Talk:Science

Scientific Propositions can never be Proven

'Whether mathematics itself is properly classified as science has been a matter of some debate.' Do enough scientists and mathematicians hold such a bizzare view that this section warrants being included? The differences between math & science are too numerous to list here; but it should be sufficient to note that a term as fundamental as 'truth' has a completely different meaning in each. Perhaps this section should be removed. Geologist (talk) 19:19, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

I think it is good to have a section on Math and Science as the two tend to be discussed together as a single topic. A section that discusses the similarities and differences between the two would be informative to readers. danielkueh (talk) 15:31, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree. The article does not need to take a strong position either way, but not to mention the link would make the article less informative.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:10, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Let's cook up......

Ok -first step, GAN. Issues to look at....Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:58, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

• Is this article comprehensive? More specifically, has it got the right hierarchy? Has important stuff been missed for more esoteric stuff? Might be good to set a prose cap and go from there. Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:58, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

• Something that might be interesting to consider is if the article is rather heavily slanted to a Western point of view. I see way more mentions of European and American scientists and ideas, and pretty much nothing from the Middle and Far East, South America, Africa, etc (although the last two have never really been heavy into scientific advancement, AFAIK). Dana boomer (talk) 00:32, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

• ...who is Joseph Ben-David anyway? Seems an odd person and odd source to quote.....?

• According to this JSTOR article, he was fairly prominent in the field of "sociology of science". I'm not totally sure I agree with him, considering, for example, Science in medieval Islam, but he is a known figure in the scientific community. Dana boomer (talk) 00:32, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

• Mayhap he needs an article on hisself? Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:32, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

• I am also not familiar with him, but many authors have made the same type of comment. A better source is probably possible, but would essentially say the same. I think the point Dana boomer raises about medieval Islam is covered if you read the quote in context, but maybe we need to make that context more clear: a fundamental distinction is generally made between pre-modern science and modern science, which definitely is identifiably distinct, and definitely started in Europe. It was of course heavily indebted to Greek and Islamic science, but it was also a new approach. To take an example Copernicus used models of orbits developed already in Persia some generations earlier, but the Persian astronomers who developed them never took the next step of saying that the Earth went around the sun.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:25, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

• Do we want to decide on a citation format at the beginning or go along with everyone adding cites how they want and then standardize them at the end? There's currently a mix of sfn/harvnb linking to cite book templates in the References section, cite xyz and no templates. Do we want to use sfn formatting on all books, or just ones that are used multiple times? I personally think that standardizing first and then working from there is best - saves a lot of work at the end when you have 300 refs to go through and fix up - but maybe that's just me. I'll volunteer to keep an eye on the formatting and try to make sure everything's pretty once we decide what we want to do, if that works for everyone. Dana boomer (talk) 00:23, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, they are somewhat heterogeneous - was looking at them but then pondered that some might be unneeded. Probably best to go through comprehensiveness first and see what gets promoted or relegated..? Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:28, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Maybe do an initial weeding once we get a few more comments here, and then do a fix up? Like I said, I just think it will be easier to standardize as we go, rather than waiting for there to be hundreds of refs in a dozen formats before we try to decide on and implement a style. Dana boomer (talk) 00:34, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Sure, I've been copyediting when I see things, which I shouldn't do until we get content right but there you go ;) Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:32, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Initial take: (1) The history section is the strongest although far from perfect; (2) Every other section is pretty weak; (3) Particularly glaring are the absence of a discussion of the relationship between science and religion, and the lack of a treatment of philosophical approaches to the problem of inductive reasoning. I'm sure there are other things that will be equally glaring as soon as they occur to us. I don't think starting with a prose cap will be useful, but I do think it will benefit us to think early about the article structure: in my experience settling early on a good article structure is the key to getting an article to work. Looie496 (talk) 00:38, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Other missing topics: (*) The relationship between science and technology; (*) The concept of a scientific revolution. Looie496 (talk) 00:48, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Sound good to me all Looie. Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:32, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Pursuing the theme, I wonder if it would make sense to create Talk:Science/Outline, and use it to cooperatively work out an article structure? (Not to be set in stone, of course.) Looie496 (talk) 03:39, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, dunno. I reckon here is ok - as there will be ongoing discussion here. Could just try it as a level three header - was what I was thinking of WRT "comprehensiveness". Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:32, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Strike that - this page is getting unwieldy pretty darn quickly ...Looie go for it and set up a subpage. Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:18, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

TCO take:

1. I agree with y'all's impressions of the article. The major thing is to decide what should be in there and get the content. Right now, it seems very uneven and ad hoc. Some topics not covered at all (commercial aspects, development of big science). Some places where they blather on about a quote wrt pure research. I'd like a little more on the major fields themselves as subheaders, etc. I bet any one of us would come up with something sort of different, but in any case it would be an improvement over what is in there now. And if we toss it around, hopefully can cover each other's blind spots and be better than any one singly. Definitely writing out an outline of topics (perhaps with approximate number of paras) would be a good starting point.

2. If Dana is just itching to get going on footnotes, would say, why don't you go ahead and pick a format (especially if you are going to do most of the work). I trust you to put what is best for us out there. Only caution I would have is that if you are quivering to redo the citations in this current article, just realize 50%+ of the content may be changing. It's just not in the state where we have the right content and just need polishing.

