Talk:Scientific Revolution/Archive 1

message: archived 18:13, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

message: The recent changes to the Existence section seem to replace one definition with another, without saying so explicitly. On the one hand, there is the idea with respect to which the entire section was written: around 1600 certain major, rapid changes took place, as enumerated in the text that follows. On the other hand (as now changed) there is the idea of a long-drawn process that for reasons not specified is called revolution and that began around 1600.
It's perfectly reasonable to discuss conflicting concepts of "scientific revolution"; the section in question was written as a description one, with the reasons why it is widely accepted as a real revolution. 
The section as modified gives nothing whatever to support the change. I'd take the liberty of saying that it's replacing one POV with another, without justification or discussion.  How about an article that describes both and gives some reason for seeing the second definition as justified? 
Dandrake 23:24, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Emergence ? 

message: The article currently claims "At the beginning of the [17th] century, science was highly Aristotelian; at its end, science was mathematical, mechanical, and empirical." But
science was also mathematical at the beginning of the 17th century, as such works as Galileo's 1590 De Motu and Kepler's 1607 Astronomia Nova both attest (or those of Benedetti and Tartaglia do, not to mention Tycho Brahe). The founder of the mathematical dynamical science of motion was Aristotle in his Physics (e.g. see Physics 7.5), with such as his basic law of motion that average speed v α F/R, where F = Force and R = Resistance (also see Sir Thomas Heath's Mathematics in Aristotle). Thus this false contrast should be deleted. --Logicus 18:12, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Science also mathematical circa 1600 

message: The article has a whole section on what it variously calls "the literary critics" and the "cultural materialist" critics of the scientific revolution thesis. But it notably fails to name any such critics or cite any reference works by these people that would enable the verification of its claims. Could it please do so. Does anybody know who they are ? --80.6.94.131 14:37, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What? --M a s 16:10, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

text: What I mean is, critiquing Newton the man is Ok, criquing the Victorian romantization is probably healthy as well.  But aren't the peers and contemporaries of Newton a closer judge of his "revolution" than you or I or Wikipedia in general?  Alexander Pope wasn't writing in the 21st c. after Derrida and Feyerbrand and all when he wrote his epitaph.  The Bernoulli gang couldn't have found the curve of constant decent without the inverse-square law.  Gauss wouldn't have been interested in curve fitting if not for the errors he got when he fit his observations to Newton.  Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and should be descriptive, not normative.  People do use the phrase "Scientific Revolution" and the Wikipedia article should describe why people use it, what it means to them, what is the history behind the term, what's the basis of modern critiques of the term... --M a s 16:35, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who are 'the literary critics' of the scientific revolution thesis ? 

message: "Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), whose greatest scientific experiment amounted to stuffing snow into a dead chicken, nevertheless penned inductive reasoning, proceeding from observation and experimentation." This seems to downplay the Baconian Method, which is basically the foudation of science as it is done today. However, changing it seems a bit trivial, and this is hardly the place to discuss the importance of the Baconian Method.
Logicus comments: Even if, contra hypothetico-deductivism, science were inductive, proceeding from observation and experimentation as claimed here, the question would still remain of how Bacon's method went beyond the empirical inductivist methodology of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics in any respect. --80.6.94.131 18:08, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bacon... 

message: In the section Early and medieval views of science, Dante is named as one of the key influences. Does he really belong in a list with figures like Galen and Aristotle? Isn't he following received opinion rather than determining it?
:I agree. Dante is not, to my very feeble knowledge of the period, a major scientific influence, and the idea of the four elements goes back considerably earlier than him. (I'd venture it probably gets traced back to the Greeks but I'd let someone more educated in this period fill that in. I know next to nothing). --Fastfission 02:57, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good removal.  See four elements - Greeks are ca 450BC.  --M a s 15:36, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Dante

message: ::Rather than just gripe about it, I thought I'd put up an outline for a new article. 
 
