User:Dpvalade/sandbox

Blog

Week One: I found the Finding Open Access and Public Domain Resources guide very helpful. The differences between public domain, creative commons license, in copyright, labeled for non-commercial reuse, and labeled for non-commercial reuse with modification can be quite confusing at times. This guide helps to help make a more professional Wikipedia entry that is accessible to other readers that might not be affiliated with other institutions or paying subscribers, so they won't be able to access the resources in our bibliography, which I wasn't aware of until now.

Week Two: After much frustration and clarification, I'm beginning to understand our assignment for Wikipedia. This is why I hate being an undergrad here at UC Santa Cruz. Is anyone going to read this?

Article Evaluation

Copernican Revolution

• Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?

Most of everything in the article ties into the Copernican Revolution; however, I was distracted because the majority of information is about adjustments made to Copernicus's theory after his death versus the Copernican Revolution.

• Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?

I don't think that this article is very neutral. Most of the claims are heavily biased toward a Eurocentric view of the Copernican Revolution. Many of the claims in the article are the result of European astronomers like Tycho Brahe, Joannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Issac Newton, and Immanuel Kant. These European astronomers have their own sub-section, while Arabic and Chinese astronomers contributions are neglected. Only a few Arabic astronomers are even mentioned in the section Before Copernicus.

• Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?

In the section Copernican Revolution#Sphere of the fixed stars European writers are credited with the idea of an infinite universe after the 16th century. This section doesn't represent the Xuan Ye theory described in the early 4th century that posed the universe as a void space with the Earth and stars floating in the empty space, and medieval European astronomers were definitely exposed to those new ideas as early as Marco Polo's travels to China in the 13th century, but also from other Europeans in Medieval China. Being exposed to new ideas/different points of view definitely affected/created a new direction of scientific motivation. Chinese astronomers contributions are underrepresented in this article.

• Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article?

I only found one link that opened the book referenced in the citation. The rest of the citations don't have links to the references or they link to other wikipedia pages or ISBN search. Not very useful. The one PDF link to the article supports the claims in the article. The author quotes directly from the work referenced and although there is no page referenced, I was able to locate the referenced support.

• Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted?

Not all claims are referenced. For example the section on Issac Newton only has two references for 9 sentences that state claims. One unsupported claim includes the citation "by whom?"

Newton was a well known English physicist and mathematician who was known for his book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. He was a main figure in the Scientific Revolution for his laws of motion and universal gravitation. The laws of Newton are said to be the ending point of the Copernican Revolution.^{[by whom?]}

Newton used Kepler's laws of planetary motion to derive his law of universal gravitation. Newton's law of universal gravitation was the first law he developed and proposed in his book Principia. The law states that any two objects exert a gravitational force of attraction on each other. The magnitude of the force is proportional to the product of the gravitational masses of the objects, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Along with Newton's law of universal gravitation, the Principia also presents his three laws of motion. These three laws explain inertia, acceleration, action and reaction when a net force is applied to an object.

The section on The Sphere of Fixed Stars doesn't have any reference included at all.

In the sixteenth century, a number of writers inspired by Copernicus, such as Thomas Digges, Giordano Bruno and William Gilbert argued for an indefinitely extended or even infinite universe, with other stars as distant suns. This contrasts with the Aristotelian view of a sphere of the fixed stars. Although opposed by Copernicus and Kepler (with Galileo not expressing a view^{[dubious – discuss]}), by the middle of the 17th century this became widely accepted, partly due to the support of René Descartes.

Historians Margaret Osler and Stillman Drake are cited the most throughout the article. Both sources take on a Eurocentric point of view. Margaret Osler well-known writings include those on Locke, Galileo, Descartes, Boyle, Newton, and Gassendi. They are all important European scientists, and the references cited from Margaret Olser only stress European contributions/improvements to the Copernican Revolution. Furthermore, Stillman Drake has published over 131 books, articles, and chapters on Galileo Galilei alone, which speaks heavily toward his European bias. Most of his works are referenced in the Galileo sub-section stress his contributions to the Copernican Revolution, and there is no mention of any bias throughout the entire article.

• Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?

I would say that most of the information is out of date. The oldest reference was published in 1941. Other works included are from 1957, 1978, 1979, 1987, 1989, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2006, 2010, and 2012. The most recent academic work cited in this article is from 2012 for Tycho Brahe. Margaret Osler's work is from 2010 but concerns only European contributions. I added Arun Bala's The Dialogue of Civilizations in the Birth of Modern Science that has a wider view of the Copernican Revolution to the reference list for the information I added.

• Check out the Talk page of the article. What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?

