Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 18:24, 26 October 2006

If you want to leave a message, please do it at the bottom, as a new section, for better formatting. You can do that by simply pressing the plus sign (+) or "new section" on the top of this page. And don't forget to sign your messages with four tildes, like this: ~~~~

Attention: I prefer to keep discussions unfragmented. If you leave a comment for me here, I will most likely respond to it on this same page—my talk page—as an effort to keep the entire conversation in one place. By the same token, if I leave a comment on your talk page, please respond to it there. Remember, we can use our watchlist and topic subscriptions to keep track of when responses are made. At the same time, feel free to send an alert to me on this page about a comment you have left elsewhere.

Thank you!

Welcome to Misplaced Pages! I'm always excited to see new editors on history of science-related articles, especially (assuming your username is who you are) established scholars. Here is some of the boilerplate for new editors, some of which you might find useful:

Welcome!

Hello, SteveMcCluskey, and welcome to Misplaced Pages! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

• The five pillars of Misplaced Pages
• How to edit a page
• Help pages
• Tutorial
• How to write a great article
• Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Misplaced Pages:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! 

You might also be interested in the History of Science WikiProject, which is an attempt to coordinate work on anything remotely related to the history of science. Its a good place to get feedback from like-minded editors. User:Maestlin in particular might share some of your interests. I hope you find editing Misplaced Pages to be a rewarding experience.--ragesoss 18:14, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Another hello

Welcome to Misplaced Pages! Are you the Steve McCluskey, author of Astronomies and Cultures in the Early Middle Ages? Misplaced Pages is badly in need of more editors with an interest in the history of pre-modern science. How did you decide to become an editor? You don't have to answer that if you don't want to--I won't be offended.

Another user and I are trying to come up with a solution to the problem of categorizing medieval astronomers and astrologers. The problems I see are as follows:

1. Some, but perhaps not all, historical actors distinguished between astronomy and astrology.
2. Some, but perhaps not all, people who fall in one category also fall in the other.
3. Secondary sources aren't always trustworthy on this matter.

Any thoughts you have on this matter are appreciated. You can read some of the comments on my talk page, through which you can also access the other user's talk page. Maestlin 17:43, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Glad to be here

Thanks for the kind welcomes. Yes I am that Steve McCluskey who does early astronomies.

As to how I came to the History of Science Project, I was looking over Alun Salt's new revisions of the Archaeoastronomy page, and wanted to see how (or whether) it was linked to History of Science. It seems to have some appropriate connections at present, but I may add a few more. BTW, Alun was quite rigorous in providing footnotes for all of his claims; I think it's a good idea and perhaps we should encourage it (at least by example) in the History of Science section. It suits Misplaced Pages's Verifiability policy and would help prevent things like the to do about "Plato's theory of Refraction." (The format is at Misplaced Pages:Footnotes)

As time allows this summer, I'll get around to reorganizing the section on "Pre-experimental" science into something like "Ancient Science." It will probably be an outline in need of details, but there are other people who can fill in the gaps.

--SteveMcCluskey 14:54, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Ibn al-Shatir

Thanks for rewriting Ibn al-Shatir so quickly. I have been putting this off for a while, not wanting to take the time for the necessary review. Maestlin 18:33, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

atomism

I don't see any content on the website you listed. Which parts are copyvio? If you're sure, just delete the offending parts.--ragesoss 03:33, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

• It is definitely a wierd page, but the text is white on white. I could only read it in IE when I selected part of the page, and it highlighted the text and made it legible. I'll delete the section but what should I do about the copyright warning on the atomism page and the notice on the Copyright Prolems page? --SteveMcCluskey 03:39, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
  • If you delete the plagiarism, then you can just delete the copyvio template (which will automatically remove it from the possible copyvio category). The warnings about not editing and waiting for an admin are intended more for articles that are wholesale cut-and-paste jobs. The atomism page (as you've noted) is a weird creation; some of it (the Greek parts) is very old and rather bad. What little there is on Timaeus is actually what I added after I noticed the same problem you did. For the rest, some of it is from an undergraduate historiography paper I wrote many years ago (the referenced parts), which is not that great either. And it drops off around the most interesting period, the transition between atomism and atomic theory.

