Talk:History of science/Archive 1

message: Since this article is exclusively about Science, instead of Technology, an image of an Abacus does not seem appropriate. How about an early greek natural philosopher instead? — RJH 17:09, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Illustrations 

message: Where does the boundary between science and technology exist? When I think of prehistory of science I think the wheel and fire - but also consider these to be technologies? --Oldak Quill 20:27, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd say science deals more with the theoretical, and technology is the application of these theories.  The thing with prehistory is that our only evidence is their "technology", so in that case it would be alright to focus on that, but for the most part I think the article should deal with the concepts and those who developed them.  If developments occurred as a result of experiments rather than theory, that is alright as well. --brian0918™ 20:50, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: technology is applied science. thus, without science, no technology, but science without technological application is possible. Still: do we really need this article *and* History of science and technology? I think they should be merged. dab (ᛏ) 20:56, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Rather, should History of science and technology be split? Though science and technology are practically indivisable in prehistory (due to a lack of scientific records) - they become very different things upon the dawn of written records. Much of the understanding of the cosmos and the atom has little to do with technology, for example. --Oldak Quill 21:16, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The phrase "science and technology" could just be interpreted as something different, ie "the history of the interaction of science with technology, and the history of resulting technologies"... if that makes any sense. --brian0918™ 21:26, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

text: My idea when I put this up on COTW was that history of science and technology should compare the histories of technology and science, and cover the academic field HST. There is significant overlap between the histories science and technology, but they are quite separate things. It is not true at all that technology is applied science. Technology is far older than science, and until recently (19th or 20th century?), virtually all technology was the product of practical knowledge, not scientific knowledge. The distinction is still important. Fredrik | talk 23:27, 22 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Science, Technology, and their relationship 

message: The four suggested ancient civilisations (I added Egypt, making 5) do not nearly cover all ancient civilisations and their sciences. Currently missing are the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations (although we could classify this as Græco-Rome), Southeast Asian civilisation, Mesoamerica, Andean, Japanese, Chibchan, etc. --Oldak Quill 01:12, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ancient civilisations 

message: Should it be "scientific revolution" or "Scientific Revolution"? I don't care much which, but at least the use should be consistent :) - Fredrik | talk 04:21, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The heading should be consistent with the article text, too. Fredrik | talk 12:33, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

text: Scientific Revolution is a proper noun, and should refer to the specific, singular event.  "scientific revolution" is a common noun which can refer to any number of instances, or to "scientific revolutions" in general. Both this article and Scientific revolution have improper usage, I think. -- Beland 03:10, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Scientific revolution

message: The article presents Thomas Kuhn and his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions as if they are recived wisdom/generally accepted. They are not they are v controvercial views. Prehaps we could have a comparison with Karl Poppers falsificationist veiws on science and a little discustion of Lackatoss attempt to get a happy medium? --JK the unwise 11:36, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Please do feel free to add more voices to the mix, and to tweak the language. -- Beland 15:07, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I tried to expand this section a bit to give a better placing of the various "big theories" of scientific theory change (Popper, Kuhn, Feyerabend). Of course doing so glosses over the nuances of each and omits several other approachs (Lakatos, Latour, etc.) but I think it serves as an adequate rhetorical model for the differences of opinion ("science is progress towards truth," "science is progress but maybe not towards truth," "science is not progress at all") inside which most other arguments sit. The problem I have though is that now that section seems particularly long. Any advice on how to cut it down would be appreciated. --Fastfission 02:30, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kuhn 

message: Although the article is getting on the long side, I think developments in the twentieth century (e.g., the coming of age of the social sciences, the rise of logical positivism, etc.) should get more attention. Maybe some of the other parts should be made shorter (they have their own entry in any case or should have one). This should be a comprehensive overview -- not an encyclopedia in itself, don't you think?
: I agree with what you say. Feel free to edit the page, I'm sure it will be better then, but if you make it worse, it can still be reverted. ;) --Eleassar777 23:22, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Science through the ages 