71.246.147.40 (talk) 05:22, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

• I started to edit the references in the article – and then remembered that I need to get a consensus. Would you all be happy if I moved the cited books from the "Notes" to the "References" sections - replacing the inline citations with sfn templates? I favour the use of templates as it is easier to maintain a consistent style, but if you all hate templates then I'm prepared remove all templates and hand craft everything. The other possibility (my least favoured option) is to remove the present "References" section and cite each book directly. This becomes ugly when many different pages are cited from the same book – but this is unlikely to be the case with this article. I'm aware that a good many of the present references are going to disappear in the upgrade. Aa77zz (talk) 15:37, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

We should definitely use templates of some sort. Having tried out a bunch of things myself, my opinion is that we should avoid approaches that give separate Notes and References sections -- they are ugly and hard to maintain. I think we should probably just use inline cite templates. They are evil, but every method is evil in some way. Looie496 (talk) 16:15, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

In my opinion having two sections can be a good arrangement - particularly when the article has citation to different pages in the same book - an excellent example is the recently promoted Richard Nixon article. As I mentioned above, for the present article it may be less clear cut as I suspect it will be rarely necessary to quote the same book on multiple occasions. Aa77zz (talk) 18:16, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

I also like the separate notes and references section (using the sfn template to link shortened footnotes to their full companions in the reference section) - I feel that it makes it cleaner and easier to read/navigate. I like using templates for the full refs - they are one of the best ways to provide consistency when you have a bunch of authors working on the same article. Citing each book directly in the notes section can tend to make that section very bulky and hard to navigate, IMO. Dana boomer (talk) 21:08, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Top level article structure

Here is a starting thought on how to organize the article by theme:

• History
• The scientific approach, in theory and practice
• Science as a human activity
• Philosophy
• The relationship between science and other things

These are not intended as section titles, simply as crude indicators of themes. Each would have a range of subtopics. Will that work? Am I missing anything essential? Is the order correct? Looie496 (talk) 16:27, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

I like your suggestion above that we take the structure/outline discussion to a subpage, so let's see if others like that idea too. Till then we can discuss it here. Here's the current structure:

1 History and etymology

2 Branches

3 Scientific method

3.1 Basic and applied research

3.2 Experimentation and hypothesizing

3.3 Certainty and science

4 Mathematics

5 Scientific community

5.1 Fields

5.2 Institutions

5.3 Literature

5.4 Women in science

6 Philosophy of science

7 Science policy

8 Pseudoscience, fringe science, and junk science

9 Critiques

9.1 Philosophical critiques

9.2 Media perspectives

9.3 Politics and public perception of science

Some comments about the differences between this and your suggested (which I understand is not a proposed outline, but let's talk about what the consequent outline would look like):

• Etymology -- doesn't need to be mentioned at the top level; can (and should) be an embedded part of the history discussion, which I agree must come first.
• Branches -- if we need this at all it should not be early in the article. Some mention of some of the branches of science will occur naturally in the history section -- for example, the separation of social sciences, as currently discussed in the article.
• You have "The scientific approach, in theory and practice" followed by "Science as a human activity" -- I'm not clear how the "practice" part of the first section could be clearly separated from the content of the second section. The current article avoids this problem by having sections called "scientific method" and "Scientific community". I think this is a useful separation.
• Are you suggesting that the content of the "Philosophy of science" section in the current article would naturally be associated with the "theory" part of the "scientific approach in theory and practice" that you include? It seems to me quite a different topic to scientific method.
• The relationship between science and other things -- I think this is a good way of thinking of the remaining material; the miscellanea, so to speak, though we wouldn't use that as a section title, of course. To the extent that the content of "science policy", "media perspectives" and "public perception" is good material, I assume that would fit under this rubric?

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:19, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

To flesh that out, by "the scientific approach" I mean the approach of learning the laws of nature by means of experiments and systematic observation. By "science as a human activity" I mean the categorization of some people as scientists, and the behaviors that distinguish scientists from other people. By "philosophy" I mean things like the concept of a law of nature, the principle of induction, Occam's razor, and Aristotle's distinction between proximal and final causes.Looie496 (talk) 19:01, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

It may (or may not) be useful to consult outline of science, which is an attempt to organise the articles that Wikipedia has on the topic. The actual article structure should, though, be guided more by looking at how other encyclopedias and books structure their coverage of science as an article-level topic. This is one of a number of things I would put on a list of things to do before jumping headlong into something like this. Carcharoth (talk) 18:28, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

The outline of science is indeed useful to look at. I fear that if we don't jump headlong, we will never jump at all. Making things depend on indefinite other things is a recipe for going nowhere. We should come up with the best arrangement we can, and be open to changing it later if we see a need. Looie496 (talk) 19:01, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, yes, jumping headlong is sometimes good. I made some suggestions below in a section titled 'organisation', but rather than follow that plan, I'm now going to do a critique of the sources currently used in the article. Go figure. :-) Carcharoth (talk) 19:24, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Another thing to consider when discussing the structure of the article is the current disambiguation hatnote: "This article is about the general term, particularly as it refers to experimental sciences. For the specific topics of study by scientists, see Natural science. For other uses, see Science (disambiguation)." Any major changes to the article will either have to fit within that article scope statement, or include a change in that statement. Carcharoth (talk) 22:55, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

• Two cents: This article is currently a higher order view of Natural Science and contains insufficient science-general or social-science related examples, content, etc. I read this article in conjunction with Natural Science and got the feeling that I read the same article twice, or one article spread inconveniently across two pages. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:10, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Organisation

Some things should be done before getting too far along with any rewrite of this article:

• (1) Notify various WikiProjects (for expert help if nothing else).
• (2) Tidy the talk page to provide a discussion space (or set one up on a subpage with a note here).
• (3) Look at the existing article text and see if the majority has been contributed by any one or few editors and as a courtesy notify them before ripping it all up and starting again from scratch. Also review the archived talk pages and previous reviews and notes on plans for the article, such as Talk:Science/to do and the review from 2006 at Wikipedia:Scientific peer review/Science (don't be misled by the Mars thing at the top, that shouldn't be there - probably no use but may have some useful comments and if the editors there are still editing I would suggest inviting them to this discussion). There was also a Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive earlier this year for the week of May 29, 2011 - that could also be checked (along with inviting the editors who participated there to this discussion).
• (4) Survey other article-length encyclopedia-style texts on this topic and see whether this gives a good guide as to the structure to use here.
• (5) Survey the existing high-level articles on this topic (I suggested starting at outline of science, but looking at Category:Science and Portal:Science and Template:Science will also help). Other Wikipedia outlines and indices are at Portal:Contents/Outlines#Natural and physical sciences and Portal:Contents/Natural and physical sciences.
• (6) Compartmentalise the discussions - external links, further reading, images, templates, and so on, can be discussed largely independently of the content of the main body, so dedicate discussions to those aspects of the article.
• (7) Be crystal-clear on what sort of sourcing to use. Be rigorous here (e.g. excluding newspaper articles and recent journal articles and sticking strictly to secondary and tertiary literature from academic presses by established authors would be one approach). Look at the existing text and sources and be ruthless. The available bibliography on this topic and its subtopics (like any broad topic) is immense. Dedicated discussions will be needed for each section and subsection. Leave notices on the talk pages of subsidiary articles to get help with those subtopics, and also draw on the sources used on those subtopic articles.
• (8) Decide on the level of detail versus summarising and be ruthless (otherwise the article will be too long). But don't just remove material. Try and find a home for it in a subarticle if it is not needed here. Always ask yourself: is this material better placed in a more specific article? Try and work out which sections will have links to a 'main article'. One of the big issues is the balance between this article and natural science and social science (among many other flavours). Probably most of the article will be spent explaining the origin and splintering of science into these multiple disciplines, so the best source available on that would be very useful.
• (9) Look at how this has been done before elsewhere. There are top-level science topics that are featured. Read those and see how the editors at those articles handled all these issues. Though looking at the structure of the article, it may make more sense to look at other 'overview' articles that have been featured (if any) and see how those were handled.
• (10) Try and work out how long you expect to spend on this and take it slowly and a bit at a time. Make clear that not everyone has to help all the time, but there does need to be a few people to push things along. Working in parallel on different sections should be possible.

The priority, I think are the first four points and the last one. Points 1-3 and 10 can be sorted relatively quickly. Then some serious time should be spent on points 4 and 5. Then gather the sources and go through editing-review-discussion cycles until most people are happy with the result (but don't try and please everyone). Carcharoth (talk) 19:12, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Source review

I've been looking at the sources (in this version of the article), and the following points need to be considered, IMO:

• Having four references to the first sentence in the lead section to bolster the definition provided there isn't a great sign. One is to a dictionary definition, one is to a work by Karl Popper, one is to Consilience by E. O. Wilson, and one is to a work by Ludwik Fleck. Trouble is, I'm not clear on what specific points each of those works is being cited to support in that first sentence. The Popper and Wilson sources are the right sort of thing, but should be used in the main body of the article. I don't think dictionary definitions should be cited. Fleck, I'm not familiar with, but looks OK for use in the main body of the article, but not the lead.
• The next reference gives a quote from Aristotle. What is needed here is a modern source for the assertion about Aristotle, not a direct quotation from Aristotle's works.
• Then we have a reference to Newton (Consider, for example, Isaac Newton (1687) Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica), when what we should have is modern source to cite this. The next source (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) is better, though the quote may be excessive. As before, citing in the lead may not be the right approach here.
• The next bit of the lead section uses another dictionary definition, this time the OED, and a long quote from the OED. I'm not convinced this is the right approach here. Dictionary definitions are not what we should be providing.
• The final citation in the lead is to a 1949/1965 work by Max Born. Again, while the text is OK, I'm not convinced this is the best source to cite. There needs to be an extra layer here, with us citing someone who cites this to Born. And that kind of detailed citation needs to go in the main body of the article, not the lead.

That is just the lead section. Looking briefly over the rest of the sources used, I see Kuhn in the further reading section (he should be used as a source). There are a number of works in the 'further reading' section that could be brought into the article as sources, but again with distance provided with a modern authoritative work on 'science' being used to refer to these major works. The type of works mentioned also varies from heavy academic books to essays, articles and popular expositions. The dates vary from recent (2000s) to mid- and late-20th century.

