Wikipedia: Ed Poor

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Software Engineer, father of two.

Interested in philosophy, science (and the history of both), pizza, music, children, and world peace -- not necessarily in that order.

I have contributed to, edited, or vandalized (?) the following pages, among others:

I have been trying to correct instances of what I saw ambiguity or "bias" in the Wikipedia articles on controversies dear to me, but I recognize that what I see as "bias" in others may merely be ideas I disagree with. I do hope that I can overcome my own biases well enough to make a positive contribution here.

Feel free to set me straight at any time. I respond to reason, praise, and pizza!!

Welcome to Wikipedia!

Another way to ask questions is to put them right on this page, then put a summary in the Summary field. Within minutes usually someone will respond.

You can add a Talk page if you have a question on an article, and ask your question there. Someone will answer. You can ask on your own page (this one) if it's not related to a specific article. You can also add a /Talk page to your own personal page when conversations here get too long or annoying, or if you just don't like others adding stuff like this statement for instance. :-) --Dmerrill

I'm going to move some dialogue with other wikipedians to my /Learning page.

Ed, on MichaelTinkler/Talk you'd asked about Galileo and his struggles with the church. After the Greeks a lot had been lost, or put on the back burner, even during Roman times. But there was still a lot there, and throughout the Middle Ages there was a great deal of interest in ancient philosophy. At the time of Galileo the works of Aristotle were widely supported, and the church had recently decided to adhere to them dogmatically. This second was a temporary development, owing to attempts to define a more comprehensive canon for Catholicism in the face of religious criticism. A century earlier the heliocentric theory of Copernicus passed with little remark, and actually the church initially showed a relatively large amount of leniency with Galileo, allowing him for instance to right a comparison of heliocentric and geocentric models so long as he didn't attempt a full scale attack on the church's position. He did, of course, and was forbidden from publishing as a result. Later, when a friend of his became the pope, he decided to risk publishing something anyways, and this is what got him in trouble - mainly because the pope saw the Aristotelian Simplicio as a caricature of himself. All in all it can be said that, though the church was being oppressive, Galileo showed a considerable lack of tact in dealing with it, and was unlucky to be alive at that particular time. Only a relatively short while later Kepler and Newton found themselves essentially unopposed from that quarter.

Actually, LDC took out the addendum to Sociology -- I had specifically left that one alone. I killed the rest because they were...how to put this...too querulous for an encyclopedia article. He's welcome to put them back in if he likes, but I don't believe I'm alone in thinking them unhelpful, so I doubt they'll stay in long if that happens. The beauty of Wikipedia is that armies of eyes now decide who's out of line -- myself, or Mr. Clihor. Wouldn't be the first time, if it's the former. -- Paul Drye