::I've also decided to copy the present article to User:SteveMcCluskey/Scientific Revolution where everyone is invited to engage in radical revisions.  I'll be away the rest of today so I won't make many changes until tomorrow.
:::::"The desire to edit is a basic human need." 
::--SteveMcCluskey 15:05, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed Outline

message: I've just dumped the changes I've made incorporating the first two sections of this outline into the article.  In real life my inbasket is overflowing so I'm taking a wikibreak and will remove the working draft from my userpages.
The rest of the article is still a bit of a shambles -- as a work in progress it's still redundant (and even self-contradictory).  A bit from the section on Post-Modern critiques (perhaps stressing Shapin more than unnamed "postmodern"critics) could go in the section on Significance of the "revolution".
See you in a month or so; have fun with this.  --SteveMcCluskey 15:07, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Partial changes made

message: :Before you implement any of this, could we please have a testable definition of a scientific revolution from you that you propose for the article ? And in which sciences you claim there were revolutions ?
McCluskey says “Needs organization and additions; its more than just mechanization and empiricism (see the range of approaches facing Newton that Westfall discusses in the first chapter of Never at Rest” 
Its not even mechanisation and empiricism theses so far as I am aware, mechanism vanquished by Newton. Both theses fail. Could you please kindly list the range of approaches Westfall discusses for those who have not read him or don’t have him to hand ?
McC says: “When asked to fix a starting point, I've always had the Scientific Revolution begin in 1543 with the publication of Copernicus's De revolutionibus and Vesalius's Fabrica. Looking for an ending point, I fudge and make it the death of Newton in 1727. Maybe we should start improvements to the article within something like those limits.”
:I suggest not. I suggest the article should be more historiographical rather than asserting there was a scientific revolution in some specific period. If it wants to get into specific periodisations it should not fudge but give the conceptual reason why a specific date is given. Presumably you give 1543 for starter because you think there was ‘a Copernican revolution’, but there wasn’t as distinct from a heliocentric ‘revolution’ because Copernican project of saving the physical reality of the celestial spheres (by means of heliocentrism) failed with Tycho/Kepler and transits of comets. Given your Butterfield viewpoint, ironically you should especially note that not being a historian of science himself but only a follower of Duhem, he dated the revolution 1300-1800 as in his book title The Origin of Modern Science : 1300-1800 . The dating you give is like the original traditional 19th century type dating before Duhem’s major intervention to put the beginning back to the 14th century in the alleged overthrow of Aristotelian dynamics by Parisian impetus dynamics. 
:I appreciate its very difficult constructing coherent Wikipedia articles given participation policy, and also that we apparently fundamentally disagree about many issues, but you might like to consider the following rough note ideas for the style of an article that might possibly make it much more interesting than the present one and the way you are heading ?
:“The traditional thesis of the alleged 'scientific revolution' as portrayed in the 19th century by such as Mach was that Aristotelian philosophy and physics was totally overthrown and replaced in the 17th century by Galileo's and then Newton's physics that allegedly fundamentally contradicted it and its alleged 'law of inertia'. However, at the turn of the 20th century the French physicist, philosopher and historian of science Pierre Duhem backdated the alleged fundamental contradiction and overthrow of Aristotelian physics to the 14th century scholastic impetus dynamics developed at his alma mater, Paris University, by clerics such as Jean Buridan, and of which he regarded the dynamics of Galileo and Newton as a continuous development. Thus followers of Duhem such as the Cambridge historian Butterfield, although not himself a historian of science, dated the scientific revolution as a transition that occupied the period 1300-1800, and Kuhn also followed Duhem in dating the overthrow of Aristotelian physics to the 14th century. Duhem's research led to the founding of the new 20th century academic subject 'history of medieval science' that was promoted by an unlikely alliance of Stalin and the Vatican, both of whom had an ideological interest in there being medieval science as Duhem had uncovered that was 'pre-bourgeois feudal' science corresponding to the feudal mode of production and was also 'clerical', whereby the Church had promoted rather than obstructed 'the scientific revolution'. 
But in the 20th century reaction against Duhem led by such as Koyre, Maier and Drake, efforts were made to restore the alleged inertial-dynamics revolution to the 17th century by finding allegedly important conceptual discontinuties between scholastic impetus dynamics and Newton's law of inertia that was said to have eventually replaced Aristotle's, and that Duhem had supposedly overlooked. But in turn Duhem's supporters subjected the efforts of Koyre and Maier to robust criticism.
However, with respect to the project of pushing the alleged scientific revolution ever further back, for the last 20 years the historian of the philosophies of Aristotle's commentators, Richard Sorabji and his assistants, has argued that the alleged anti-Aristotelian physics revolution must be backdated even further than Duhem (and Kuhn) did to the physics of Philoponus in the 6th century. Thus on this basis the scientific revolution conceived as the overthrow of Aristotelian physics and replacement by Newton's would roughly be the period 600-1800.
But most significantly, against the common fundamental premise of all these theories of a scientific revolution, Newton and other scholars have claimed Aristotelian physics essentially observed the Principia's law of inertia, whereby if so it would follow there was no scientific revolution on this basis on which it was originally posited. Assessing these claims requires careful logical and conceptual analysis of both Aristotle's Physics and other Aristotelian works and also of Newton's Principia and other works that has yet to be undertaken by academic historians of science.
Beyond this original and core claim of a scientific revolution as an anti-Aristotelian inertial-dynamics revolution in physics, with lower and upper dates according to when its different proponents claim Aristotelian physics was overthrown and Newton's physics fully replaced it, claims of revolutions in other sciences have also been made, but mostly if not wholly with insufficient conceptual definition both of what constitutes a revolution in a science and of the theoretical system the overthrown science consisted of to determine whether there were or not. Claims have also been made of a methodological scientific revolution such as in the mechanisation, or the mathematisation or the empiricism of scientific research, but they have never been verified and are often easily refuted.
It is arguably evident from the leading historiography of the idea of 'the scientific revolution' by Floris Cohen that it is a radically degenerating and increasingly ill-defined concept, and for that reason, as Cohen fears, in imminent danger of dissolution as a fiction like that of the Renaissance, but to whose prevention Cohen's own forthcoming efforts at its regeneration are devoted. However, the question arises of whether it may be doomed for the deeper historiographical reason that Vico's project of constructing block periodisations by absolute discontinuities in history - of which Renaissance and the scientific revolution thesis are prime examples, as Butterfield's view demonstrated - is itself untenable like all alleged absolutes ? Or is it doomed for the more superficial reason that ..." Logicus 18:12, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Logicus comments

