinary medicine" (perhaps also others). --Eleassar777 21:46, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I think that one could plausibly argue that while the separation would be messy, there is a considerable amount of medical practice and knowledge which is quite separate from the approach undertaken by biology (and there is so much of biology which has little to do with medical practice as well). A history of medicine in here could talk about different conceptions of disease, different forms of treatment, the changing sites of medicine (from traveling doctor to hospital as place to die to hospital as place to get good treatment), and ending with something nice and topical about the ways technologies of medicine have changed much of our conceptions of what it means to be "alive" and "dead" and "sick" and "healthy". It would have a different tone from the history of biology article as it stands, which is more focused on Darwin, DNA, etc. Obviously we are selecting certain narratives out of these big fields to hilight (the "history of biology" could be about a million different things), I don't see why this one couldn't be selected out. I suppose my thought that they should be separated comes from the fact that the current history of biology section says very little about medicine in it. --Fastfission 23:12, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Fastfission, your thoughts are welcome, on a thread which Beland started. I'm proposing a #Science sampler. The idea is to have a little place in the main article which is intended to pique a casual reader's interest, and to lead that reader to more history of science. One possible locatiom might be at the end of the article, to encourage a reader to scroll through the main article. Not a big thing, optional, but it might convince reviewers for the FAC to accept the article. It might even be a link in the navbox, and would n't take up much space then. Ancheta Wis 02:07, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
This sampler would be like that of the COTW on the community portal page? Do the numbers indicate rotations? If so, that's a great idea. I would put it on the right beside "see also" links, if this is technically possible.
As to the history of medicine, of course I agree that it is in many topics distinct from the history of biology. However, there are some discoveries that revolutionized both fields (e.g. discovery of microbes, DNA...). If the sciences are separated, it's important that these breakthroughs are mentioned in the resume of both fields, while as much as reasonably possible avoiding duplicating the info. --Eleassar777 07:52, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Greek science

The section on Greek science was moved to a proper page in this series. Ancheta Wis 11:13, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

I added a small section on greek science. Where was it moved? I think it's wrong to limit greek contribution to science to Aristotle, and then conclude that the greek were pre-scientific, completely ignoring the impressive achievements of the third century B.C.. For sure my contribution can be greatly improved. Carlo Marchiori 15:25, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

See the comment above: it was moved to History of science in early cultures. Noisy | Talk 13:28, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] History of Sociology

I have been told that Ibn Khaldoun(1332-1406) is the founder of Sociology. According to the wikipedia article about Ibn Khaldoun ([1]), he has some major work in sociology. I was surprised I couldn't find any mention of Ibn Khaldoun or his work in this article.

[edit] History of Psychology

I removed this part:

There are several new major avenues of psychology undergoing current development. Within psychotherapy, the "fourth wave" (the first three being psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and the humanistic psychology of Carl Rogers) is Transpersonal psychology which concerns the transcendent or spiritual dimensions of humanity. On the scientific front, two promising areas of study are evolutionary psychology, which seeks to understand psychology as a function of natural selection, and positive psychology, the main proponent being Martin Seligman, that emphasizes the nature of healthy and and positive psychological states, such as happiness, "flow", and subjective well-being.

The main reason is that this is supposed to be an article about history, not current development. Also, transpersonal psychology is anything but mainstream. This is partly true about positive psychology as well. --Heida Maria 22:03, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with removing this part. Maybe there is room for a new article (which we can refer to in this one) about the 'current state of affairs' in psychology. There topics such as evolutionary psychology and positive psychology (which is getting more and more attention) could be discussed. This goes for other disciplines as well. -- Cugel 11:34, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Misleading text

I think i will add the "POV" warning to this article. (If I was a native English speaker I would change this myself).

  • There's no mention in the text to the Renaissance of the 12th century. Worse: many good things that came trough this medieval renaissance are displayed as if it was from the "traditional" Italian Renaissance (Which, by the way, was mainly an artistic movement with relatively little scientific production. The true Renaissance in terms of scientific knowledge was the one that occurred in the 12th century.)
  • "Because of this regression in knowledge, the long period that followed is also known as the Dark Ages." <-- This is no longer true among historians or medievalists.

--201.50.114.212 14:31, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for the info. It would be better if you could use a {{disputed}} header and point out just where we could get updated information to improve the article. --Ancheta Wis 22:12, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I have just followed the link you provided. Some information in this link, such as the map of medieval universities, was already in the article so it appears that you are primarily objecting to the sentence you are disputing, such as the reference to the Dark Ages. Is the Dark Ages concept inappropriate after the 12th c.? If this was a long period of incubation, do you believe there was actual progress, or what? If you are referring to Roger Bacon and his peers, can you identify a scientific community to which he and his peers belonged? How many might have there been? How did they communicate? What results might they have communicated? Or was it statements of principle which needed elaboration? Thank you again, --Ancheta Wis 00:54, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Now I have followed the Roger Bacon link. If Maimonides and other Egyptian influences made it all the way into Europe, what was the vehicle? Was it trade, was it conquest, were there books or codices? If this was all under the radar, then what was it that caused the information to be saved away for the future generations? Was it the rise of the Hindu numeral system in Europe? Who were the truth bearers? --Ancheta Wis 01:07, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Following the Petrus Peregrinus link, the experimentalist and crusader whom Roger Bacon admired so much, I see the makings of a scientific community in the 13th c, not the 12th. Thus I believe that you are going to have to justify the 12th c. statement if you believe that this early Renaissance fomented a scientific revolution which occurred as early as the 12th c. Likewise, we may need to establish that the empirical method had backers (per Peregrinus and Bacon) as early as the 12th c. The next question is whether Peregrinus learned the empirical method during the crusades. I look forward to your references. --Ancheta Wis 01:43, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
In the critic's defense, I have also read about a (small) Renaissance period in the 12th century. Admittedly, it was in a text on the history of psychology. The main 'renaissance' was that in that period, some important inventions were made (I seem to recollect wind mills, but it may be a different type of mill). -- Cugel 09:09, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Cugel, I found this reference: c. 1200 for Windmills in Holland. The diagrams are clearly for 15th c and later, which is consistent with centuries of development, but what I am reminded of from those diagrams are the temples of Kyoto or Nara (lots of wood, thatched roofs, etc.), which also date back 1000 years ago, and older. So the question remains, just what makes these 'scientific'? Technology is not the same as science; if we are talking about Simon Stevin's sail-driven carriage (which is 16th c.), we should also be talking about the community which foments the knowledge. In Stevinus' era, then we seem to be on firmer ground, where the vehicle for scientific progress was the printed book. But 12th c.? What was the truth bearer? Was it the transmission of manuscripts? Was it working models? Was it a travelling savant? Was it trade of merchandise? Please note that I am simply asking for more evidence, such as a title we can refer to in a citation. --Ancheta Wis 17:41, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

It's hard to communicate in English for me, but ill try.

When I say "The true Renaissance in terms of scientific knowledge was the one that occurred in the 12th century.", the main factor is that the Renaissance of the 12th century provided the foundation for the future development of scientific ideas in Europe. This foundation came with the birth of the medieval university, with the strong process of translation of Arab and Greek texts, with the scientific work of Franciscans and Dominicans, (especially the Franciscan school of Oxford - with men like Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon - but also with the intellectual work of such man as: Albertus Magnus, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham and Jean Buridan.) One should also note the development of empiricist methodology by them.

These fact are not explained anywhere. Moreover, the present text makes one believe that the process of rediscovery of the ancient scientific texts was only an aspect of the art-oriented Italian Renaissance - simply not true.

Google gave me this link that may be useful: [2] See also: medieval technology, and [3].

There is also this [[4]] text, with the bold claim that "the 'Renaissance' was a period when thought declined significantly, bring ing to an end a period of advance in the late Middle Ages". (!?)

I hope it helps. --201.50.114.33 19:16, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

201, Thank you for your information. It being Thanksgiving Day, I was looking forward to a relaxing time reading the history of New Mexico, but your data is forcing me to do some work! OK, if we can work this out on the talk page before going to the Article page, I would appreciate it. Wikipedians, please feel free to join in the fun!