Thanks for all the work you've been doing lately.--ragesoss 14:09, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Going with the temp page is fine, too. And no, I'm not an admin.--ragesoss 14:25, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

---

• NPOV probably would require covering the normative content of atomism even though modern atomic theory apparently ignores the normative flaws in its own methods. Hence, I would suggest that Epicurus's statements of what 'atomism' is would be important for an NPOV encyclopedia even if the scientific method succeeds in suppressing serious normative discussions in modern life. --Rednblu 16:51, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I like the statement, but..

"Knowledge is a gift of God..", Let me say, rare would be the individual who could refute that, its elegantly expressed. I certainly can't refute it. A gift of god can hardly be ignored. Does the statement disambiguate Knowledge from Understanding, or are the two considered to be the same? Terryeo 16:40, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Since it's a 13th c. scholastic catch phrase, I would consider the author intended the standard scholastic understanding of scientia as demonstrative knowledge. --SteveMcCluskey 17:11, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

More discussion on WP:RS Talk re: Electronic mailing lists

A new proposal, minus the cautions, from user Doright has been added to our discussion. If you want to know what's behind this, review Talk:On the Jews and Their Lies, but only if your really want to know. 8-) --CTSWyneken 10:49, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, Doright unilaterally inserted his text as follows, replacing the one we discussed. I reverted once, and he has now reverted it. I'm backing off to prevent an edit war. I would appreciate it if you would comment on this. The text he has inserted says:

Electronic mailing list archives

Electronic mailing list archives are collections of email messages related to a given topic. If such a list is moderated by a reliable entity or hosted by a reputable organization (e.g., H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, that confirms the identity of its contributors, they may not suffer from the above stated identity problem of Usenet. Therefore, they can be cited and carry the authority (if any) of the person being cited. As with all sources, it is incumbent upon the editor to ensure that the person being cited is notable. All citations must include the name of the person being cited, the message subject line, the archive or forum name and date.

--CTSWyneken 20:22, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Bede

Hi Steve, I was just wondering why all that material was deleted from Bede - is it factually wrong? -- Stbalbach 00:31, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

You're right; its wrong. None of the secondary sources I have on Bede's use of the Bible mention that he was involved in editing the Vulgate. The closest I can get is that the great Codex Amiatinus was made at the monastery of Jarrow. The discussion of Bede's translations into Anglo-Saxon is also overblown; I'm still working on sorting it out. Hope to finish soon. --SteveMcCluskey 00:38, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

awaiting your reply

Hi Steve, awaiting your reply

Hey Steve, thanks for your courteous reply. Cheers, Doright 18:30, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

archaeoastronomy

Indeed, the astronomy is impeccable, but it's astronomy based on shoddy philology: It is philological nonsense to assume to find astronomical statements precise to the arc minute in ancient hymns. Once this assumption is made, straightforward astronomy can be used to arrive at nonsensical conclusion. See also my description at Image:Vedic_pleiades.png. dab (ᛏ) 13:17, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

thanks; I think that was a software glitch in Misplaced Pages's imagemagick. The image is of course a thumbnail, and you have to click on it to see what it is about :) cheers, dab (ᛏ) 13:43, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

thank you again :) I bought Kak's book a couple of years ago in India as an obvious curiosity, for a chuckle; it's still sitting on my "crackpot" shelf, but I didn't expect it to haunt me on the Internet. It is simply incredible what people infected by that "measles of mankind" (nationalism) will put up with to get to believe in their version of history, and I am not just talking about Indians here. dab (ᛏ) 14:23, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

arXiv again

Hi there, maybe I'm too optimistic about the quality of stuff on preprint servers. The question is if preprints (possible only those that fit some credibility criterion) can be used as reliable sources or if we should wait until the paper has appeared in a refereed journal You opinion here would be appreciated. Cheers! Dr Zak 03:45, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