message: The recent changes by Logicus rely heavily on the interpretation of a direct quotation from Newton, in which Newton claims that his first law of motion was already known to the ancient atomists and to Aristotle.  Most Newton scholars recognize Newton's claims for the antiquity of his ideas as a recurring theme in his writings.'  
An important and revealing study of Newton's attitude to the supposeed ancient lineage of his ideas is J. E. McGuire and P. M. Rattansi, "Newton and the 'Pipes of Pan'," Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 21, No. 2. (Dec., 1966), pp. 108-143.  McGuire and Rattansi note that in the 1690s, Newton was preparing a series of classical scholia for the second edition of the Principia, in which he planned (according to various sources) to attribute his ideas to Pythagoras, Plato, Thales, Epicurus, Lucretius, and Democritus.  He attributed the Copernican system to the Egyptians, and the atomic system to Epicurus, Democritus, Ecphantus, Empedocles, Zenocrates, Heraclides, Asclepiades, Diodorus, Metrodorus of Chios, Pythagoras, and Moschus the Phoenician. 
The fact that Newton claimed that his ideas were in Aristotle or in other ancient sources, does not necessarily mean that they actually were.  Primary sources like this require careful analysis by historians familiar with Newton, his life, his achievements, and in this case, with the content of Aristotle's Physics and its later influence.  That is one of the reasons why Wikipedia cautions against the use of Primary sources and has a strict policy against Original Research.  --SteveMcCluskey 01:33, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Newton on the Scientific Revolution 

message: Here I just present the two paragraphs I put into the article, that Steve has now deleted, so that people can see what Newton actually wrote alongside what Butterfield wrote and how it challenges it. 
"The 20th century historian, Herbert Butterfield, was less disconcerted but saw the change as equally fundamental.
"Since that revolution overturned the authority in science not only of the middle ages but of the ancient world - since it ended not only in the eclipse of scholastic philosophy but in the destruction of Aristotelian physics - it outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes, mere internal displacements within the system of medieval Christendom.... [I]t looms so large as the real origin both of the modern world and of the modern mentality that our customary periodization of European history has become an anachronism and an encumbrance.[2]"
However, the view of Butterfield, Koyre, Kuhn and others that there was a scientific revolution was based on their opinion that Newton's physics overthrew Aristotelian physics because Newton's first law of motion was contradicted by Aristotle's law of inertia. But the logically more astute Newton himself was of the contrary view that Aristotle had essentially espoused his first law of motion, from which it follows there was no scientific revolution as Butterfield and others claim, namely an anti-Aristotelian inertial-dynamics revolution. For Newton wrote as follows:
"All those ancients knew the first law [of motion] who attributed to atoms in an infinite vacuum a motion which was rectilinear, extremely swift and perpetual because of the lack of resistance ….Aristotle was of the same mind, since he expresses his opinion thus … in Book IV of the Physics, text 69, [i.e. Physics 4.8.215a19] speaking of motion in the void where there is no impediment he writes: 'Why a body once moved should come to rest anywhere no one can say. For why should it rest here rather than there ? Hence EITHER it will not be moved, OR it must be moved indefinitely, UNLESS something stronger impedes it [My caps].' " [From one of Newton's Scientific Papers in The Portsmouth Collection, first published in Hall & Hall's 1962 'Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton'.] Logicus 14:37, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: What did Newton say ?