It appears that the theses of Petrarch and Gibbon, who witnessed shepherds grazing their flocks among the ruins of Rome is under attack. Thus a Roman-centered view of the development of western civilization is POV. Fine. The counter-argument appears to be that the medieval universities were the truth-bearers. They started the infrastructure which we need for scientific communities; these universities produced thinkers like Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon Albertus Magnus, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham and Jean Buridan. Thus the disputed sentence might be replaced with

The regression in knowledge began to abate as early as the twelfth century. By this time, the universities of Europe aided materially in the propagation, translation and preservation of the texts of the ancients, including Archimedes, Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, Aristarchus, and Euclid. By the thirteenth century, these texts began to be extended by the Scholastics such as Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham and Jean Buridan. In particular, the empirical approach admired by Roger Bacon was exemplified by Petrus Peregrinus. These advances occurred in the same time as those in Jewish philosophy by Maimonides and in Islamic philosophy by Averroes.

201, how is this? By the way, if you get a user name, it will mean that you can track any changes to an article with your watch list. Please feel free to add your changes or completely rework what I have tried to put down. For example, the thinkers had not started to specialize as they do now. It may well be possible to add a sentence apiece for each of the links. One problem with this article is the length. At one time, it was twice as big as it is now, and we are trying to hold down the size. --Ancheta Wis 20:09, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

- - - -

Hi, Ancheta Wis. Some historians may argue that the regression in knowledge began to abate as early as the Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century. But I generally like the paragraph, thank you for your help trying to "translate" my claims. Sorry, but I won't be able to continue this discussion today. I intend to be back tomorrow. I will also read more carefully this text, (the last link I gave earlier). --201.50.114.33 20:52, 24 November 2005 (UTC)


Ancheta: looks good! 201 was clearly refering to the Scholastics, and you seem to have nicely covered them. The 12th century (around that time) marks the first division between faith and ratio - William of Ockham was instrumental in this process. After reading the earlier comments, I'm not sure we can put the article up for FA anytime soon. What are your thoughts on this? -- Cugel 21:44, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Cugel, I inserted your information. I don't think about FA anymore; if it happens, it happens, but there were so many of us working on it for so long, that I believe it's not going to make it anytime soon. --Ancheta Wis 00:07, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

I came up with this - not yet finished - complete rework of the topic "The Middle Ages: Western World" I am aware that it may be too big right now (or not :-)

[edit] Early Middle Ages

'See also: Medieval medicine, Medieval philosophy

With the loss of the Western Roman Empire, much of Europe lost contact with the knowledge of the past. While the Byzantine Empire still held learning centers such as Alexandria and Constantinople, Western Europe's knowledge was concentrated in monasteries. Philosophical and scientific teaching of the period was based upon few copies and commentaries of ancient Greek texts that remained in Western Europe.

In part because of this regression in knowledge, the period from about A.D. 476 to about 1000 came to be known in popular culture as the Dark Ages. Most modern historians dismiss the use of the term, tough; by pointing out that the label of this era as "dark" was mostly based on previous ignorance about the period combined with popular stereotypes.

[edit] High Middle Ages

Map of Medieval Universities
Map of Medieval Universities

See Also: Renaissance of the 12th century

This scenario starts to change with the birth of medieval universities in the twelfth century, when the rediscovery of the works of ancient philosophers through contact with the Arabs after the Reconquista and during the Crusades started an intellectual revitalization of Europe.

The contact with the Islamic world in Sicily and Spain allowed Europeans access to preserved copies of Greek and Roman works along with the works of Islamic philosophers. The universities of Europe aided materially in the translation, preservation and propagation of the texts of the ancients, including Archimedes, Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, Aristarchus, and Euclid.

By the thirteenth century, these texts began to be extended by the Scholastics such as Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Jean Buridan and Nicole Oresme. In particular, the empirical approach admired by Roger Bacon was exemplified by Petrus Peregrinus. These advances occurred in the same time as those in Jewish philosophy by Maimonides and in Islamic philosophy by Averroes.

[edit] Late Middle Ages

Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, an example of the blend of art and science during the Renaissance
Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, an example of the blend of art and science during the Renaissance

See also: Renaissance

In spite a halt caused by events like the Black Death, the 14th century was a time of great progress, especially within the arts, but also with the sciences. The process of rediscovery of ancient texts was enhanced, now with the translation from original Greek works brought to the west when many Byzantine scholars, fleeing from the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, had to seek refuge in the West, particularly Italy.

Translations and commentaries of Aristotle by the Islamic scholar Averroës were influential in much of Europe. The published works of Marco Polo along with the Crusades helped spark interest in geography. Most importantly, the development of the printing press in the 1450s allowed for new ideas to be rapidly copied to multiple people. All that paved the way to the Scientific Revolution.


What do you think? --201.(the same person of yesterday) 15:11, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

201, it looks good to me. Shall we go to Prime Time? I will wait for other responses, but you have at least one Support response. -- Ancheta Wis 16:31, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Support. But the sentence 'events like the Black Death' looks too informal to me. Maybe you can just sum up the two or three most important events that held back further developments. (so you'd get something like: 'Events such as the Black Death and (other event)...'). -- still, nice to see improvements done to this article again, so go ahead. Cugel 15:15, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] About: "The Middle Ages: Western World"

Hi, everybody. I am/was 201. (that annoying fellow complaining about the article :-). I made yet another rework of the topic "The Middle Ages: Western World" and aplied the new version to the article "History of science in the Middle Ages". The idea is to discuss there how to improve the text and work out possible disagreements. After the text is more refined, we can transfer the important content to the general "History of science" article. --Leinad-Z 01:07, 26 November 2005 (UTC)


Here it is. This new version includes more data and much timeline tweaking. It's larger than the previous version, but it has only important facts - I believe.

  • Update: If the text is too big (I hope not)... i just marked (like this: kjkjkjkjkj) some parts we could cut out. --Leinad-Z 21:35, 29 November 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Early Middle Ages

See also: Medieval medicine, Medieval philosophy

With the loss of the Western Roman Empire, much of Europe lost contact with the knowledge of the past. While the Byzantine Empire still held learning centers such as Alexandria and Constantinople, Western Europe's knowledge was concentrated in monasteries. Philosophical and scientific teaching of the period was based upon few copies and commentaries of ancient Greek texts that remained in Western Europe. In part because of this regression in knowledge, the period from about A.D. 476 to about 1000 came to be known in popular culture as the "Dark Ages". Most modern historians dismiss the use of the term, tough; by pointing out that the label of this era as "dark" was mostly based on previous ignorance about the period combined with popular stereotypes.

[edit] High Middle Ages

Map of Medieval Universities
Map of Medieval Universities

See Also: Renaissance of the 12th century, Medieval technology

This scenario starts to change with the birth of medieval universities in the 12th century, when the rediscovery of the works of ancient philosophers through contact with the Arabs after the Reconquista and during the Crusades started an intellectual revitalization of Europe. The interactions with the Islamic world in Sicily and Spain allowed Europeans access to preserved copies of Greek and Roman works (in Arab language) along with the works of Islamic philosophers. The European universities aided materially in the translation, preservation and propagation of these texts and started a new infrastructure which was needed for scientific communities.

On the beginning of the 13th century there were reasonably accurate Latin translations of the main works of Aristotle, Plato, Euclid, Ptolemy, Archimedes and Galen, that is, of all the intellectually crucial ancient authors except Thucydides. By then, the natural philosophy contained in these texts began to be extended by the Scholastics such as Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus and Duns Scotus. Precursors of the modern scientific method can be seen already on Grosseteste's emphasis on mathematics as a way to understand nature and on the empirical approach admired by Roger Bacon. The published works of Marco Polo along with the Crusades helped spark interest in geography. These advances occurred roughly in the same time as those in Jewish philosophy by Maimonides and in Islamic philosophy by Averroes.