There are conversations about avoiding Copernicus's nationality dispute as this is not the place for that because the article isn't about Copernicus it's about the Copernican Revolution. There are talks about article expansion but not about it's representation. People on the talk page want to expand on European contributions after Copernicus, and have done so. The tend to go something like this

Margaret Osler made feeble excuses for Copernicus's "shortcomings". She implied that Copernicus was entirely dependent on ancient observations. Actually, he made a few of his own, often with severe errors.

Again, this representation is very Eurocentric and when someone tried to globalize the article the people on the talk page didn't accept the article published in JSTOR, and refute the persons contributions.

• How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?

This article has been rated as Start-Class on the project's quality scale meaning there's plenty of room for improvement, and has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale meaning this article is one of the core topics about the history of science. Generally, this is limited to those articles that are are included as sections of the main History of science, History of medicine, and History of technology articles. This article is part of the History of Science WikiProject, an attempt to improve and organize the history of science content on Wikipedia.

• How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?

The Wikipedia article on the Copernican Revolution has a Eurocentric view, and overemphasizes European contribution to the Copernican Revolution. The article under-represents non-European contributions minimizing Arabic contributions and neglecting Chinese astronomical influences especially concerning The Sphere of Fixed Stars.

Copernican Revolution Article Additions

Sphere of Fixed Stars

In the sixteenth century, a number of writers inspired by Copernicus, such as Thomas Digges, Giordano Bruno and William Gilbert argued for an indefinitely extended or even infinite universe, with other stars as distant suns. This contrasts with the Aristotelian view of a sphere of the fixed stars. Although opposed by Copernicus and Kepler (with Galileo not expressing a view^{[dubious – discuss]}), by the middle of the 17th century this became widely accepted, partly due to the support of René Descartes.

Chinese Astronomy

The earliest model of the many highly sophisticated Chinese astronomical theories emerged in the first century. The gai tian astronomical tradition theorized the sky as forming a dome or canopy around the earth, which provided an explanation for day and night, and as the cause of seasonal variation. The following hun tian theory that also developed in the first century by Zhang Heng (78-139) elaborated further on the earlier Chinese astronomical model as “The heavens are like a hen’s egg; the earth is like the yolk of the egg, and lies alone in the center.” In this model of the world, as is often thought of today, the hun tian tradition theorizes the earth as a celestial sphere. This idea allowed Zhang to develop a celestial grid system, for which more accurate star maps could be drawn. This new mapping system would later be discovered by Europe in 1568 called mercator projection that could make a cylindrical map flat by copying projections of constellations onto a transparent globe.

Chinese astronomical theories further developed as early as the 4th century. Chinese philosopher Ge Hong (Ko Hung, 283-342), who compiled doctrines from various schools of thought, theorized of a universe that is infinite “having no bounds.” The most sophisticated xuan ye theory was adopted by the neo-Confucian orthodoxy, and widely accepted by Chinese astronomers long before re-opened communications by Europe with a new corridor into China in 1514.

These Chinese astronomical theories along with many other sophisticated models were widely circulated back in Europe. After 1514, Jesuit missionary astronomers flooded into China eager to learn and understand Chinese astronomical ideas frequently communicated much of them back to Europe in letters from China. Perhaps most notably was the Jesuit astronomer and mathematician Matteo Ricci who in the 16th century regularly wrote back home to Europe relaying a number of Chinese astronomical ideas, models, and theories. Many of the ideas Ricci circulated back to Europe would become adopted into modern astronomy such as, there is only one sky not ten skies which Ricci believed, that stars float in an infinite void space, that an envelope of air encompassed the earth, that the moon impedes the light from the sun in an eclipse, and the sun falls below the horizon at night. The Chinese also believed that celestial bodies formed from the condensation of vapors they called qi, which align very close to modern theories that stars and the solar system formed from the condensation of gas, and opposed European theories of the 16th century that the heavens were unable to change over time that lasted into the 18th century. Chinese astronomical ideas were considered controversial by Europeans and heavily investigated where as the scientific ideas that would later develop in Europe closely related to early Chinese astronomical ideas in the 16th century.

Territorial State

The term territorial state is used to refer to a state, typical of the High Middle Ages, since around 1000 AD, and "other large-scale complex organizations that attained size, stability, capacity, efficiency, and territorial reach not seen since antiquity." The term territorial state is also understood as “coercion-wielding organizations that are distinct from households and kinship groups and exercise clear priority in some respects over all other organizations within substantial territories.” Organizations such as city-states, empires, and theocracies along with many a number of other governmental organizations are considered territorial states, yet does not include tribes, lineages, firms, or churches alike.