In the inline references, there are newspaper references (reference 41 to Dawkins in a 2005 Guardian article), and a bare URL (reference 42). Reference 29 is a bare URL to an archive of Dawkins articles. Reference 20 is a bare URL to Rees' Reith Lecture from 2010, which isn't a bad idea as a source to use, but needs tidying. Having three citations to Peirce is excessive. As always, a modern source is needed to place Pierce and others in their context. The sentence "An enormous range of scientific literature is published" is cited to a 1980 paper, which is not really what is needed there. Similarly for As of 1981, one estimate for the number of scientific and technical journals in publication was 11,500" - surely there are more updated figures than that. Reference 66 is a typical quote farm on definitions of pseudoscience, giving the topic far too much prominence in an article such as this. Skipping to the end, the article ends with a sentence on Edwina Currie and the Salmonella comments in 1988 referenced to a BBC 'On This Day' news article. That is not really appropriate for this article and is a poor finish. I could go on, but I skipped large parts of the article and only looked at the types of sources being used. Carcharoth (talk) 23:37, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Just responding to your comments about the lead, I'd suggest that we leave it to last. The difficulty with a broad article like this is the need to summarize at such a high level; I think we're quite unable to summarize again, into the lead, until the content is fairly well settled. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:58, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Agree content of lede should be deferred for the time being - the references should appear in the body for the same material and be taken out of the lede - and that can happen sooner though. Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:11, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Sure, add dealing with the lede section to a set of discussions that can be dealt with at the proper time, but to give an idea of how others handle this sort of article, have a look at the Encyclopedia Britannica online entry on science. It is around 120 words, and is mostly a definitional entry combined with pointing readers towards related topics. So that is the EB approach. How do other encyclopedias approach this topic? If you can bear it, have a look at how the EB 1911 handled the topic. What other article-length treatments exist of a topic like this? How long is the MacMillan encyclopedia entry and how is it structured? Carcharoth (talk) 01:47, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I see no reason to stop editing the lead. I can understand that some individual editors are now working on other parts first, but we all have different interests, so we can all be looking at different things at the same time. I've made a couple of light edits today which are more aimed at getting the current version a bit more clear in its meaning. I think by its very nature the lead can preferably be looked at constantly while the rest of the article reforms. The two jobs can affect each other.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:09, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Ludwik Fleck (1935, in German), Genesis and development of a scientific fact was cited as antidote to logical positivism, and the positivist idea that science is received knowledge. To show its importance, Thomas Kuhn wrote the introduction to the translation of Fleck's book. Kuhn & Merton took comfort in the knowledge that Fleck's book existed, to keep scientism at bay (they admit it's a difficult book). I scanned the titles in my local library (35 titles not checked out, in the 509.xxx Dewey Decimal Classification), and was gratified to see that a new set of authors have arisen on this perennial topic (they keep tossing out the older titles, which I rescue for a dollar apiece :-). ). I have an agenda, which is to make sure that no one tries to foist "the last word" on this topic. Thanks to casliber, it's back on my watchlist. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 17:11, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

What would help is sources that comment on Fleck and place his work in a larger context. We need to cite those sources, rather than citing Fleck directly (other than quotes or as follow-on material). What there is far too much of in this and other articles is people trying to summarise directly in their own words what various seminal works in this area have said when there are plenty of reliable sources out there that have done this already. We don't need to try and explain what others have already explained. i.e. Rather than synthesizing an original overview of these ideas (an overview written by and argued about by Wikipedians), summarise things based on what later authors have said about all this. Carcharoth (talk) 21:57, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I added Steven Shapin's quote on Fleck. Ironically, Shapin is a winner of the Ludwik Fleck prize. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 02:48, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh, god, not again

Too bad you couldn't see my wince when I read somebody above commenting that this article on science and the article on natural science looked like two versions of the same thing.

Why yes, they do. That is because some editors have been convinced that the word "science" now and forever more means "natural science" and alternate shadings of that word, plus previous history of it, should be apologized for. And that the formal sciences, social sciences, computer sciences, and political science are all badly named, or are at least now in political "limbo," as this article states. Sort of like the Catholic Church's limbo is in limbo, I guess. Yes, I see the infobox. I also see that nobody really pays any attention to it. This history is still here, and is good, but the rest of the "science" article just sort of carries on, as though it was about natural science, natural laws, and so on.

There's not much I can do about the language-recentists. If you must have the science article be (mostly) about natural science, I suggest you just delete the thing and redirect it. If NOT, then I suggest we delete much of the natural science content in the science article, and write a small natural science synopsis here per WP:SS, and make natural science the {{main| }} article for that section.

But I don't want to go through that debate again. SBHarris 01:43, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I think there is a very good argument that this article should be nothing more than a short set of definitions with links to more detailed articles, which is the approach the Encyclopedia Britannica took (see the link I provided in the previous section). One way to sweeten the pill for those who have worked extensively on this article would be to ensure the material removed from here was not lost, but merely reviewed and if it was good enough it could then be moved to another article. However, much of the material here isn't really up to scratch. It is in parts a synthesis of past and current ideas, with the past ideas cited directly to older sources (rather than those sources being placed in their proper context by modern authors), and in parts a collection of opinions cited to a mish-mash of modern sources, with some irrelevancies added in for good measure. There are bits worth merging to various places, but IMO not much. This is not to denigrate the efforts of the editors who have been working here, but I think they have been working on the wrong article. Much of the material present here could easily be placed in subsidiary articles. Carcharoth (talk) 01:58, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Sbharris, I understand your pain (Anarchism, Communist genocide, Libertarianism, Holodomor). I'm hoping that an influx of editors who are dedicated to high quality reliable soruces may help the article. Fifelfoo (talk) 03:25, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

The aim of making this article one which leans more logical upon sub-articles, and provides a broader house where people can make sense of both natural and social sciences, as well presumably as other meanings such as classical/medieval, seems good to me. I am therefore a little concerned with some of the ideas for a very detailed structure which would try to cover too much? Such projects also have more propensity to peter out leaving something incomplete and imbalanced? It seems to me that the most important priority is to get a basic structure which is better and which covers the most important things well. If we try to cover every school of methodology for example, we will end up un-balancing the article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:14, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, indeed. THIS article, if you decide to keep it, should cover only the history of development of term "science," plus summaries of the various types of science in the infobox, comparing and contrasting their methadologies. It will do no good (for example) to try to discuss library science, or the formal sciences, in terms of the standard inductive "scientific method." So save all that for the natural science article and the philosophy of science article (which is really about the philosophy of the inductive sciences, not the applied and formal sciences). Here is not the place, and the outline proposed works better for the other two articles, NOT HERE. This article has some good material in that direction, but it's in the wrong place. Move it. Where it's duplicated, choose the best version and delete the other, or synthesize in primary place and shorten and summarize per WP:SS in the other.SBHarris 17:39, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I can't agree with that approach. When readers come to an article called science they will usually have certain questions in mind, and we should do our best to answer those questions if we can. Basically, to most people science is what scientists do, so we should try to give an overview of what scientists do and why they do it. Looie496 (talk) 17:45, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