[edit] Late Middle Ages

Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, an example of the blend of art and science during the Renaissance
Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, an example of the blend of art and science during the Renaissance

See also: Renaissance

The first half of the 14th century saw the scientific work of great thinkers like William of Ockham, Jean Buridan and Nicole Oresme. Some scholars, such as Buridan, started to question the received wisdom of Aristotle's mechanics: he developed the theory of impetus which was the first step towards the modern concept of inertia. William of Ockham introduced the principle of parsimony: philosophy should only concern itself with subjects on whom it could achieve real knowledge, this should lead to a decline in fruitless debates and move natural philosophy toward science.

Then came the Black Death of 1348, that sealed a sudden end to the previous period of massive change. The plague killed a third of the people in Europe. Recurrences of the plague and other disasters caused a continuing decline of population for a century. In spite this halt, the 15th century saw the artistic flourishing of the Renaissance. The rediscovery of ancient texts was improved after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, when many Byzantine scholars had to seek refuge in the West, particularly Italy. Meanwhile, the invention of printing was to have great effect on European society. The facilitated dissemination of the printed word democratized learning and allowed a faster propagation of new ideas. All that paved the way to the Scientific Revolution, which may also be understood as a resume of the process of scientific development halted around the middle of the 14th century.



It's probably my last version. Please, tell me what you guys think. I suppose the writing stile, orthography, etc. shold be improved, since I'm not a native English speaker (the best written parts possibly came trough copy and paste from other Wikipedia articles :-) --Leinad-Z 19:18, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Well, I was looking forward to change the main article. So I squeezed the above text and also removed most of the marked text. I hope you like the result as it is in the article right now. --Leinad-Z 14:22, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
We currently need a picture of the base of the brain, for some articles. There is one in Andreas Vesalius' De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543) which I could use in an article right away. --Ancheta Wis 09:42, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
Ancheta: that picture looks useful. Let's see if we can incorporate it here. (I did so, feel free to move it to a better position). I think the Einstein pic is a little out of place, but I don't know a better position for it. -- Cugel 14:12, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] One suggestion

I don't mind all of the middle ages/ancient text, but now it greatly, greatly overshadows the scientific revolution. Perhaps we can shrink some of the middle ages sections into summaries of larger articles, and expand the scientific revolution a bit? At the moment the 15th-17th centuries have been reduced to a list of names, which is somewhat silly given how many rather world-changing things happened at that point. --Fastfission 04:48, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Agreed, we need to shorten it a little. Feel free to expand the 17th century part a little (this is a difficult exercise, but the whole article has been very complex to keep succinct/short/informative). -- Cugel 14:12, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
Most courses on history of science treat separately: the history of science from antiquity to 17th century and the history of Modern Science. This article tries to handle both subjects simultaneously - it’s very hard to do so while keeping the size down.
I may try to shorten the medieval section even more, but important information will be deleted in the process.
It may be wiser to split this article in the same fashion of the academic courses, allowing the subtopics some space to breathe. Was this alternative ever considered? --Leinad-Z 16:57, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
I don't think that particular option was considered. You may want to (re)read the comments from the earlier peer review though, since some suggestions for major structural changes were made then. I have to say that most of the advice was followed. I do think a generic 'history of science' article is useful, but it could be shortened, with the main stuff being in two articles 'History of (ancient?) science' and 'History of contemporary science'. -- Cugel 18:02, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
Only two articles makes for an artificial split. Granted, the Scientific revolution was a watershed, but two articles (pre-science, modern science) makes the difference between 'before' and 'after' too dramatic. In only a few decades, the 'after' article will seem quaint. It is valuable to show the march of ideas in one article, somehow. Isn't the medieval science article reflecting the added content? What about 3+ articles on this topic? You know -- a 'main' article with the huge sweep of ideas, and child articles, but on science in general, not just specialized, because we have the specialized ones already. --Ancheta Wis 18:07, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
Anything which is a survey of this magnitude has to cut a lot of corners, of course, but that's what sub-articles are for. I think there is certainly enough material to have separate articles on History of Ancient science, History of Islamic science, History of medieval science, History of early modern science, and History of modern science, which are the usual divisions I have seen. History of science in the twentieth century could be a long, long article, too. --Fastfission 20:00, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
So if I understand, you mean something like (please modify as you see fit): --Ancheta Wis 22:24, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
  • History of science: overview article on science in general
    • History of Ancient science: Astronomy, mathematics, timekeeping, recordkeeping
      • History of Indian science: Astronomy, Medicine ...
      • History of Chinese science/technology ...
      • History of Islamic science: Astronomy, scientific method ...
      • History of medieval science: Renaissance (12th c.-16th c.), rise of scientific communities, mathematical notation
    • History of early modern science: 1600, Scientific Revolution
    • History of modern science: 1700-1900 -- specialization
    • History of science in the twentieth century: QM, GR, Big Science, DNA, Computing, Statistics, Logic ...
    • Open/interconnected history of science (today)

Pretty much, with some small hierarchical changes:

  • Ancient
    • Indian
    • Chinese
    • Greek (I don't know what order the last three should go in -- not an area I know much about)
  • Medieval
    • Islamic
    • European (not much to say)
  • Early modern
    • Renaissance
    • Scientific Revolution
  • Modern
    • 20th century

Now the question of whether the Renaissance was the end of the Medieval or the beginning of the Early Modern is of course up for some dispute, but I think it sits more elegantly with the Early Modern myself, though it could go either way. Now I'm not sure if the article should be oriented in this way — it would be pretty different from our current article if it was, unless we jetisoned much of the current modern science into its own article. But that's how I have understood the general chronology to be, with the exception of the Ancient period which I know much less about. --Fastfission 23:07, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

The History of Science template lists a red link, History of science in the Renaissance, which according Leinad-Z's work on the current History of science article, has to do with the recovery of Europe from the depopulation from the Black Death. Leinad-Z, Fastfission, am I misstating this? The non-monolithic character of the States of Europe then led to just enough freedom of scientific inquiry to allow publication of the works by Vesalius and Copernicus in 1543. Of course, Vesalius was chased from Padua and had to take refuge in Spain, and Copernicus published from his deathbed. Concurrently, the first scientific societies were getting traction, such as Giambattista della Porta's society, before it was shut down. Then we get the Lincean Academy and Galileo, and the flame of Scientific Revolution flares up again, so far unextinguished to this day. But who knows, everything could get suppressed again, unless you view the printing press and internet as instruments of freedom in communication of scientific thought. This would imply that Science was here to stay with these inventions. --Ancheta Wis 11:54, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] About the 15th century Renaissance

Ancheta Wis, in response to you first question I will quote: Italian Renaissance#Science and philosophy.

While concern for philosophy, art and literature all increased greatly in the Renaissance the period is usually seen as one of scientific backwardness. The reverence for classical sources further enshrined the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic views of the universe. Humanism stressed that nature came to be viewed as an animate spiritual creation that was not governed by laws or mathematics. At the same time philosophy lost much of its rigour as the rules of logic and deduction were seen as secondary to intuition and emotion.
It would not be until the Renaissance moved to Northern Europe that science would be revived, with such figures as Copernicus, Francis Bacon, and Descartes. They are often described as early Enlightenment thinkers, rather than late Renaissance ones.

The over-the-top reverence for ancient texts ("older equals better"); the disregard for "laws of nature"; and the emphasis on intuition over logic were all "downgrades" from the high scholastic period (1250-1350). So, it seems to be more reasons for that "red link" than just the steep decline in population caused by the Black Death. On the other hand, I’m not sure Fastfission agrees with the statement that the Renaissance was a period of backwardness. Let's wait his comments. --Leinad-Z 16:22, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] History of science Wikiproject

Seems like a good place to advertise this for interested parties: History of science Wikiproject proposal. --Fastfission 15:21, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Citation needed for iron rockets in India

Could you please place a citation for the iron rocket? It appears that gunpowder would have then been available in India for the propulsion of the rocket. Is this so? What is the citation? --Ancheta Wis 02:16, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Accuracy?