message: Logicus,
It would help if you refrained from personal voice in your contributions. Perhaps you might wish to revoice the recent edits in the article, including those referring to 'logical astuteness'. One way to indicate good faith might be to rephrase things.
:[(i) I don’t understand what you mean by ‘personal voice’, by which I understand the first person singular, but which I have never used in any of my contributions to articles, as distinct from discussions. However, if you refer to inserts such as [My caps]in a Newton quote, then this is a standard scholarly device for indicating one has used capitals or whatever to emphasise something rather than these being in the original. What alternative device do you suggest ?(ii) The recent edits I made in the article that also referred to Newton’s ‘logical astuteness’ were removed by McCluskey without consultation. Why should I revoice them ? Can you guarantee they can be put back without McCluskey or others removing them again ? Please let me know. But certainly if evaluation of somebody’s analysis is to be banned from articles, you have a lot of editing to do before you get to me (-:  (iii) Who or what would it help if I did things as you want, and would you be kind enough to rewrite what I said as you think it should be written so that I can understand and evaluate you kind attempts to help me somehow. (iv) Are you suggesting I have somehow indicated ‘bad faith’  (is that Sartre’s concept)? Logicus 18:11, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: [Yes, as I recall they were evaluated post Principia E1 by the Halls precisely because of the reason you state.  Then as I also recall Bernard Cohen in his 1964 Notes & Proceedings of the Royal Society article Quantum in Se Est… , the only article by any academic historian of science to have ever discussed Newton’s paper that I am aware of, dates them in the 1690s [as McCluskey said] as part of a series of memoranda on the historical sources of his philosophy to his accolyte David Gregory either for his forthcoming book on the Moon to which Newton wrote the anonymous Preface on historical antecedents or for the Principia E2, or maybe both, I cannot recall. Do check that article for yourself.  I never finished my debates with Bernard about these matters before he died, but if you do bother to read his article, you should note(i) Bernard’s logical error in apparently agreeing with a German commentator’s dismissal of Newton’s claim on the ground that Aristotle denied the void, but as did Descartes to whom Koyre and Cohen attributed the law of inertia. (ii) Bernard’s claim that nobody else in Newton’s time attributed the first law to Aristotle, whereas if you read the Newtonian  Andrew Motte’s ‘Treatise on the Mechanical Powers’ (Motte who first translated Principia E3 into English), you will find he justifies the first law in exactly the same terms as Aristotle does in Physics 4.8.215a19-22 as quoted by Newton, and as also did D’Alembert, namely that ‘there is no reason for the body to stop here rather than there and thus nor anywhere’. The possibility Bernard overlooked was that it was tacitly accepted that Aristotle had first stated the first law whereby nobody would bother to state the obvious. (iii) Bernard’s claim that no contemporary historian would attribute any contributory role whatever in the law of inertia to Aristotle, whereas Eddie Grant did exactly that the very same year (as I recall) in his 1964 ‘Motion in the Void’ article.Logicus 18:11, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

text: [Thanks a lot for that. Don’t have time to study all the Wikipedia formating tricks, so that’s helpful.Logicus 18:11, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

text: This is an example. --Ancheta Wis 04:00, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [My caps] 