...remembering that there is quite a range of different things called science. It is therefore a matter of defining what unites them, and giving good links onwards to more details. I think. I will be interesting to see if this ideal can be attained though. The normal tendency for "single important word" articles is that all passers by wish to include something that they think just has to be in. So I believe it is best, if we are trying to get a good quality which will also last a bit, that we aim at a simple good structure.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:49, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

There isn't anything that unites all the subfields of science except that they all claim to have reliable knowledge. Which is what the word "science" means. If you try to shoehorn in disparate fields like physics, mathematics, political science and library science with anything more than that simple definition, you'll end up saying things that are not true. Which will be amusing. SBHarris 21:23, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

So there is something which unites them.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:10, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, indeed, and this article will be improved the most strongly that point is made (that this is ALL that binds all these disciplines-- a claim to knowledge). But of course, you're not done as soon as you admit that that is all it is. All of these fields that have inductive components are then plagued with problems with epistemology. How do we test for valid knowledge? For the natural sciences, the proof is in prediction and test. For the observational sciences, it gets very wooley. Explanation has sometimes been used as as test, but explanation is easy-- any fool can tell you why the past happened and give you a very good story. I can "explain" why the stockmarket went down today (and all the pundits have done so). But they didn't tell us that YESTERDAY. And they're not quite so wise about what it will do tomorrow. In this sense, political science is a lot like an investment newsletter: it's much more sure if itself regarding the past, but if it knew the causes of things as well as it pretends, it could fairly frequently predict the future, and if it really could, the guys writing it wouldn't be sweating away making their money writing investment newsletters. SBHarris 21:39, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

The thread here seems to be drifting away from discussion of sources and what edits to make to the article, and drifting towards discussing the topic in a forum-style manner. It matters very little what individual Wikipedians think of the demarcation problem and epistemology. What is needed here is a clear discussion (without distracting sideshows) to decide: (1) What this article should cover; and (b) What sources are best used to achieve that. If there is disagreement about the scope of this article, model the narrative (or the article) on a reliable source rather than trying to construct your own narrative. Carcharoth (talk) 23:57, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry to say that this effort is drifting off in exactly the direction I anticipated it would, with editors focusing on their own pet philosophers of science, without mention of whom the article would of course be a steaming pile of ordure. The problem is of course the same as with many (most?) of Wikipedia's scientific articles; we need to rely on review articles, or in this case general overviews of the field, not primary sources such as what Feynman or any one individual may or may not have said. I really couldn't agree more with the approach that Carcharoth has suggested. Malleus Fatuorum 00:05, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Prior discussion

A prior discussion that I think is worth looking at is here. I have only skimmed it so far but it looks of interest both for understanding any consensus formed and for identifying issues that were discussed at that time. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:58, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Outline

I've created an initial proposal for an article structure at Talk:Science/Outline, by taking the existing article structure and reordering some of the sections. This is intended as a starting point; I don't imagine the version we finally arrive at will resemble it very much. It isn't even my own idea of a good solution. Anybody who wants to should feel free to modify it in any way that seems desirable. If somebody does something that you don't like, don't worry about it too much -- we are just brainstorming here: this is just a convenient way for people to express their thoughts without overloading the talk page.

My main reason for taking this approach is that in my experience when editors try to deal with such large-scale issues as this, the talk page quickly becomes so large that it is impossible to follow its evolution. I am hoping that having a more structured way to express our ideas will be helpful. Looie496 (talk) 05:44, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

• I moved some sections around, it is hard to introduce the scientific method without history and philosophy coming first due to the 20th century criticisms of true knowledge generation from philosophical and sociological stand points. This also better reflects the close unity between history and philosophy of science studies (ie: the HQRS literature). Fifelfoo (talk) 07:14, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
  • Looks good. I think this is going to work best if someone does something like this as we can otherwise talk in circles. Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:45, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Comment: Revised outline looks great! danielkueh (talk) 20:00, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

• Added Technology to society section, added scientific revolution by implication to history, expanded history per History of Science. Fifelfoo (talk) 00:13, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Philosophy section

I'm going to start by reworking that section. Let me note that my general approach to writing is to blast out a bit of text each day for a while, and then work on revising, integrating, and referencing -- so please don't be upset if it goes through a period of incoherency. I have read through the philosophy of science article, but it is really just an accumulation of special topics and not very useful as a source of material.

My inclination is to organize the material by questions rather than the current organization by schools -- I think readers are better served that way. That's what I did in the philosophy section of the consciousness article, and I think it works reasonably well. Comments are welcome, of course. Looie496 (talk) 17:43, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

It is currently missing Feyerabend, Kuhn, Lakatos and similar social constructivist positions; their question is "Method? What method" which connects with your small paragraph on "get on and calculate," as its hipper, sinister, cynical cousin. Fifelfoo (talk) 21:47, 17 October 2011 (UTC) Fifelfoo (talk) 00:03, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

A couple of organizational and notification questions

A couple of questions/suggestions, now that work has started.

• Would it be better to have the subpages such as Talk:Science/Outline set up elsewhere than article space? That would allow us to have both pages and associated talk pages, which might be helpful. I'm thinking of either a user page or a subpage of a relevant WikiProject.
• Any objections to me posting some notifications to old locations that might attract interested participants? I'm specifically thinking of the FA team and the content review workshop, both of which have been silent for a long time, but which might still be watched be editors who would like to be involved. Anywhere else we should post?
• What about posting to related Wikiprojects? I haven't checked what notifications have gone out but would be glad to post some notes if this hasn't been done.
• How are we going to organize the tasks for this article, without the work of so many editors becoming an uncoordinated tangle? Casliber, you were nominated for a leadership role on this effort. Is there a coordination function that could be useful here? I suspect there is: nothing that would subordinate the autonomy of any of us, but an organizational focus to help us keep on track. If others agree, is that something you're willing to do, Cas? And that others are willing for you to do?