I was just glancing and noticed something that I know is not correct, and its a rather simple thing, a date: "Linus Pauling's book on The Nature of the Chemical Bond used the principles of quantum mechanics to deduce bond angles in ever-more complicated molecules, culminating in the physical modelling of DNA, or (in the words of Francis Crick) the secret of life. In the same year, the Miller-Urey experiment demonstrated..." It was the same year? Paulings book was published in the 30's but the Miller-Urey experiment was not until 1953. Am I misunderstanding something? Giovanni33 09:15, 18 March 2006 (UTC

Thank you for the note. I simplified the sentence to make clear that the DNA modelling was in 1953, the same year as the Miller-Urey experiment. That leaves the date for Pauling's book unspecified, but clearly written earlier than 1953. --Ancheta Wis 09:34, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dont forget the Greeks

Why does this article jump right from alchemy to the middle ages. What about Archimedes, Plato, Aristotle, etc.? Never thought I'd see an anti-Greek bias on Wikipedia? savidan(talk) (e@) 07:12, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your concern. See Pre-experimental science and the History of science in early cultures#Greek and Hellenistic science subpages, which attempt to portray Greek science as a natural successor to earlier cultures, especially Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China. The article was severely pruned from a 90K size in an attempt to reach Featured status; thus the elision of 'Greek and Hellenistic science' from the main History of science page, which had previously attempted to sketch Science in 30K. From the previous versions, only Aristotle remains on the main History of science page. Currently the main article exceeds 45K.
There has been a conscious attempt to portray the global development of science, and not only the Western version, so as to avoid systemic bias, which is a Wikiproject in itself. Isaac Newton himself credits 'the Ancients' as his forebears, which includes Greek science, of course (as well as the entire globe). We invite your participation in this Wikiproject, where you might sketch any proposed contribution you may wish to offer. --Ancheta Wis 09:11, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Citations -- Footnotes

Can I suggest that we encourage the use of footnotes in history of science articles. A good example of what I have in mind is the Archaeoastronomy page (and when adding some new material to the main History of Science article, I converted the existing citations to use that footnote format).

It seems like a good way to ensure that content is verifiable.--SteveMcCluskey 22:55, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

PS I was just reading History of science in early cultures and saw that it has an inconsistent use of footnotes; there's one footnote but most notes are links to web pages. I'd rather see a title in a footnote than wait to download a 341 page PDF file (see notes 3 and 4).
As I understand it (I'm new to Wikipedia) the automatic footnote procedure is new (and has the advantage of renumbering notes as pages are edited and deleting them as paragraphs are removed). Is there / should there be any consensus on preferred citation style for history of science? --SteveMcCluskey 01:32, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
Migrating older notes to the new style is definitely a plus, in my opinion. From the related WP style guide pages (WP:CITE), it looks like the only mainstream citation style that actually supports footnoted references is CMS (and some people prefer inline citations except for didactic footnotes). In practice, it looks like there is widespread support for the new footnote system for citations. Personally, I think most readers are not looking for sources and so would find inline citations distracting. For those that do want to see sources, jumping down to the notes is not too much to ask.--ragesoss 01:46, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
I learned the footnote system {{fn|1}}Citation in the text and {{fnb|1}}The Footnote for the Citation at the foot of the article. There have been several changes but the fn/fnb seems to be the most stable, as the other methods, for example anb does not seem to work anymore. So, can you give an example from which we can work? --Ancheta Wis 10:59, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
As the link to Wikipedia:footnotes shows multiple methods, we need 1 example method for this article. You are welcome to give the example on the talk page or in the article. Ancheta Wis

As far as formatting, this is new style.[1] --ragesoss 11:09, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

  1. ^ New style formatting

So that says a succeeding citation [2] will behave thus? The world waits.[3] --Ancheta Wis 11:16, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

O.K. In my first try, I simply duplicated the format, but by convention, it appears that only one <references/> ought to be used, once only in the article, in the References section. --Ancheta Wis 11:20, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Are we moving toward a consensus that the new <ref> style is a good way to go? If so, I'll use it in future edits. --SteveMcCluskey 15:03, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I think it seems like the most flexible format, and in keeping the references near the part of the text in which they are referenced, it keeps things from slipping out of place over time. --Fastfission 15:27, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
Does that mean we should all use the <ref> tag in the same way as is done on the earlier mentioned Archaeoastronomy page? Because that page does not seem to use the {{cite}} method, which to me seems to be the preferred way to cite. Or are these somehow separate issues? -- Wijnand 15:41, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure how they're related; do you have a link to the documentation on the {{cite}} method? --SteveMcCluskey 17:00, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
{{cite}} is another referencing system, an older one than <ref></ref>. The main problems with the former are that it is very easy for the footnote numbers to get off (if someone inserts an external link into the text of the article, it throws them all off), and because it can be very hard to figure out, many edits later, exactly what footnote was supposed to correspond to what piece of text. With <ref>, neither of these are problems since the citation is actually stored in the part of the text that it is cited from. I don't think there is an official WP-wide policy on what sort of citation format to use (Wikipedia:Footnotes encourages the use of the <ref> tags but also claims to leave it open to the editor to decide what they prefer), but the advantages of the <ref> system are pretty large, IMO. There is a tool to convert from the old format to the new one at User:Cyde/Ref_converter, but I haven't used it myself. --Fastfission 19:59, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

JA: Let me just recommend that WP editors not invest a lot of time and entropy [sic] in citation styles and tools that are utterly DOA, like cite and ref. Jon Awbrey 20:54, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Fastfission: That is not the way I understood it, but that may well be my fault. I thought {{cite}} is a method to create uniform citations, whereas <ref> is a method to create 'footnotes'. So that would mean you'd get something like this: <ref>{{cite book | author=someone | title=the title}}</ref> and so on. I didn't know this would mess up numbering. -- Wijnand 20:58, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
Pardon me, you're right about all that -- I was getting it confused with another template. I'm pretty sure I've seen people use the cite templates inside the ref tags (personally I can't stand using cite templates, but I understand why others find them useful). --Fastfission 23:22, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
I pasted in your nested <ref> {{cite ... }} </ref> in two places, one here [4]. How does it look to everyone? One thing that I see is the numbering is indeed sequential in the article; the linked references have the the expected numbers. It even allows putting the list of footnotes at the top of the article, if that is where <references /> sits in the article. It could even be used as a kind of Table of Contents if it sat at the top of an article. --Ancheta Wis 22:39, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
What I like most about {{cite}} is that it will make sure all references are formatted consistently within an article. For those who want to use it, check out WP:CITE/ES for example styles. (Remember you have to follow the links tot the templates and check the source to actually see what's going on) And Ancheta Wis: to me it looks good :-) But I don't know about using references as a ToC.. -- Wijnand 06:37, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

<reduce indent> second that: in working on Catherine Cranston which involved repeating reference to sources for various points, with some of the sources contradicting each other to an extent, use of the <ref name=xxxx>{{cite book | first=xxx etc. ...}}</ref> system with citation templates from Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles#Citations of generic sources for books and web references worked really well. Having the cites in the text rather than trying to keep track of them in a separate footnote is good, though I found it a bit confusing at times. Overall, strongly recommended. ..dave souza, talk 12:11, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] For Whom The Bell Tolls

JA: A few general remarks on citations, footnotes, and stuff. No Wiki is an island, sufficient unto itself, but part of a Wider World, and even though WikiPediagogues are somewhat new to the business of sourced research, the Wider World is not, and there happens to be a rather vast amount of cumulative experience, and even quite a few experimental research studies, on the documentation practices that work best, on any number of factors from cognitive comprehension to robust maintainability, over the very, very long haul. WP denizens, including RoboCite and RoboRef innovators, are simply wasting their time and effort going up against what has become standard practice in that Wider World. Now, all of the reasons why the "Way Of Things" (WOT) came to be as it is can be explained if anybody is interested, but the sheer thrill of automating antiquated ways of doing things seems to be keeping anybody from heeding what is an utter no-brainer here, so I will just leave to these words to the wise. Hear me now, and believe me later, Jon Awbrey 14:36, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

eh? ..dave souza, talk 14:54, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm with Dave on this one.. -- Wijnand 20:02, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

JA: Ah. Two Canadians against the World. The usual odds, I must say. Jon Awbrey 20:28, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

JA: I much prefer to spend time working on articles, and only get in-cited every now and then to comment on these indicental matters out of a sense of self-defense, so here for your e-musement is an earlier manifester on this general non-subject:

Putting roller skates on the horse

JA: That's not how the Automobile got invented. The way I see it, a lot of time and ingenuity is being wasted on a system of citation that experienced scholars just plain don't use anymore, and never will again, for all sorts of reasons that would be immediately obvious here if WikiPedians had a longer history of actually sourcing their contributions in any routine and systematic way. Here are some of things that normally become obvious when you do this all the time.