message: Above Stever McCluskey tells us: "the conventional view of Aristotle's Physics that every violent motion requires the continuous action of a moving cause (contrary to Newton) is presented in G. E. R. Lloyd, Aristotle: The Growth and Structure of his Thought (1968), pp. 175-180 and Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, (1946), vol. 1, pp. 314-5."
This view may well be presented by Lloyd and Copleston. But is it true ? For in Aristotelian dynamics the violent motion of a sublunar body, as opposed to its natural motion, is a motion against its own nature/gravity, and therefore requires a motive force to sustain it against the countervailing force of gravity, just as it does in Newton's dynamics, as in the case of the directly upward projectile motion (i.e. violent motion) of a body with gravity, for example. That is why all space rockets require a continuously acting motor to overcome gravity and reach space, for example. Have Lloyd and Copleston misunderstood either Aristotelian or Newtonian physics, or possibly both ?
Perhaps people would like to think about this most crucial issue of whether Newton's dynamics did in fact completely overthrow the ancient and medieval authority of Aristotelian physics and scholastic philosophy and hence constitute scientific revolution as Butterfield and others claim, or whether they were in agreement that sustained motion against gravity requires a sustained motive force ?
Thanks for the other comments from various contributors, to which I shall reply asap.
LOGICUS 81.132.185.177 10:02, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Is the Aristotelian principle 'violent motion requires a mover' anti-Newton ?

message: In edited inserts to McCluskey's recent editing of this article, I quoted Newton's attribution of the Principia's first law of motion to Aristotle as evidence that there is a point of view that there was no scientific revolution as traditionally conceived by Koyre, Duhem, Butterfield and Co, namely that Newton's physics totally overthrew Aristotle's because the latter denied Newton's law of inertia [See above 'What did Newton say ?']. 
But it was claimed by McCluskey that this constituted doing ‘original research’ in preparing a novel viewpoint, banned by Wikipedia policy, and also using primary sources, which Wikipedia cautions against, but does not ban and in fact even encourages. McCluskey then removed my edited inserts and the Newton quotation. And McCluskey's objections to my defending Newton's point of view - interpreting primary sources against the consensus of historians - were then echoed by Ragesoss. But it is important that people should be aware of Isaac Newton's interpretation of Aristotle's physics, at least because it is provably correct, and especially because historians of science have almost exclusively maintained a notably deafening silence about it since it was first published in 1962, whereby it is very little known. 
Here I present more detailed Wikipedia policy evidence than before that these claims of McCluskey and Ragesoss are mistaken because (i) the Newton document is not a primary source but rather a secondary source and (ii) the research I present is 'source-based research' that Wikipedia recognises as fundamental to writing an encyclopedia', and not 'original research'.
I quote from Wikipedia's No Original Research Policy as follows:
Wikipedia NOR Policy
"Primary and secondary sources
*	Primary sources present information or data, such as archeological artifacts; film, video or photographs (but see below); historical documents such as a diary, census, transcript of a public hearing, trial, or interview; tabulated results of surveys or questionnaires, records of laboratory assays or observations; records of field observations.
*	Secondary sources present a generalization, analysis, synthesis, interpretation, or evaluation of information or data from other sources. Original research that creates primary sources is not allowed. However, research that consists of collecting and organizing information from existing primary and/or secondary sources is, of course, strongly encouraged. All articles on Wikipedia should be based on information collected from published primary and secondary sources. This is not "original research"; it is "source-based research", and it is fundamental to writing an encyclopedia."
The Newton paper I have presented gives an analysis and interpretation of information from another source, namely Aristotle's Physics. The latter is presumably the primary source here, being a primary source about the nature of Aristotle's physics along with his On The Heavens, providing direct evidence of whether it affirmed or denied Newton's law of inertia, and thus whether there was a scientific revolution or not. Moreover, the Newton secondary source claim that I am defending - that Aristotle's physics affirmed the law of inertia - was also held by other classics scholars and historians of science, such as the Cambridge Trinity historian of ancient Greek science Sir Thomas Heath, whereby it is obviously not a "novel historical interpretation" even in the 20th century and thus not the forbidden 'original research' McCluskey claims it is. 
Rather, in the words of Wikipedia policy, I am providing "information collected from published primary and secondary sources. This is not "original research"; it is "source-based research", and it is fundamental to writing an encyclopedia." This research is defending an old viewpoint - the viewpoint of Sir Isaac Newton himself - that is now a minority viewpoint by providing and analysing primary, secondary and tertiary sources to demonstrate how the currently prevailing contrary view is both unproven to date and mistaken, whereby Newton's view merits mention at least as an alternative view that has not been refuted.
Here I provide some sources supporting Newton's viewpoint. First here is a secondary source commenting on the primary source Aristotle's Physics by the Cambridge Trinity classics scholar and historian of ancient Greek science and maths Sir Thomas Heath. He is commenting on his own translation of Aristotle's Physics 4.8.215a19-22, the same passage cited by Newton as evidence that Aristotle endorsed his first law of motion.
ARISTOTLE'S PHYSICS 4.8.215A19-22: " "Further, no one could give any reason why, having been set in motion, [a body in a void] should stop anywhere: for why here, rather then there ? Hence, EITHER it will remain at rest, OR it must continue to move ad infinitum UNLESS something stronger impedes it." [My caps for emphasis]
But attention should be drawn to the last sentence in the above passage, because the statement in it constitutes a fair anticipation of Newton's First Law of Motion. There is a similar passage in Plutarch, De facie in orbe lunae, c.6, which has been noted as containing a similar anticipation of Newton's First Law: 'For everything is borne along in its own natural direction unless this is changed by some other force.' But Aristotle's statement seems to me more complete." [p115-6 Mathematics in Aristotle, Oxford Clarendon, 1949]
Now here is a tertiary source reporting that readers of ancient Greek physics at the turn of the century almost unanimously believed it postulated the law of inertia, including Aristotle's physics, the secondary source here being the opinions of those classics readers: 
EMILE MEYERSON: "It is sometimes asserted that this principle [of inertia] was known to antiquity. It is certain that in following the exposition of a Greek atomic system, such as that of Democritus, through the refutations of Aristotle, or that of Epicurus in De Rerum Natura, a modern reader is almost without fail led to believe that these philosophers implicitly postulated [the law of] inertia."  [p113, Identity and Reality, 1908]
Note how similar the reported view of the modern classics reader was to that of the older classics reader Newton. Meyerson then went on to claim these readers were wrong because, he mistakenly claimed, the law of inertia is the assertion of an unforced interminable straight motion, which of course it is not, and because Aristotle denied there is any such motion he therefore denied the law of inertia. Thus it seems he initiated the elementary logical fallacy that was then repeated and exported from France to America by his equally logically challenged disciple Koyre in his 1939 Galilean Studies dedicated to Meyerson. Koyre further invalidly concluded the discovery of the law of inertia presupposed positing an infinite universe and void to make room for that interminable straight motion he mistakenly thought the law of inertia asserted. But Newton's first law only states that any body neither at rest nor in uniform straight motion is subject to perturbing impressed forces. It does not state there are any bodies not subject to such forces amd thereby assert there is some interminable uniform motion in the real world. 
To be continued...
Logicus 14:36, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Newton's Point Of View (NPOV) and Wikipedia policy ''contra'' McCluskey & Ragesoss