History of Mathematics References

Thanks for pointing that out to me. We can leave the History of Mathematics article as it is now (in three separate sections) —Mets501 (talk) 23:43, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

antipodes

Hi Steve -- I think you are mistaken about the direction of the linguistic change in question. antipodes was a geographical term *originally*. It was later extended to refer to the inhabitants of the region: this happened already in Latin, and the term entered English in both senses. I wouldn't know that the secondary meaning is now again obsolete, I would tend to claim that antipodes remains the correct term even today. I recognize, however, that antipodean (as opposed to 'correct' antipodal; this has to do with the back formation of a singular antipode (as opposed to 'correct' antipous) from antipodes) already in 1913 Webster's is listed as the generic adjective (not referring to people in particular). has "mainly humorous". dab (ᛏ) 20:04, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Flat Earth

Hi, Steve. My last edits in the article were made late in the evening; it's not impossible that I had screwed something up. I hope not. :-)

About the footnotes, my source was actually the citations of Ethical Atheist website (here). I thought that I could trust them here, especially because many citations were even arguably against their preferred view. In Portuguese (my language) there are ways to cite something like "<ref>''John Doe'' (...), cited by ''Author Jack'' in http://(...),,</ref>". But I don't know how to do that in English, so I did it the easier way.

My passage about Lactantius's heresy and lack of influence came from here. ( very interesting text!) This info also seemed to be more or less confirmed by his biography here in the Misplaced Pages. You said you think the passage is unnecessarily argumentative. Well, I find useful an attempt at describing the relevance of each writer in that list (A next step I was intending to do was to remark the importance of Saint John Chrysostom - a doctor of the church!). Anyway, maybe you're right and the text, (and maybe also future references to these author’s popularity), should be removed. For now, I'll leave that choice to you.

The source I just gave about Lacantius is part of an exhibit about the Shape of the Earth. And can be useful to further improve the Flat Earth article. For example: it mentions that people other than "Christian writers" also occasionally questioned the sphericity of the earth (as a consequence, our current intro is inaccurate). Latter, the exhibit also mentions the Globus cruciger as the representation of a spherical Earth, (not a spherical cosmos). … It has great hi-quality PD-art pictures too.

--Leinad ¬ »saudações! 20:45, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi Leinad,

Thanks for the reply.

I'd normally respect something from the History of Science department at Oklahoma; they're quite respectable. Unfortunately, this is an exhibit for a class and doesn't provide any sources on Lactantius's biographical details. Since it doesn't seem crucial, I just would drop the detail about heresy.

The Globus cruciger has been standing up there with a {{fact}} template since I added on 4 May. I really was looking for someone to support the assertion that the globus represented the two halves of the cosmos rather than the spherical earth. Since no one provided texts for either position, I finally took advantage of the opportunity of providing a real ninth century illustration to remove the globus cruciger and the nondocumented text. I've always assumed the globus cruciger represented the spherical earth, and if there is a scholarly discussion of it somewhere, perhaps the globus cruciger can be restored. Otherwise, I'd just let it go.

I must rush, I have to do a stir-fry for dinner. --SteveMcCluskey 21:27, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi Steve, I removed the reference to Lacantuis heresy and agree on leaving the Globus cruciger topic as it is for now... Also, I've just replied to your new comments on my talk page. --Leinad ¬ »saudações! 17:47, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Citation needed

Your edit for 16:26, 27 August 2006 indicates citation needed. On the publishing page, it indicates that no content lacking verifiable citations should remain on a page. To that end, if content is allowed to remain without citations, how can articles (including history of science of the middle ages) be viewed as reliable? I am a new user and need to understand the relative accuracy of wikipedia in general..Mrdundore 14:41, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the question, and welcome to Misplaced Pages. There are several options when an editor finds undocumented material in an article. If it seems to be easily fixed, it is generally considered good form to add a {{Citation needed}} template to the article, which allows the editor who added the material (or anyone else for that matter) to find an appropriate source. If the material is seriously wrong -- and especially if it defames an existing person -- policy calls for it to be removed promptly without warning.