  1. Once you get more than a dozen or so items in your list of references and/or bibliography, then it's time to use an alphabetized list for both.
  2. The list of references needs to be in one place, not scattered throughout the text. This allows for (1) easy error correction and omission checking, by virtue of the parallel comparison of literature entries that it facilitates, (2) extracting the references whole hog from an article, as scholars already familiar with a topic often find that the literature section is the only thing of real interest, for instance, if it cites sources that they haven't seen before. Further, this practice helps to prevent the erosion of accurate citations that inevitably occurs as editors will tend to use more and more abbreviated reference entries as time goes on.

JA: To be continued. Hold yer horses. Jon Awbrey 20:50, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Suddenly you're making a lot more sense. But then this practical issue arises: is such a system available in the Wonderful World of Wiki? Or even: should such a system be available, given the fact that most wikipedia articles are and ought to be well shorter than your average scientific article? I generally see (or edit) articles with at most five references to books or articles. Although you are right that correcting a typo can become hard if you also have to go figure out where the text with the typo actually is, I don't see a reason to at least use this system for now.
I also don't see a wikipedia article as primarily a place where scholars go to find sources, but as an article that explains a subject to just about anyone who is interested. The references are very useful, but in my opinion more so to make claims verifyable and to give some starting points for further reading, than to fill a scholar's BibTeX database. If that's what you meant. -- Wijnand 06:29, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
I don't agree with the assessment that scholars don't use footnotes. In work done in the history of science, extensive footnotes and/or endnotes is still the favored mode of citation. The goal of using such footnotes, closely tied to the content, on Wikipedia is to help with making sure that individual claims can be easily sourced. A list of alphabetized references at the end is not prohibited, even with a footnote system. --Fastfission 11:57, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

JA: Look, I'm just a messenger here. I do not expect that anybody will be swayed one way or the other just because of what I say, so all I can do is point to a world of customs and practices, and maybe it will serve to think about that. The stability of customs and practices is an index of their utility, hardly the last word on their optimality, but it happens that current practices in documentation are supported by a lot of experience and reality-testing of different ways of doing things.

JA: To clarify what we are talking about, here are some general points:

  1. Footnotes are used for editorial remarks, not citations. The apparatus of editorial remarks may be extensive in critical editions of important works, but outside of that footnotes tend to be incidental and minimal.
  2. Citations are placed in text, in forms like (Plato, p. 123) when there is only one work of a given authorship being used in the article, or forms like (Peirce 1870, pp. 1–9) when there are several works under the same authorship. It's best not to lose sleep over the presence of the p's, but leave that to taste.
  3. References are placed in a alphabetized list of references.

These are the practices that seem to work best over the long haul. Jon Awbrey 12:45, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

The reason I want to see citations is that as I look through Wikipedia, I frequently come across statments that seem really questionable, with no citations to back up where that specific fact comes from. I think putting a citation to a reliable source immediately adjacent to every fact that isn't common knowledge is a strong way to insure Verifiability.
I think JA is exagerrating the extent of uniformity in the "Wider World" outside Wiki. The standard practice he suggests (Footnotes for editorial remarks, Citations in text, and an alphabetized list of references) is in fact standard in the social sciences (I use it when writing for collections edited by my archaeolgist and anthropologist colleagues).
As FastFission points out, almost every historical journal uses Footnotes for both editorial remarks and citations, and sometimes adds an alphabetized list of references. It's a matter of disciplinary preference, indicated by the fact that the Chicago Manual of Style has separate chapters for the two styles of citation. When writing historical articles, I suggest following general historical practice (especially since Wiki now has such a nice way to keep footnotes organized). --SteveMcCluskey 17:11, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
JA, you're talking about the customs of one discipline. There are many options and Wikipedia's WP:CITE policy does not discriminate against them. I have no problem with parenthetic citation, but it is just one way to do it, and like all forms of citation it has its ups and downs. Footnote and endnote citation is extremely prevalent in historical works. Parenthetical is more common in the sciences and the social sciences. Neither is exclusive and neither is outmoded. I fail to see why this discussion belongs here, in any case (if you want to discuss the merits of citation formats, go to the policy page on citation), and I don't think the world hinges on this distinction in any case. --Fastfission 19:03, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
While I appreciate that JA is in dead Ernest, for a non academic like myself the recent system gives a hefty push towards being more systematic about references, even looking to show editions which I didn't try to do before. The "standards" he cites strike me as relating to, well, paper papers, and a bit irrelevant with linked text on these overgrown electric typewriters we're all using. Still, if what is desired can be achieved with software easily used by us mere mortals, so be it. ...dave souza, talk 20:07, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Personally, I despise inline citations; they are always an eyesore, whereas it's kinda nice to see footnote superscripts, once you get used to them.--ragesoss 20:15, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Is "history" one of the sciences studied in the history of science?

I was surprised to see the new section on "History" in the general article on History of Science. It's a good essay, but I don't think it belongs there for several reasons:

  • In English usage history is not considered to be one of the sciences, unlike German usage which places it among the Wissenschaften.
  • Historians of science seldom write about the history of history. Of the 5000 items in the 2004 and 2005 issues of the Isis Current Bibliography only one was categorized as the history of history as a discipline, and that was a biography of the historian of science, Herbert Butterfield.
  • Historians also seldom write the history of their discipline. An essay in Perspectives: Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association vol. 44, no. 5 (May 2006), pp. 23-26, 36 commented on the lack of such inquiry.

Without commenting on its quality, I would remove this new section as misleading the reader on the scope of the history of science as it is currently practiced. --SteveMcCluskey 21:56, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

But is the study of History moving to a set of principles? If so, then that would be an argument that Historiography is gaining a scientific slant. Would it make sense to include Historiography rather than History itself? --Ancheta Wis 22:05, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Reading the content of the new section, it appears that the content of Historiography is still in the stage of ostensive definition. Ancheta Wis 22:52, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
I don't think anybody considers history a "science" itself. There were, of course, people with aspirations for such, but it was always a call of making history a science, never a claim that it was a science (excluding Soviet rhetoric of course, which thought everything they did was a science). Today there are very few if any historians who would argue that history is or should be a "science" under the strict definition of science. --Fastfission 01:09, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Folks, welcome to the real world. Go to any college, and history is under social sciences. Psychology (or at least a significant contingent within psychology), and some sociologists finally prove their methodology as empirically and statistically sound (within the last 35 years or so), and all of a sudden, well, all the social sciences are in. Please do me a favor and go explain that to intelligent design advocates. ... Kenosis 01:56, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you're advocating here. Sociologists and psychologists like to call themselves scientists, and some people disagree. But historians almost never call themselves scientists. Political scientists don't actually think they are "scientists" either, as I understand it, and wouldn't classify themselves under "history of science". --Fastfission 04:06, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Not advocating anything. I was merely observing that this is a fairly classic demarcation problem as I see it. I think sociology, liguistics, anthropology and such disciplines are already stretching the term "science", but that's just a personal preference for use of the term. What I do see is that once the other social sciences are presented, there appears to be little warrant to exclude history...Kenosis 13:16, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
And in any case... historians do often write about the history of history, but it is considered a type of historiography, not history of science. Historians of science are, of course, often concerned with historiography and its effects (Kuhn devotes quite a bit of SSR to discussing the historiography of science) but that does not make "history" a "science" in the sense that including it in this article would indicate. --Fastfission 04:09, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Fastfission puts it well. I think the history section doesn't belong here. The only time historians call themselves (social) scientists is when they want NSF grants ;). History of political science does have some relevance to history of science (e.g., Leviathan and the Air Pump and other SSK work), but isn't treated as a science on its own; it should probably go as well.--ragesoss 04:17, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
What if the contribution were to be moved to the historiography article itself? --Ancheta Wis 11:15, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