message: :At 16:10, 15 September 2006, Logicus (User:80.6.94.131) said " you apparently prefer 'authority' rather than reason in determining the truth." This reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the encyclopedic nature of Wikipedia and its No Original Research policy.
:Let's try to get at the heart of the No Original Research policy by tracing its origins.  It began with an e-mail on the wikien-l where Jimbo Wales expressed his reaction to an editor who was advocating an unorthodox criticism of special relativity on the article by that name.  That view was generalized to cover topics other than physics and became the original version of the No Original Research policy and is still included in the much larger current version. 
:Here's Jimbo's view, transposed from physics to history:
::The specific factual content of the article is, in a sense, none of my business.  My sole interest here is that the wiki process be followed and respected.  Talking to me about [history] is pointless, because it misses the point.
::What do mainstream [history] texts say on the matter?  What do the majority of prominent [historians] say on the matter?  Is there significant debate one way or the other within the mainstream [historical] community on this point?
::If your viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts.
::If your viewpoint is held by a significant [minority of historians], then it should be easy to name prominent adherents, and the article should certainly address the controversy without taking sides.
::If your viewpoint is held by an extremely small minority, then whether it's true or not, whether you can prove it or not, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia, except perhaps in some ancilliary article.  Wikipedia is not the place for original research.
::Remember, I'm not much interested in "is it true or not" in this context.  We could talk about that forever and get nowhere.  I'm only interested in the much more tractable question "is it encyclopedic and NPOV or not"?  And this question can be answered in the fashion I outlined above.
::--Jimbo
:Since this is the official Wikipedia framework, we have to live with it and work within it.  We cannot determine whether a view belongs in Wikipedia by debating whether it's true that Aristotle maintained a theory of inertia (or that seventeenth-century natural philosophers believed that Aristotle held a theory of inertia).  Instead, our goal is to determine whether these views are held by a majority, a significant minority, or an extremely small minority of historians.  To do that, we need to identify specific passages in which historians state these views and similar passages where historians state alternative views (such as that Aristotle believed that bodies are moved by some motive cause or that Galileo, Descartes, or Newton  believed that their concepts of inertia or impetus contradicted the views of Aristotle).
:If this means we must engage in what Logicus called "mindless authoritarian rituals of the academic discipline form, quoting 'authorities' and displaying supposed learning," so be it.   --SteveMcCluskey 16:25, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Truth, authority, and the NOR Policy 