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:31, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I posted to many users who'd contributed significantly. I had forgotten to post to the wikiprojects. Regarding substantive contributions, I'd be amazed if any more than one or two people really put their shoulder to the wheel here and get stuck into it. Agree that having a layout in talk space proves problematic when looking for a "talk/talk" space for discussion. I'll have a look at the other non-talk venues. Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:04, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

So would I. Talk is easy. Malleus Fatuorum 04:22, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes; I'm having trouble figuring out how I can contribute, since I don't have enough background knowledge to be able to jump in. I can help work on organization and prose once the material is in, but the content is the hardest part since the subject is so broad. How about directed research? If we identify sources we should go read, I can do my share of obtaining and reading them. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:39, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Okay - Wikipedia:Content review/workshop is more for processes rather than specific articles. Wikipedia:WikiProject Featured articles/FA-Team/Mission Proposals is an option, but is just an uberpage, so things can carry on here as per before. But might be nice to transclude there. I'd say 3 months to GA and another month to FA is a good ballpark to run with. Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:00, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Mike - see Talk:Science/Outline discussion...quite easy really. I can jicker around with the names when archiving much later down hte track. Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:05, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

That sounds good enough to me. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:39, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

To help keep things organised (since the number of subpages of this talk page might grow), here is a useful link: [1]. That will help in putting everything in an archive box so discussions are easily accessed by other editors both now and in the future. Carcharoth (talk) 00:11, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Science or natural science?

There is a fundamental disagreement brewing here (one that has happened in the past as well, it seems) between those who want to essentially rewrite this article to include much of what is covered at natural science and those who want the article to be much shorter and essentially a starting point article about origins, etymology, and definitions, with most of the detail being left for other articles. Please, before anyone goes any further, read this (Encyclopedia Britannica). That is a very short way to handle an article like this, and I think there should be serious consideration given to that approach. I mentioned it above but it may have got lost in the noise. Carcharoth (talk) 22:04, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

So EB takes physical science as the archetype for science, as you point out. "For ... see ..." It takes one sentence: thirteen words with two links.That won't work for us.

I think that Andrew Lancaster's approach is viable for this encyclopedia; we aren't going to get to the EB style because EB's style runs counter to the Manual of Style for this encyclopedia. It will be easier for this group to write in wikipedia style than in EB style, just based on group dynamics. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 22:56, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Maybe you should rm "Heads of Title" in the text below. It's not parsing. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 00:15, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Much of the literature on history of science is amenable to a science article; though, in the past 200 years for social science you'd want to get a couple of histories of the disciplines of the social sciences if they're referred to in broad scale history of science literatures. Regarding methodological divides: I don't see why we can't Heads of Title cover cover as dense single sentence summaries noting the importance and excitement of, for example, Scientific method as bringing theory into a systematic relation to an external referent proof structure: Formal (Internal consistency), Quantitative (Experimental, Observational), Qualitative (Experimental, Observational). I'm very wary of the idea that some sciences are truly discursive in the humanities sense of methodology—but your average PhD level research methods book for the social sciences will discuss solidly constructivist and other similar edge-cases to the social sciences. Fifelfoo (talk) 23:47, 18 October 2011 (UTC) (edit: Fifelfoo (talk) 00:44, 19 October 2011 (UTC))

Wait. I can think of counterexamples: Darwin's book on natural selection is quite well written from a humanities POV, so I'm not sure if natural science can be included in your statement about humanities sense of methodology, above. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 00:15, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Darwin uses a self-reflexive or text reflexive theory/methodology such as historiography or hermeneutics or literary criticism in his book on Natural selection? Compare the biological and sociological sections of Kropotkin's Mutual Aid: a factor in evolution for an example of the difference I'm talking about. Kropotkin's example of the competitive advantage of rabbit versus the hare is grounded in observation of external reality; Kropoktin's observation about the structure of the village as a commune in medieval Russia is grounded in an analysis of text. Fifelfoo (talk) 00:43, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

But how much of that would really be needed here, and how much in the more detailed articles? It is that divide between this article and the more detailed articles that will constantly be a problem. Some people will try and summarise here, others will try and expand, and it will be a constant back-and-forth unless it is very clear what is being attempted here. My view is that this article needs to avoid at all costs being rambling and discursive. It needs to be succinct and clear and to the point, leaving the details and complexity to later articles. Carcharoth (talk) 00:26, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

A lot of Mains, dense linking, and high order summaries. We can't present an account so succinct that it becomes triumphalist, one sided, or a caricature—the limit of succinctness is "Science: see also: natural science and social science." On the other side, I think we ought to introduce major controversies in the field (the content of Needham's work merits a sentence, for example). It is also hard to introduce Philosophy of science without noting the concerted 20th century attacks on the possibility of science. These are interesting enough topics to summarise here, to excite people about the main articles, and to tell them the story of where science is at at the moment. Fifelfoo (talk) 00:43, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

O.K. finally, something concrete I can contribute. In my local library, I have just found a nice precis of Needham's Grand Question with a believable thesis which explains the causes. Now, just where should that go in this article? --Ancheta Wis (talk) 00:55, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I put some notes in the outline, it's the wrong place to put them so please tell me where you move them next; I plan to be gone for the next 10 days. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 19:52, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