That would work really well; it could almost just be dumpted right in as its own section after the "basic issues section" and before the journals list. "History of history," perhaps. The social science section is more about the historical role of politics in science; is there somewhere it could go? We don't have a Science and politics article. It might have a place in the theories and sociology article.--ragesoss 16:27, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I think Ancheta's suggestion of incorporating it into historiography , or perhaps starting a new entry called "History of history" would be the way to go. BTW, I posted a note about this on Daanschr's talk page, asking if he wanted to comment (since he wrote most of the History of history section). --SteveMcCluskey 21:21, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Let's put it all in historiography; it could definitely use the information (it has nothing on the history of historical writing in it at the moment). We could move it through the 19th and 20th century with a little consultation to Peter Novick's That Noble Dream, if someone has the time. --Fastfission 22:24, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
I automatically presumed that history was a science, when i wrote my peace about history of history in this article, being enthusiastic about it that history was missing. I have a bachelor degree in history and am now doing my master. I have to admit that i have never heard a teacher on the university saying that history is a science. It is not an issue there. In the Netherlands (where i live), it used to be an issue ten years ago. Some politicians wanted to make an end the history education, because they thought that it didn't contribute anything and only costs society money. In France however, history is considered as the prime social science and it is very important there.
If i look at the defenition of science in the opening of this article, then i don't understand why history is not considered a science. it says: 'science refers to the system of acquiring knowledge – based on empiricism, experimentation, and methodological naturalism. The term science also refers to the organized body of knowledge humans have gained by such research.' The word science could be replaced by the study of history and then it would easily fit this description. The main difference between physics and history is that history involves far more causes to explain something, so it is very hard to come to the 'right' answer of 'scientific' questions in the study of history. Maybe it is a solution to add the remarks of Kuhn about science and state that it is controversial that social sciences belong to science.--Daanschr 08:41, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
About the immaturity of the study of history: the study of history in America surprises me. It seems like it is more important in America what to do with historical knowledge, then to find out what actually happened. American history handbook have a strong tendency to moralism. I don't understand why subgroups in the society should have such an impact on the study of history. There is lots of emphasis on female and African American history. Also, i like open questions instead of multiple choice in exams. To conclude, i think that the Dutch approach of the study of history is far more scientific. A major problem in the history study is the emotional involvement of people.
French historians started using philosophy, psychology, sociology, mathematics and other specialisms in their research, which makes it more scientific to my opinion. Sociology and psychology have the tendency to deal primarily with the present. Sociology uses the past to describe the present. History is about really understanding the past as it was. I don't know if the use of knowledge is important in science?--Daanschr 10:26, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
If you're interested in a good book on the development of the historical discipline in the U.S. in the 19th and 20th centuries, esp. on why certain questions have become as important as they are, I do recommend Peter Novick's That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession, which is really a pretty good book on it, and the rise and fall of demands that history be "scientific". Most historians in the U.S. and Europe would not consider history a "science" -- it does not have a pre-set methodology, it does not necessarily matter if its results are not testable, and it often does not attempt to be reductionist in its explanations (often much the opposite), just to name a few things which distinguish its goals from most recognized "sciences". For the purposes of a discussion like this, one needs to also draw a big line between history at the high school or undergraduate level and history at the graduate or academic level -- in the U.S., anyway, they are vastly different both in terms of content, style, and purpose (history at the high school level is, in the U.S., explicitly intended to make people into good citizens, not historians; history at the undergrad level is usually about learning facts and the rudiments of methodology; history at the graduate level is about learning the methodology and how to do independent research -- just to generalize wildly about these things, from my experience). Anyway, I think this content should be added to the historiography article, without a doubt. --Fastfission 14:13, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
You know more about this then me, so i agree that history should be removed from this article. I like to note that most historians are not concerned about wether history is a science or not. I didn't learn anything about it at the university, except for the teacher of philosophy of history, who told a great deal about it. Also, in the handbook used for philosophy of history it is said that most historians don't care about it. In De constructie van het verleden by Chris Lorenz, history is put under social sciences. In the Netherlands, history doesn't belong to the social sciences but to the study of literature just like in Germany. In France, history really is a social science. Do you know anything more about the debate on this topic? Maybe science has a different meaning then wetenschap or Wissenschaft.--Daanschr 14:46, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
A good question is wether history is seen as a science in non-American english-speaking countries, like the United Kingdom, India, South africa, Canada, Australia etc. Or if a worldwide view is important, then America should be compared with all other countries. In the Netherlands history is sometimes referred to as geschiedswetenschap.--Daanschr 14:52, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I recently posted proposed merger templates at Historiography and History of science#History. The templates have default links to Talk:Historiography where other aspects of this issue may be raised. --SteveMcCluskey 13:31, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I just merged it into the Historiography article. You people do what you will on this page. =) -- TheMightyQuill 18:39, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Medieval Indian Science

The Medieval Indian Science section seems a little off topic. At the start it refers to innovations that occured before the Middle Ages, then it talks about things that don't seem to be directly related to the history of science. "The spinning wheel used for spinning thread or yarn from fibrous material such as wool or cotton was invented in the early Middle Ages" hardly refers to science, or even pre-scientific investigation. Referring to different metals as being "invented" probably isn't the best terminology either - "discovered" could be more appropriate.

None of this section appears to be referenced, and there has been a request for a citation for iron rockets since February.

It may also be more appropriate for Indian Science to be put before the Islamic Science section, as some Indian concepts are mentioned as being the basis for Arab mathematics and pre-scientific investigation. Grimhelm 19:48, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Islamic Science

There's been some discussion previously of the need for an article on the History of Islamic Science. At present there is a small section of that sort in the article on Islamic science.

There's a real potential for tension there because two different groups are interested in the topic of Islamic Science, and these two groups define it in very different ways. I am concerned that the different assumptions of these two groups may lead to unnecessary conflict, which can be avoided by dividing the present article in two.

  • The article "Islamic science" seems to have been founded by advocates of a modern intellectual movement called "Islamic science," which seeks to establish the practice of science within a particular set of traditional Islamic religious norms. Thus the article defines "Islamic science [as] science in the context of traditional religious ideas of Islam, including its ethics and philosophy. A Muslim engaged in this field is called a Muslim scientist. This is not the same as science as conducted by Muslims in the secular context" (my emphasis).
  • Historians of science, on the other hand, find this definition excessively constraining, since we investigate the ways in which scholars within the Islamic world developed scientific ideas through original research and by drawing on and transforming the ideas of their neighbors and predecessors. It really doesn't matter to historians of science whether the particular scientist was Muslim (e.g., al-Khwarizmi), Sabian (e.g., Thabit ibn Qurra), Christian (e.g., Hunain ibn Ishaq), or Jewish (e.g., Hasdai ibn Shaprut), whether he advocated strict adherence to Muslim traditions (e.g. al-Ghazzali) or was critical of tradition and open to the ideas of foreign philosophers (e.g. Averroës), or whether he worked in a religious or secular context. If he studied natural phenomena and worked within the Islamic world, his work fits the historians' broader definition of Islamic science.

These contradictory expectations are likely to lead to conflict in two or more different ways:

  • When historians wish to discuss scholars who don't follow traditional Islamic religious norms, while advocates of the modern movement would wish to delete these from the discussion.
  • When advocates of the modern Islamic science movement wish to discuss those modern scholars who contribute to the development of that movement, while historians would wish to delete them as not relevant to the historical development of science in Islamic cultures.