message: These proposed edits hopefully both improve the article by removing some gross errors and also assist in clarifying the issues of Wikipedia policy raised by Steve McCluskey in 'Truth, Authority and the NOR Policy' above.
In the current first paragraph delete "A closing date is less easily established, although most historians would agree that the Scientific Revolution had come to a close by the death of Sir Isaac Newton in 1727" UNVERIFIED. The logic of the arithmetic evidence presented in this paragraph suggests the contrary, that it is easier for revolutionists to agree a closing date than an opening date, with an opening date disagreement of some 250 years.
In 3rd Para of 'Significance' delete "the replacement of the Aristotelian idea that heavy and light bodies moved naturally straight down or up toward their natural places and heavenly bodies moved naturally in unchanging circular motions by the idea that all bodies move according to the same physical laws including the law of gravity,..." because it is a multiple logical muddle and its claims unverifiable: UNVERIFIED. Just a few brief illustrative points: (i) In Aristotelian celestial dynamics not all heavenly bodies move naturally in unchanging circular motions. The nested celestial spheres each revolve uniformly in themselves but not absolutely, for only the fixed stars embedded in the stellar sphere move in unchanging circular motions. For the planets embedded in some of the spheres move in non-circular and non-uniform compounded resultant curvilinear motions, very similar to those in Kepler's and Newton's dynamics. But in Newton's simple astronomical model as in Galileo's the planets moved in circles, as in the simple (pre-)Aristotelina model. And in the Dialogo Galileo obviously conceived himself to be developing Aristotelian dynamics by demonstrating the universality of circular motion in nature and denying sublunar rectilinear motion (trajectory of projectiles from a tower is a semi-circle, refuted by Fermat). Overall the distinction attempted here fails. (ii) In Newton's physics bodies do not move according to the same physical laws as claimed because it posited different laws of repulsion and attraction for different bodies in different domains such as macro-dynamics, optics, chemistry and electricity. Also the inverse-square 'law of gravity' does not hold within celestial bodies.
In same para delete "and the replacement of the Aristotelian concept that all motions require the continued action of a cause by the inertial concept that motion is a state that, once started, continues indefinetely without the need for any further action of a cause." Verification required. This is a logical muddle. (i) Nobody, not even historians when in their right minds, denies all actual motions are accelerated and subject to gravitational forces and so require the continued actions of a cause/force, unless perhaps they try to get cute with GTR, but which also fails. So this claimed distinction between Aristotelian dynamics and some alleged replacement fails. In the 17th and 18th century neither Galileo's, Descartes', Newton's nor Leibniz's cosmologies denied this principle. (ii) Re the case of purely hypothetical 'inertial' motion - i.e. unresisted and externally unforced motion - in modern 'post-positivist' times at least since Westfall's 1970 Force in Newton's Physics and the discrediting of its Machian positivist interpretation, the claim that it is unforced and uncaused has been highly disputable because in Newton's dynamics 'inertial' motion is caused by the inherent force of inertia, whereby in 1999 in his Guide to Newton's Principia the world leading Newton 'expert' Bernard Cohen at long last finally admitted that by virtue of his concept of the force of inertia, Newton had not abandoned the principle of Aristotelian physics that 'all motion requires a mover'. (Thus at least Cohen must be removed from McCluskey's list of 8 secondary sources who are said to have claimed a fundamental discontinuity between Aristotelian and Newtonian dynamics like Butterfield.) (iii) it is simply false to say the inertial concept is that motion is a state that once started continues without need for further action of a cause, since this is false of orbital motions of planets (iv) the perpetual rotations of the celestial spheres are states in Aristotelian dynamics, contra Koyre's manifestly mistaken claim that motion is not a state but a process in Aristotle's dynamics, but which only applies to sublunar natural motion.
Nor is the perpetual circular violent motion of the sublunar fire belt a process, but a permanent state.
In the 5th para of this section, delete "While few historians have found demonstrable infuence from these ancient sources, ..." unless and until it is VERIFIED that most historians have denied any such influences, because this claim misrepresents the burden of proof. If a scientist cites previous propounders of their theories and has adopted the same theory, what further proof of influence is required ? How on earth is 'no demonstrable influence' to be demonstrated in such circumstances ? By proof that they had no knowledge of the older theory or its proponent before propounding it ? But even that would fail because people may be unaware of the original source of their influences, just as modern scientists who believe in the Aristotelian philosophy that the world is composed of a plurality of different things (pluralism), that there are laws of nature (nomologicism) governing the behaviour of these many things, and that these laws can be derived from experience (empiricism), may be unaware they are therefore deeply influenced by Aristotelian philosophy, as are educators who maintain 'children should achieve their full potential'. For example, even if Newton himself had been unaware of the ancient origins of his theory of gravity in Plato's 'mutual attraction of cognates' theory that replaced Aristotle's in 14th century Parisian scholastic physics in order to accomodate a plurality of worlds contra Aristotle after the 1277 Condemnation, and subsequently adopted by such as Kepler and Galileo, nevertheless as Duhem pointed out in his 'Aim and Structure of Physical Theory', it was an evolutionary development of it. 
CONCLUDING COMMENTS: It seems a key problem here is the logico-literacy problem of formulating factually true propositions about physics, which requires training, careful thought and systematic coherent logico-semantic analysis. When we have supposed 'authorities' such as Copleston and Lloyd reportedly positing 'Newtonian levitation' as Steve reported (i.e. that violent motion does not require the action of a force in Newton's dynamics) in their efforts to find fundamental discontinuitues between Aristotle's and Newton's physics, then clearly we have a very serious problem of understanding or exposition that should not be promulgated in an encyclopedia nor endorsed by its rules. Perhaps Steve McClusky can kindly explain what Wikipedia policy rules would exclude such blunders, or say exclude the blunder of a Wikipedia artice claiming that Newton's law of gravity says gravitational attraction is inversely proportional to the distance CUBED ?  Logicus 18:08, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Problems of Verification: Some Proposed Edits