As a reader, the {{Citation needed}} template is akin to a proceed with caution sign. --SteveMcCluskey 15:31, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

..

Sorry but

I'm going to have reverse you and remove the stub tag. I'm not sure you are understanding what the tag is for. It is not an attention tag or a cleanup tag or an expansion tag. It means that the page is short and barely long enough for inclusion in the encyclopedia. Well that is a full article. Does it need cleaning up or expansion or attention? Maybe, but then those tags should be used, not the stub tag. I added the attention tag for now. If you feel like the expansion tag or some other tag is more appopriate, be my guest, but the stub tags don't fit an article that long with no empty sections. --Woohookitty 22:59, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

And btw, here is a list of the cleanup templates. Lots of them. Too many. :) --Woohookitty 01:29, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Scientific Revolution

Steve, I took a shot at it based on the sources sitting on my bookshelf. I'll keep an eye on further discussions... hopefully Logicus will not be too recalcitrant. Let me know if there is anything else you think I should mention (especially any questions that relate to the Dear or Shapin books). On a related note, it may be appropriate to have a separate article on Historiography of the Scientific Revolution. Maybe we can find someone to donate a graduate-level historiography essay for some starting material.--ragesoss 01:40, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Steve, you can view a critique of one sentence on my talk page --Ancheta Wis 03:02, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Ragesoss, Thanks for your comments on the talk page. I'd appreciate it if you could work some of your comments on Shapin and Dear into the section which I entitled Significance of the "revolution". I had been planning to use something of that sort to replace the old last paragraph in that section, but when I became emeritus I planned to focus on early medieval science and packed away most of my books on the Scientific Revolution -- so many books, so few feet of bookshelves. --SteveMcCluskey 14:02, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Steve, I will try to get around to that as soon as possible. I like the outline you've proposed... it puts the recent critiques right up front, then proceeds to the actual significant historical transitions without worrying about whether it adds up to a revolution. And I'll keep an eye out for Logicus' original research. We needn't bring in the primary versus secondary distinction to establish that it is, in fact, OR... one definition from the policy is:

• "It introduces an analysis or synthesis of established facts, ideas, opinions, or arguments in a way that builds a particular case favored by the editor, without attributing that analysis or synthesis to a reputable source."

Obviously, since all his sources come from before the idea of The Scientific Revolution, his interpretation is (at the least) a new and unsourced synthesis.--ragesoss 04:53, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Steve, I acceded to your request on the anonymous user and will monitor the page for further action if needed. ragesoss and Steve, please feel free to request additional actions. --Ancheta Wis 23:02, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

If you could be a little patient and less abusive, I shall try and make some proposals here for resolving current situation. But might I suggest it would perhqps be more helpful

if you

Dobbs and Jacob

Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs and Margaret C. Jacob (1995), Newton and the Culture of Newtonianism ISBN 1-57392-545-4

p. 9 "Newton was not a skeptic. On the contrary, he seems to have adopted a contemporary response to questions of valid knowledge called the doctrine of "the unity of Truth", a position that was in fact one answer to the problem of skepticism. Not only did Newton repect the idea that Truth was accessible to the human mind, but also he was very much inclined to accord to several systems of thought the right to claim access to some aspect of the Truth. For those who adopted this point of view, the many different systems they encountered tended to appear complementary rather than competitive. The assumption they made was that Truth did indeed exist somewhere beyond the apparently conflicting representations of it currently available. True knowledge was unitary, and its unity was guaranteed by the unity of the Deity. He being the source of all Truth. As a practical matter, those who followed this doctrine of the unity of Truth became quite eclectic, which is to say that each thinker selected parts of different systems and welded them into a new synthetic whole that seemed to him (or her) to be closer to Truth. That was certainly Newton's method, and in the course of his long life he marshaled the evidence from every source of evidence available to him: mathematics, experiment, observation, reason, the divine revelations in biblical texts, historical records, mythology, contemporary scientific texts, the tattered remnants of ancient philosophical wisdom, and the literature and practice of alchemy."