Rather than go this unhappy route, I propose an amicable divorce, removing the section on the History of Islamic Science (perhaps renamed History of Science in Islam) and making it a separate article under the History of Science portal, and leaving the remaining article on Islamic Science as part of the series of articles on Islam. --SteveMcCluskey 21:03, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, the split has been accomplished. The new article History of science in the Islamic World has been set up (right now it's only a somewhat large stub), with appropriate links and a disambiguation page at Science in Islam. Feel free to help build this article into a good historical study. --SteveMcCluskey 15:53, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

The brethren of purity, Basra, 950 CE is an earlier scientific society than Giambattista della Porta's. I learned of it from Wightman's Growth of Scientific Ideas. But it already has an article! --User:Ancheta Wis 12:18, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stable version now

Let's begin the discussion per the protocol. What say you? [submitted 11 July 2006 by User:Ancheta Wis

The editors here have done a phenomenal job with this article in my opinion. The content is well balanced, and the illustrations and layout are excellent. ... Kenosis 04:59, 11 July 2006 (UTC) ... What's up with the current section on History of science#Medieval Indian science and technology though? The material on Aryabhata seems quite credible and can be sourced though secondary literature on the Aryabhatiya. Much of the rest seems to be on extremely thin ice. ... Kenosis 06:55, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
I concur that a stable version of the article should be selected. On balance, the article is quite good although I have a few problems with the section on Pre-Experimental Science which, as I expressed elsewhere, is of doubtful validity. Nonetheless, I think we can settle on one of the recent versions for the stable version of this page and future editing will work its way in. --SteveMcCluskey 14:48, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
PS Here's my nomination of the current version for the stable version. --SteveMcCluskey 14:56, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Y'all do you know that the "stable version now" thing is just a (highly controversial) proposal and that there exists no policy or infrastructure to support it, right? JDoorjam Talk 01:25, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Sure, but some of us think it's a very good -- and long overdue -- idea. In that case, the principles Be bold and Ignore all rules seem relevant. --SteveMcCluskey 03:36, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
As does WP:CONSENSUS. I recommend you join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Stable versions now. JDoorjam Talk 04:41, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Absolutely not, the discussions were generally opposed to the idea. WP:CONSENSUS, WP:PROT, WP:5P all individually (never mind collectively) trump a still-under-discussion-but-largely-rejected proposal. Cynical 20:29, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More missing material?

Anything on geographic-specific histories of science, ie: history of science in US? [left unsigned 06:24, 11 July 2006 68.255.4.208 ]

[edit] Political science...

While I think that Mac Davis's new political science section is much better in terms of content than the previous one, it is a little long, no? I mean, I don't think most people even consider political science to be part of the history of science (I don't know when it first started calling itself "political science" but it certainly wasn't called that in Machiavelli's day when it was clearly considered more along the lines of law and history than it was a "science", which even today most people don't call it), and currently it is as long as the section on "Biology, medicine, and genetics" in the 20th century (three major topics in one). Perhaps someone can prune it down a bit? Mac? --Fastfission 03:27, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] History of Political Science

The new section on the History of Political Science was lifted verbatim from the Antecedents of political science section of the article on Political Science.

While this change replaced a section that dealt more with the political context necessary for the development of science than the history of political science, I've reverted to the previous version. --SteveMcCluskey 02:03, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

OOPS, I should have read FastFission's comment before talking. I think his idea of using it as a starting point for editing is a good one. I won't revert.

BTW, is it plagiarism to lift a section from another Wikipedia article? --SteveMcCluskey 02:07, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

No, it is not plagiarism, as it helps consistency in seperate articles, and all edits are assumed to be free to use anyway:
"If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it."
It is perfectly reasonable to redistribute information between separate articles, although a reword or change of style can help it stay on-topic. Grimhelm 15:43, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
Steve, by the tenets of the GNU Free Documentation License, anything written under it is free content. Thus material written under GFDL is appropriate for re-use in another Wikipedia article. --Ancheta Wis 15:57, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Peer review citation needed

Please comment on the discussion at Talk:History of scientific method#Peer review in medieval Islam?. --SteveMcCluskey 16:34, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Italian Renaissance Backwardness

Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, an example of the blend of art and science during the Renaissance
Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, an example of the blend of art and science during the Renaissance
Science, and particularly geometry and astronomy, was linked directly to the divine for most medieval scholars. Since God created the universe after geometric and harmonic principles, to seek these principles was therefore to seek and worship God.
Science, and particularly geometry and astronomy, was linked directly to the divine for most medieval scholars. Since God created the universe after geometric and harmonic principles, to seek these principles was therefore to seek and worship God.

The image of the Vitruvian man (right) is misleading in the medieval section of this article, as the Italian Renaissance to which the image belongs was a time of great scientific backwardness (see here).

I suggest that another suitable image, such as that from the History of science in the Middle Ages (left), should replace it, as it is more in the spirit of European scientific thought from the 12th century Renaissance. (I would, however, also recommend that the caption of the left image be made more concise). --Grimhelm 10:48, 24 September 2006 (UTC)


I have shortened the caption from 11 lines to 7 lines, so it reads thus:
To medieval scholars, because God created the universe using geometric and harmonic principles, trying to understand geometry and astronomy was seen as trying to understand God.
I have also added a reference to the image caption. --Grimhelm 12:36, 24 September 2006 (UTC)


I'd be a little cautious in describing the Renaissance as a time of scientific backwardness; it was more properly a time of shift of scientific focus away from scholastic natural philosophy to other disciplines: especially (al)chemistry the biological sciences of botany, medicine, and anatomy. Alan Debus's book, Man and Nature in the Renaissance, nicely sketches this different focus.
I like the picture from the Bible Moralisee of God the craftsman. It's a good depiction of the medieval perspective on nature. The caption, however, is a bit wordy, I'll have a go at moving part of it to the text. --SteveMcCluskey 14:28, 24 September 2006 (UTC)


Well, the initial period of the Italian Renaissance is described in another article as follows:
There were no new developments in physics or astronomy, and the reverence for classical sources further enshrined the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic views of the universe. Humanism stressed that nature came to be viewed as an animate spiritual creation that was not governed by laws or mathematics. At the same time philosophy lost much of its rigour as the rules of logic and deduction were seen as secondary to intuition and emotion.
And it also says that the scientific shift you mention did not occur until the Northern Renaissance of Francis Bacon and Copernicus; the emphasis of this article's Scientific Revolution section on Vesalius (Holy Roman Empire) and Newton (England) supports this. Of the 15 Renaissance people mentioned in that section, only one of them is Italian (Galileo). --Grimhelm 15:20, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but Wikipedia articles are not supposed to be based on other Wikipedia articles. See Wikipedia:Reliable sources#Bulletin boards, wikis and posts to Usenet. Could you cite a specific reliable source for this opinion?
Thanks for pointing me at the History of science in the Renaissance article; from a quick glance it seems to need editing and documentation too. --SteveMcCluskey 17:45, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Revisionist History

Many people are thinking it, so I'll go ahead and say it out loud. A Wiki by its nature is going to trend towards the history that people prefer rather than the history that actually happened, which is ominous. Page locking and peer review schemes are just stop-gaps. My advice to people devoting their time to this is to give it up.

I've just come back from browsing the links, and now I'm doubly convinced. The article on "floating point" (a means of representing real numbers in computer memory), states without qualification that floating point was in use by the "Kerala School" of mathematics in the 14th century. (A moment ago I removed an attribution of floating point to the Kerala School from this article.)

Of course, it'd be possible to work out a notational scheme for doing floating point by hand, but it'd be a sloppy mess (keeping track of bits, etc). You'd need a very good reason to do so. Perhaps there's something to be gained from the loss of precision in overflow and underflow cases? Even if there is, how could one trust the Kerala School article to discover what it is? The article is a recitation of the Keralese concepts that were being applied in India long before they'd been heard of in Europe, concluding with a section -- the longest in the article -- containing speculations as to how these concepts might've made there way to the Europeans. Practically nothing is said of the concepts themselves!

