Talk:History of science/Archive 3

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More thoughts on pruning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Missing material

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

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


Granularity and threading

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

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

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

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

Granularity and subthreads

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

Science sampler

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

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

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

What else needs to be added?

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Greek science

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

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

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