Unlike the old lordships organized as a personal union, the sovereignty of a territorial state was based on its land or territory and not on membership of a dynastic family or other personally-related rights. Juridical sovereignty is not necessarily required as the main characteristic of statehood. Our contemporary understanding of sovereignty, which was introduced in the 16th century, did not exist until the 19th century and doesn't apply to this time period. Rather a territorial state reflects the exclusive use of physical force within some type of geographic territory.

The territorial state shares many characteristics with the institutional, geographically-defined state typical of the modern era.

Predecessors of the territorial state

The first sign of state existence dates back to 6000 BC. Written and pictorial records from a settlement called Jericho maintain the existence of heavy urbanization for over two thousand years but throughout their history, states have only encompassed a small portion of the earth. Cities emerged around the same time period between 8000 and 7600 BC and eventually merged with states to create city-states that ruled for a few thousand years. City-states were often centered with a capitol controlled by a priest that collected offerings from the surrounding lands. By 2500 BC, some cities began developing into empires that ruled by force and tribute and from then on, the existence of states and cities were central to the great civilizations. The formation of towns and cities allowed for the creation of small independent states, which led to the emergence of large territorial states.

Rise of the territorial state

There are a few accepted theories on the emergence of territorial states and they both concern money and war with each stressing one over the other. The mainstream view of territorial state formation emerged around the 12th century as a consequence of the transfer of royal sovereign rights for a particular region to a feudal lord. This meant that within territories unrestrained feudal jurisdiction gave way to a larger central authority that maintained a more stable territory through bureaucracy, a skilled and qualified army, and taxation. This is unlike the medieval hierarchical structure of control and jurisdiction that was in a state of perpetual uncertainty threatened by a shift in the balance of power. The idea of sovereignty emerged from a struggle of power between authoritative institutions like "emperors and popes, popes and kings, and kings and emperors." The idea of a "collective" of nations that maintained a "rule of law" that offered a more stable security from the abuses typical of the medieval hierarchical authority and power structure.

Coercion

It has been debated amongst scholars that a main motivating factor in territorial state formation was the control and exploitation of the territorial resources by force, which was the main source of revenue for the state. It was important to maintain control over the areas resources because failure to do so resulted in a loss in revenue, which weakened the states authority. People will always recognize the authority of the political unit that offers protection and security. It is widely considered that the only states to have emerged were the ones that could compete in war with other territorial states that resulted in states forming large military forces with technological and tactical advantages. Designated the military revolution, in Europe between 1500 and 1700 occurred a high frequency of wars that got bigger and lasted longer. This allowed for "changes in the art of war" in which better tactics evolved, the size of the army grew substantially allowing for the considerable growth of armed states. This model of the territorial state maintains that war and state formation are independent of economic development occurring only as a consequence of war.

Capital

The other competing theory maintains that there is a definite stronger link between commerce and territorial state formation. The spirit of "exploration and commerce" that began as maritime routes and destination points on a map eventually gave way to the idea of a bound world as a place of outlined territories. In the 15th century the creation of global sea passages that connected the world together in a true world economy of trade and transportation. Economies on almost every continent that once were separated became connected in a global maritime trading system where risk was distributed more evenly and demand and supply networks became larger as a result which encouraged economic cooperation. The growing global market economy, state populations, and economic ambitions encouraged the intensification of the use of land by territorial states to increase agricultural production for commercial markets. The economic and legal systems present in the territorial state indicated some form of government regulation and cooperative use of territorial land and water. Territorial jurisdiction consists of deciding patterns of land-use including the behavior of the people living within territorial lands. Territorial states became fixed to local and expanding global markets for the economic capital that they produced.

Cartography

Portolan Chart of the Mediterranean circa 1466

Although it is not the mainstream view, the development of cartography alongside territorial expansion can also be linked to the development of the territorial state. Indeed it is a unit bound by lines on charts and maps. The practice itself easily supports the idea of creating a sovereign unit that is unified and bound by a single governmental authority. The treaty at Nerchinsk is an example of how mutual trade benefits from commercial markets encouraged peaceful negotiations between the Chinese Qing emperor and the Russian tsar that resulted in the defining and mapping the borders between the two states. Portolan charts, which were used since the 13th century developed the technique of representing a unified political space with bounded lines. For example, typical of many portolan charts representing Great Britain had England bound separately from Scotland as two distinct political entities. In the New World Spanish imperial cartography used the church as a symbol of a defined unified Catholic territory. The English colonies left their maps void of indigenous populations which left the lands mostly marked as empty and unoccupied. New World maps were created for the purpose of finding out where places and people were located in an ever expansive territory. In the Russian conquest and mapping of Siberia, maps were divided into regions where indigenous populations under certain jurisdiction were located to be contacted later. Centuries after their aspirations to map the extent of territorial states, lines bound on a map became the definition of a political units claim to an area.