In any case, the fact that something as arcane as floating point numbers made its way into an article on the history of science is evidence enough of gross disproportionality. And I'm afraid it's endemic to the Wiki concept. I'm serious when I say this -- people should stop wasting their valuable intellectual energy on this.

Do you actually have reason to doubt the Kerala case in particular or are you just rejecting it out of hand? I don't know much about Indian mathematics but the claim about floating point numbers is available in secondary literature as even a cursory search of just online literature reveals. See, for example, Dennis F. Almeida and George G. Joseph, "Eurocentrism in the History of Mathematics" Race and Class 45, no. 4 (2004): 45-59: "Deduction was an integral part of pramana, but it was not imagined, as in the case of Greek mathematics, that the exclusion of the empirical somehow conferred a superior and infallible status on deduction. In addition, the use of irrational numbers, unlike early Greek mathematics, was accepted in Indian mathematics by the use of floating point number approximations. ... On the other hand, from the fifteenth century onwards, the Kerala mathematicians employed computational mathematics with floating point numbers to understand the notion of the infinitesimal and derive infinite series for certain targeted functions. ... " I don't know if that's true or not — nor do I honestly care much — but personally I'd lend a bit more authority (for the purposes of the Wiki) to the published claim than your personal judgment that it would be a "sloppy mess" (it is clear, at least, that you clearly took your maxim of not wasting any intellectual energy on this to heart).
Wikipedia is bound by content policies which attempt to restrict the overrepresentation of fringe views. The project is always a work in progress and never quite complete, but to dismiss it out of hand seems a rather uncritical—if not irresponsible—move. I suspect you have very little understanding of how the Wiki actually works on a day-to-day basis; it's a little more complicated a dynamic than you seem to think it is, and in areas where there is active support from specialists it is actually quite easy to make sure that nonsense is kept out. For areas which are less well-known it is of course harder to have that sort of policework.
Please feel free to spend your "valuable intellectual energy" elsewhere. --Fastfission 03:09, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
I said that a notation for doing floating point by hand is possible (which is obvious). There's no doubt it'd be cumbersome working with bits, where different bits have different interpretations. Keralese floating point does sound interesting, but where is it? Floating point is a very specific thing -- one bit of memory to represent the sign, some number of bits to represent the exponent, etc. It'd be very interesting to know that people were working with bits in the 14th century. Perhaps it was something like floating point, but how would I know? Where is it? (It's certainly not in the race-and-class math book you cite.) The more important question is this: What is such an arcane aspect of mathematics doing in a short article on the history of science?
I didn't mean to be insulting with the waste-of-time remark. I had in mind the people who seem to be pursuing this full time. Here's what's going to happen with wikipedia (you heard it here first) -- as Internet access becomes more and more widespread, you're going to get more and more edits from people who feel that their own countries aren't adequately represented, or who feel the need to promote this or that 'ism'. The task of sorting it all out will become overwhelming. This floating point issue is a good case in point. How much can experts on the history of science possibly know about floating point? (Maybe it's not such a representative case because it's related to computer science, which I'm sure a lot of people in the wiki community are familiar with.) You'll get more and more of these "citation needed" mark-ups, and there just won't be enough person-power to provide the citations, or to check the citations that are provided. Saying that people should just give it up was too extreme -- I should've just said that it's a losing battle. Look at the history for the article on the French Revolution. Someone made dozens of attempts to reapply the same trivial changes; changes that don't even have any sort of agenda. Imagine an army of such people who DO have an agenda.

[edit] The review of Physics continues at Talk:Physics/wip

Some time ago a group of editors set up a "work in progress" page (at Talk:Physics/wip) to hammer out a consensus for the Physics article, which for too long had been in an unstable state. Discussion of the lead for the article has taken a great deal of time and thousands of words. The definitional and philosophical foundations seem to cause most headaches; but progress has been made. Why not review some of the proposals for the lead material that people are putting forward, or put forward your own, or simply join the discussion? The more contributors the better, for a consensus. – Noetica 02:01, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Update: Concrete proposals have now been put forward, arising from recent discussion aimed at producing a stable and consensual lead section for the Physics article. We have set up a straw poll, for comments on the proposals. Why not drop in at Talk:Physics/wip, and have your say? The more the better! – Noetica 22:29, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia is very anti-European

As one critic mentioned above already, it appears that Wikipedia cares more about making sure every group is equally represented instead of actually presenting the history of science as it really happened. The fact that so much space is devoted to Islamic, Indian and Chinese contributions (three cultures that did very little with science as we understand it as a subject in the modern sense), while hardly a paragraph is alloted to the Greeks, speaks volumes. We would all like to think that Indians invented Calculus and rocket ships, but the evidence simply isn't there. As far as Islam goes, it appears that Wikipedia far too often tries to find ways to give Islam credit for discoveries that were fully either Greek or post-1300 AD European. The Scientific Method came from Muslims? Sorry, try again. It is easy for a bunch of internet serfers to come on here and make up their own histories. The right thing to do, however, which isn't always easy, is to get your information from trustworthy sources. The trustworthy sources I read devote over 75% of their space to developments made by Greeks and then by Europeans after the Renaissance. Is this called Eurocentrism? No, it most certainly isn't. It is called portraying history as it really is.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Cftiger (talk • contribs) 18:39, November 25, 2006 (UTC)

As of the Revision of 22:10, 8 January 2002 there was not much to this article. Over two years later, in 2005, this page became a Collaboration of the Week, and attracted collaborators who had previously worked on other pages. In particular, the History of physics had been previously augmented to specifically cite contributions from multiple countries, and that material was brought here when the collaboration occurred. That is one reason that the article reads as it does.
As you point out, the particular contributions of Classical Greece were unique. You may wish to contribute some citations and materials to the article. When we were working on the article, there was in fact so much that we had to product child articles which you see noted. You are also welcome to contribute to them.
Now step back; see yourself as someone who is not as fortunate, but rather as one who knows little of what one ought to know about their history or culture. If that one were to open this article, one would glimpse not only what happened, but also what could happen, if one had the chance to work on one's own culture, and build up one's own accomplishments, perhaps to become as notable as that of Classical Greece. For, what happened to them? By sheer luck, their own civilization was not overwhelmed by others, and their own history was not rewritten for them. Please add your contribution to the article. Citations are welcome. --Ancheta Wis 19:11, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I would be happy to add my own citations. Thanks for offering. In response to your closing paragraph, I personally feel that we need to focus on presenting facts as they are instead of making sure people of other cultures feel good about their histories. The facts show that Europeans (including Ancient Greece) are largely and mostly responsible for the state that science is in today. Other cultures contributed, and we need to recognize that, but we certainly don't need to start writing false histories about other civilizations in order to equate them with Western Civilization and its accomplishments. Facts are facts.--Cftiger 24:22, 25 November 2006

[edit] Science in India

The section on "Science in India" is a real shame, since it is the only thing bringing down the quality of this article. It really needs to cite sources, and I would be appreciative if editors could add references for its claims. Additionally, I have removed the following paragraph, not only due to lack of sources, but also because the start of the article reads "The history of mathematics… [is] covered in other articles. Mathematics is closely related to, but distinct from science."

From the 12th century, Bhaskara and various Keralese mathematicians first conceived differential calculus,[citation needed] mathematical analysis, trigonometric series, floating point numbers, and concepts foundational to the overall development of calculus. By the end of the Middle Ages, iron rockets were developed in the kingdom of Mysore in South India.[citation needed]

--Grimhelm 19:52, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you. But, since Science and technology in ancient India does cite sources, we should be able to improve this section. I invite you to make a start. The current section is far too detailed, it should just give a short overview of scientific developments in India (which I think is very informative for all us Western Renaissance (wo)men) -- Cugel 08:34, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, I had made a start with this, using some sources I found in somewhat unexpected places: [5]. In regard to shortening it, I think that Aryabhata and Brahmagupta should be given more of an overview than their sizable paragraphs, especially based on the lack of sources. --Grimhelm 17:22, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
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