p. 10 "One must realize, however, that in making selections from the various sources available to him Newton utilized a sophisticated balancing procedure that enabled him to make critical judgements about the validity of each. Perhaps the most important element in Newton's contribution to scientific method as it developed in subsequent centuries was the element of balance, for no single approach to knowledge ever proved to be effective in settling the knowledge crisis of the Renaissance and the early modern periods. Human senses are subject to error; so is human reason. So is the interpretation of revelation; so is the mathematico-deductive scientific method put forward by Descartes earlier in the century. Since every single approach to knowledge was subject to error, a more certain knowledge was to be obtained by utilizing each approach to correct the other; the senses to be rectified by reason, reason to be rectified by revelation, and so forth."

"The self-correcting character of Newton's procedure constitutes the superiority of Newton's method over that of earlier natural philosophers, for others had certainly used the separate elements of inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning, mathematics, experiment, and observation before him, and often in some combination. But Newton's method was not limited to the balancing of those approaches to knowledge that still constitute the elements of modern scientific methodology, nor has one any reason to assume that he would deliberately have limited himself to those familiar approaches even if he had been prescient enough to realize that those were all the future would consider important. Newton's goal was much broader than the goal of modern science. Modern science focuses on a knowledge of nature and only on that. In contrast, Newton's goal was a Truth that encompassed natural principles but also divine ones as well. He had a deep religious concern to establish the relationship between God and His creation (nature), and so he constantly searched for the boundaries between God and nature where divine and natural principles met and fused. As a result, Newton's balancing procedure included also the knowledge he had garnered from theology, revelation, alchemy, history, and the wise ancients."

references: B.J.T. Dobbs (1991), The Janus Faces of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton's Thought Cambridge University Press

Richard H. Popkin, ed. Millenarianism and Messianism in English Literature and Thought, 1650-1800. Clark Library Lectures, 1981-2. Publications from the Clark Library Professorship, UCLA, no. 10. Leiden: E.J. Brill 1988

Arthur Quinn. The Confidence of British Philosophers: An Essay in Historical Narrative. Studies in the History of Christian Thought. 17 Ed. Heiko A. Oberman, in cooperation with Henry Chadwick, Edward A. Dowey, Jaroslav Pelikan, and E. David Willis. Leiden: E.J. Brill 1977

Greek science

Thanks Steve for expanding Misplaced Pages so much about Greek Science. About a year ago there were only few lines about it in the History of science in early cultures article. Ygmarchi 10:05, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

moving on

You said: "I think we should go ahead on this article without Logicus, and if he further disrupts the project by reverting our work, we should call for him to be banned from working on this article as a disruptive editor."

Sadly, I have to agree with you at this point... he seems unwilling to participate in a constructive way. However, I propose that we continue going systematically through the article, letting Logicus air his grievances if he wants to; it will at least give us incentive to strengthen and focus the language, as we've done for the background section. You and I probably have a different enough perspective that continued comparison of sources and working at a consensus between us will be beneficial (and I've enjoyed working with you thus far).

(Incidently, Iantresman isn't such a bad guy from what I can tell... at least he has respect for sources and recognizes that the topics he is interested are not widely accepted; he just disagrees about how such topics should be treated. And given the degree of scientism evinced by some editors, I partially sympathize with his concerns.) --ragesoss 21:07, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Ditto for me... I should be studying for orals, which don't include the scientific revolution. I've moved the improved background section into the article, and am starting a (very rought) draft for the next part of your outline. The longer you take to respond to it, the better that might be for both of us.--ragesoss 21:32, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Scientific Revolution

Thanks for the heads up, reverted back to anons version. - RoyBoy 16:53, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Image:Maomé.jpg

I noticed that you changed the description on the linked image on September 29th. I was curious - did you translate from the website the image was originally released on? Captainktainer * Talk 20:20, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

YEs, I am curious too, I went looking on the site and couldn't find it.. can you point me in the right direction? --Irishpunktom\ 18:11, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

He explained it to me in this edit. Hope that helps. Captainktainer * Talk 18:24, 26 October 2006 (UTC)