message: When editing the Talk page, might we adhere to the following guidelines:
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#The talk page should be archived (i.e., it is 170K, and should be placed in storage). But might the contributors suggest just what be retained to give context for the discussion to be continued. Ancheta Wis 11:25, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  LOGICUS ASKS: Has anybody been breaching these important rules lately ? May we take non-response to this query to indicate they have not been ? I would much appreciate your reply to my reply to your previous comments as requested on your UserTalk page. Logicus 16:36, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: LOGICUS COMMENTS: I agree with Steve's suggestion for an apposite Archiving breakpoint. As for his other many personal snotty remarks, I do not. Yet again he is in breach of Good Faith policy.Logicus 16:36, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Ground Rules 11:25, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

message: A useful breakpoint for the archive for now would be the start of the recent discussion, initiated as I understand it by my comments that "This article really needs focus and improvement."  To the extent that the earlier discussions may be relevant, they can be consulted in the archive as necessary.
I'll let this recommendation sit for comments for a while.
As I don't know how to set up an archive, if anyone does (Ancheta?), feel free to do so.
Like Ragesoss, I'm trying to get things done in my real life (see the Wikibreak note on my talk page).  I proposed using the procedure outlined in the new Tendentious Editing guideline since it was developed as a fast and non-bureaucratic way to deal with problems like this.  I don't have that much time to spend debating minutiae in the philosophy and history of science or acting as a prosecuting or defense attorney in a legal case.  I'd like to get on with writing an article that reflects the best scholarship in the history of science.  --SteveMcCluskey 14:31, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: LOGICUS COMMENTS: I agree with Steve's suggestion for an apposite Archiving breakpoint. As for his other many personal snotty remarks, I do not. Yet again he is in breach of Good Faith policy.Logicus 16:36, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Archiving discussion