message: : I'm trying to neutralize many point of view remarks. Especially things like 'This happened a thousand years before the Western world discovered it' and the like. Help me out here! -- Cugel 12:52, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)
:Science has a specific stance on what counts as "truth". Scientific "truths" are objective, verifiable, empirical, accurate, predictive and systematic in their area of application. Scientific "truth" is always time-limited, and is valid until the next scientific "truth" is discovered.  These should be distinguished from other forms of truth that are not in themselves considered to be scientific. Examples are: non-empirical theories, creative or practical designs, opinions and beliefs. Both scientific and non-scientific knowledge can be found in many fields, among which are mathematics, technology and engineering, philosophy, ethics, politics, religion, or art.
So I removed this paragraph for two reasons.  First, I was trying to make the introduction more concise, since there were justified complaints about dragging on too long on tangential issues.  Second, I have some accuracy concerns.
:Scientific "truth" is always time-limited, and is valid until the next scientific "truth" is discovered.
Yes and no.  The scientific "truth" that the living organisms we are familiar with are made of cells will probably never change; there's no time limit on its validity.  Theoretically, there could be some new information which changes the theory of celluar composition, but...yeah.  It is of course true that when a new theory comes along that proves to be a better explanation (usually because the old explanation didn't adequately explain the universe as observed), various intellectual and social processes are supposed to (and generally do, eventually) displace the old in favor of the new.
:Scientific "truths" are objective, verifiable, empirical, accurate, predictive and systematic in their area of application.
Scientific theories are often inaccurate, in the sense of getting the right answer.  They are also often imprecise, in the sense of specifying a narrow range that a numerical answer should fall in, or precisely describing the mechanism for a phenomenon.  Many theories, especially in medicine and the social sciences, are qualitative.  Many theories in all sciences involve subtle statistical differences.  I suppose you could say that scientific hypotheses are supposed to be clearly stated.  Certainly once you get down to actually doing an experiment, they have to be.  Perhaps it's better to let scientific method explain these sorts of complexities, rather than throw in the rather ambiguous adjective "accurate" into a list like this.
:Both scientific and non-scientific knowledge can be found in many fields, among which are mathematics, technology and engineering, philosophy, ethics, politics, religion, or art.
As I understand the two fields, there is no scientific knowledge whatsoever in mathematics.  Mathematics is an entirely theoretical endeavor, which makes no reference to the real world in any way.  Science is the complete opposite; it exludes any non-empirical theories from its scope. To be sure, you can take an empirical fact, relate it to a mathematical concept (like say, the numbers two and five), make a mathematical derivation, and apply the result to the empirical situation.  (There are seven bananas, so you owe me $2.10.)  But the fruit market is not with in the scope of mathematics, only the conversion of one non-empirical construct into another.
I suppose you could argue that the other fields have some overlap, to one degree or another.  Some religions certainly assert or make reference to empirical facts, but of course many religious "truths" are also non-verifyable.  When evaluating an ethical question, you may need to make an empirical determination to get an answer.  But I tend to think of this as using science as a tool in the process of doing something in a separate field.  The core content (if not all the content) of ethics is a series of moral judgements (or more precisely, a map to the universe of possible moral judgements and considerations thereof), which is non-empirical and thus outside the scope of science. Politics is also about making decisions with no single objectively, empirically determinable answer, and the social processes used to make those decisions.  Art and philosophy are too vaguely defined for me to really have any opinion about them. 
Anyway, I guess my initial attempt was even more inaccurate than the above, but as I said, I was aiming for brevity...I'm not sure any of these debates really belong in the history of science. -- Beland 04:47, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Natural philosophy was the rationalist, usually deductive, approach of many civilizations.  The scientific method is the largely inductive, empiricist approach developed from the scientific revolution. 
I'm not sure the induction/deduction distinction is quite so black-and-white, nor is it perhaps the primary distinction you'd want to make here.  It is also covered quite well in the subarticles (especially scientific method), from a brief inspection, so I dropped mention of the terms from the intro. -- Beland 04:47, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

text: The site where the Ishango Bone was found was re-dated by Alison Brooks more than a dozen years ago and found to be 25,000 years old rather than the original estimate of 8,500 years. 
   