(Hopefully you will see this when you get back) It would help if people explicitly named the sources they are proposing to use. From the diff you have provided there, it seems that the source you are using (presumably the same as the precis you state above that you found in your local library) is Patricia Fara's Science: A Four Thousand Year History (2009). I have that book on my shelves as well (I dug it out last night after rummaging around for the Gribbin work). This is good, as since two of us have this work that will help co-ordinate things. What I will do now is make a list below of the four books I've found on my shelves that may help here. Hopefully others will chip in, and we can go from there. Carcharoth (talk) 00:05, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I'd suggest Joseph Needham and in the first paragraph of any History of Science section, I've noted it in the Outline. Stuff like the Needham question leads a reader into reading 4 densely summarised paragraphs on science history. Our current History section has 7 paras, none of which seem particularly connected to histories of science, all of which seem connected to an uncited triumphalist account. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:09, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Could you go into more detail and say explicitly what the text is that you have a problem with? It might also help a bit if the editors working here said a bit more about their background, or what reading they have done on the topic. My background is studying history and philosophy of science for a year at university level nearly 15 years ago now, and having a (very small) range of books on the topic. But not much more than that. I suspect (from what is being said here) that others here are far more up-to-date and current and have studied the topic far more than that, but what needs to be avoided is people focusing too much on specifics, and what is needed is keeping the broad sweep of the article in mind. The key is deciding what to include and what to leave out. Try and put too much in and you overwhelm the reader. Leave too much out, and you don't really inform the reader about much at all. Carcharoth (talk) 01:57, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

A number of my colleagues are historians and philosophers of science. I'm a social science Historian who uses a discursive method (historiography). I've done a semester long doctoral seminar on social-science methodology as philosophy of science, using a text published by a Sydney academic focusing on Popper, Kuhn, Feyerabend IRRC with some dog-bear on the cover. I'll address text issues by paragraph in the section History and etymology. The central problem is that it follows neither its main article (History of science), nor the high quality scholarly literature's presentation—the Needham issue is only the most obvious.

1. ¶1 is an introduction that is confused in its chronological presentation of the issue, and presentation of the problem of historicising science;
2. ¶2 is an etymology quote, cited to "Hunt, Shelby D. (2003). Controversy in marketing theory: for reason, realism, truth, and objectivity"—perhaps not the best literature to cite on the point when there's an entire discipline attending to the issue?
3. ¶3 is an etymology para, using EtymologyOnline, an Self-Published Source; and an Original Research interpretation of a Primary Source
4. ¶4 is a more adequately cited etymology para, but is half uncited
5. ¶5 is uncited etymology, Original Research?
6. ¶6 is etymology apparently Original Research, and one appropriately cited sentence to a Historiography of Science book
7. ¶7 is one sentence on history, unlike any history of science I've observed and unlike the main article, cited to a contemporary reception of science in the US sociology work. Then an appropriately cited etymology sentence. Then an inappropriate citation on etymology to the reception text. Then a sentence of original research.
8. ¶8 is an appropriately cited etymology sentence, followed by a conjecture from an expert in an expert forum. Unfortunately the conjecture appears to be synthetic, as it isn't tied into a scholarly narrative justifying its inclusion (ie: the broad historiography of science as it exists). Such colour quotes need to be sustained by a narrative context, an actual history of science.
9. ¶9 is a block quote from an expert practicioner: again it is original research by synthesis.

There's one inappropriately cited history of science sentence; one etymology citation to a history of science text, and two expert conjectures that aren't sustained by a high quality reliable source narrative. We use no history of science works, we don't duplicate the main article structure (History of science), and we don't actually tell even a summary history of science in this section. The structure of the main article for this context level is "Early cultures, Medieval science, Early Modern science, Modern science". The first text in the bibliography of the main article "Agassi, Joseph (2007) Science and Its History: A Reassessment of the Historiography of Science (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 253) Springer." seems current, HQRS and precisely on topic, amongst a number of other works cited there (Kuhn, Lakatos, Needham). We can improve this by separating etymology from history, structuring the history based on the main article and scholarly history of science texts, and citing high quality reliable sources that have appropriate specialist context. Fifelfoo (talk) 02:43, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I raised similar concerns to yours in the section titled 'source review' (on this talk page). I had also noticed the 'Controversy in marketing theory' source and mentally noted that it needed to be replaced. I agree absolutely that there is a need to use actual history of science and philosophy of science works that put the history and philosophers in their contexts (as you say 'a high quality reliable source narrative'). What would be most useful right now is probably identifying such sources to be used. Unfortunately, all I have accessible at the moment is Science: A History 1543-2001 by John Gribbin. That is more a popular-level treatment of the history of science, but I'm hoping you can suggest other texts in addition to the Agassi work from 2007 that you've mentioned above. What would be ideal is one that took a very broad overview of the whole of science in an encyclopedic style, but I doubt that is done much at the academic level any more. The closest I found was from around a century ago here. Wonderfully archaic, and not much use, but does anyone do essays or articles like that any more? Carcharoth (talk) 03:19, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Brilliant, will do for History, possibly Philosophy. Fifelfoo (talk) 03:42, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Regarding ¶9: The Feynman Lectures on Physics are meant for very smart college freshmen. I am surprised any quote from the Feynman Lectures is called OR; every aspiring physicist reads Feynman. What's the disconnect? --Ancheta Wis (talk) 03:54, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

OR by Synthesis (disconnected from a HQRS account); OR by Primary. I can collate a sequence of factual statements, but it doesn't connect them to the topic—the issue is why we should quote Feynman on philosophy of science in a history of science section. Additionally Feynman is a self-reflecting practicioner, he's primary for the statement. If we had, for example, "Kuhn controversially emphasised the role of irrationality in scientific practice, quoting Feynman, "…"". It would be okay, or even if Kuhn or Schaffer, or someone referred to Feynman's practice in the history of science. The result is that the second Feynman quote is actually wrong (the majority of HQRS disagree with it), "...there is an expanding frontier of ignorance...things must be learned only to be unlearned again or, more likely, to be corrected." given that the most influential historians of science, and historians of social science, have been emphasising the social construction of knowledge, the contingency of ideas and practices, and the absence of one true and correct vision for 60 plus years. Fifelfoo (talk) 04:17, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