brian0918™ 14:17, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problematic paragraphs 

message: Is anyone else wondering if that angelfire reference is legitimate? Pages like that tend to be either blatently plageuristic or original work, plus they are certainly not guaranteed to be accurate. Any better sources? --Dmcdevit 05:21, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  angelfire 

message: Are you sure that the Ishango Bone is only from 8500BC? I've found several sources which say 20,000-30,000BC, which is more in line with similar artifacts which dated to that time.  
  
Notably, this site claims: 
 
:The site where the Ishango Bone was found was re-dated by Alison Brooks more than a dozen years ago and found to be 25,000 years old rather than the original estimate of 8,500 years. 
   
brian0918™ 14:17, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Ishango Bone

message: I really like the new timeline of communication technologies as used in science...the Science as a Social Enterprise section has a much more vague overview.  I guess I'm too sleepy at the moment to synthesize the two narratives into a cohesive whole, which might be better than just sticking one after the other.  I am the primary author of that section, so perhaps it would be best for a third party to bring a fresh perspective to the synthesis process. -- Beland 05:03, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  History of change in documentation/communication 

message: Today I added the text I wrote myself (section "Science in the 19th century"), but the information is derived to a large extent from Encarta. If you consider this to be copyright infringement, please edit or revert and list it where necessary in the article "Wikipedia:Copyright problems". Otherwise, give me a useful advice in regard to this topic, because what is written in other articles here on Wikipedia is too vague for me.
For comparison, see: Encarta: Science.
Thanks. --Eleassar777 12:34, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for noting that. I am taking that as a signal that it is alright to copyedit the history of physics section using completely new prose for the the same subjects and objects. Please don't be offended if your prose gets touched in the physics section but it is important not to infringe on copyright. Here we go. Ancheta Wis 01:06, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Text added; about copyright 

message: So as was mentioned on Talk:Sociology, there seems to be tremendous overlap between anthropology and sociology these days, but they have distinct histories.  It seems a reference to Anthropology (which is where the short main history seems to be) is appropriate from this article, but I'm not sure how it should be presented with respect to sociology (which is where its history is).  Any ideas?  I'll just add a placeholder for now. -- Beland 20:35, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anthropology and sociology 

message: My reference for the scientific societies and for the Geology section is a booklist of selected first editions from the collections of the Library of Congress. Ancheta Wis 04:15, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Citation

message: I have reworked the physics section into two seperate themes.  The first theme follows the study of electricity to special relativity and general relativity.  The second theme goes from the discovery of radioactivity and the electron to the study of quantum mechanics.  Material on the age of the universe was moved to the astonomy section.
This work is an attempt to address the comment in the peer review that article wsa too list-like. --Allen3 23:54, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)
I have added a note which ties to the Contributions of Women in Twentieth Century Physics website, including C.S. Wu's role in the overthrow of the conservation of parity. Ancheta Wis 05:16, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rework of physics section 

message: Can anyone clarify for me how either Thomas Browne or Thomas Hobbes actually contributed anything to the forward progress of science? Westfall's biography documents how Newton studied Descartes extensively. But Westfall includes one non-notable mention of Thomas Browne. Westfall lists Thomas Hobbes as an enemy of Cambridge Platonists (Henry More etc) in Newton's study list. Their mention in the article seems arbitrary to me; Wallis and Isaac Barrow seem more appropriate names to mention than Browne and Hobbes; certainly they are only two of hundreds of names in Westfall's book. Ancheta Wis 07:10, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thomas Browne and Thomas Hobbes