This means Fleck has won. Hurray. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 04:42, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Forgive me if I've misread some of the above, but is this the science wars redux? I wouldn't quote Feynman as a source to support claims about Feynman's impact on physics (though I would cite other prominent physicists to support such claims and not only historians of science). But I don't see how a self-reflecting scientific practitioner's views about science are automatically OR or less reliable than a historian of science, nor do I see why the view of the "most influential historians of science, and historians of science" - influential, at any rate, on one another - for the past 60 years makes Feynman's view "actually wrong." Such a claim, that Feynman's view (which echoes Einstein's view) is therefore "actually wrong," is inconsistent when it comes from a radically truth-skeptical (not merely and reasonably fallibilistic) viewpoint that sees mainly or only social constructions to the near or total exclusion of right and wrong about facts. Scientist will usually not have an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of their fields, but they have to know some of it, and they are in a peculiarly good, experience-based position to understand scientific reasons that have influenced and helped determine that history. A field of practitioners with insufficient awareness of work in the field's past ends up spinning its wheels to reinvent the wheel, which was a major point of The Nature of Geography by the prominent geographer Hartshorne. The Tetrast (talk) 15:07, 19 October 2011 (UTC).

And this is why we'd quote Feynman on philosophy of science when he's an expert in practice about whether it is possible to make a true claim. But his historical statement about science being a continuous but punctuated progress of knowledge isn't borne out in expert literature, nor does Feynman have the academic expertise to determine if his comment on the history of science is true within the disciplinary methodology of history of science. Even quoting Feynman's peers (when they're not acting as historians of science) on the historicity of a particular Feynman quote is suspicious—they're not academically trained or reviewed by peers in the judgement of historicity and the practice of historiography. Hartshorne is a brilliant example of how a practicioner of science can conduct history of science. (Regarding truth statements here: wikipedia constructs itself through its policies, which heavily privilege expert reviewed expert speech in expert forums.) Moreover, as I've said, if there's an expert who concludes that Feynman's opinion (or an opinion fundamentally analogous) is significant at this high summary level of the history of science, then let's quote Feynman—in explanatory context, not as a classical style authority "Feynman also observed,". Compared to the Newton quote Feynman's quote does at least have the advantage of including the free complexification that progress may be inconsistent. Fifelfoo (talk) 00:20, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

OED quote

Imma just interject this here in the hope that it might be useful since I happen to have access and others might not:

4.a. In a more restricted sense: A branch of study which is concerned either with a connected body of demonstrated truths or with observed facts systematically classified and more or less colligated by being brought under general laws, and which includes trustworthy methods for the discovery of new truth within its own domain.
[...]
5.b. In modern use, often treated as synonymous with ‘Natural and Physical Science’, and thus restricted to those branches of study that relate to the phenomena of the material universe and their laws, sometimes with implied exclusion of pure mathematics. This is now the dominant sense in ordinary use.

— "science", OED online

--Cybercobra (talk) 02:14, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I split this off to a separate section for its own discussion. I don't think dictionary quotes are useful here, but others might disagree. Carcharoth (talk) 03:04, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Can you give a rationale?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:09, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm not saying dictionary definitions are useless, but you rarely see them in real encyclopedia articles, and that is because if people want dictionary definitions, they turn to a dictionary. Encyclopedia entries are meant to provide a bit more than that. For the etymology of a word, or an article about a word, it may be appropriate to quote a dictionary definition, but there will nearly always be a better way to tackle what we are trying to communicate to the readers. Anyway, this is beside the point, as this OED dictionary definition is already cited and quoted in this article. And the full OED entry is much longer than the parts provided here. Carcharoth (talk) 00:09, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Possible sources

I'm going to list here some general sources that I personally own copies of, in the hope that this might help refocus things somewhat. They are mainly history of science, but one covers philosophy of science as well. If others add what they have, or have access to, or think should be used, or shouldn't be used, please add them here. What I'm trying to get is a list of the sources best placed to give a general overview, to help guide the article and make sure it doesn't end up unbalanced and focused too much on one area at the expense of other areas. It might help to put this on a subpage if it gets too large. Carcharoth (talk) 01:01, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

General sources

• Science: A History 1543-2001 (2002) by John Gribbin
• Science: A Four Thousand Year History (2009) by Patricia Fara

Introductory texts

• Worldviews - An Introduction to the History and Philosophy of Science (2004) by Richard DeWitt

Specific topics

• God's Philosophers - How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science (2009) by James Hannam

Discussion

Clearly the above is only a starting point. The Gribbin and Fara works will be useful, but there are other works out there that will need to be used as well (for example, Simon Schaffer and Steven Shapin). The DeWitt work looks to be aimed at university students starting an HPS course. The Hannam work has good footnotes and a good bibliography, but is more a popular history work (and is narrower in scope) and hence is probably better used for more detailed articles (probably only of use here for suggesting works to consult). Rather than try and locate all of the most useful sources, it might be best to pick three or four that will be good enough, and then get stuck in there, and then refine as needed from that point. But I'm reluctant to do that until some of the discussions have settled down a bit and there is more clarity about how to approach this article (mainly how to avoid excessively duplicating material already present elsewhere). But when things are settled on exactly what needs doing here, I'll be happy to help with references from these books if needed. Carcharoth (talk) 01:01, 20 October 2011 (UTC)