For some earlier talk, see
Scientific Mythology/Talk.
While I understand your re-titling, I think it's a cop out. "Mythology" is a perfectly
meaningful word, and while it is misused and ruffles some feathers, I think it's better
to clarify its real meaning than to simply avoid it.
- You're assuming, Lee, that once we've covered all the stories of science, we'll have a large, important topic in addition, called the mythology of science. I really doubt that.
And besides, if we are going to cover mythology at all, how do we justify using the
word for Greek, Roman, Sumerian, and other cultural and religious traditions and not
for Christian, Hindu. scientific, or other cultures? The only difference, it seems to
me, is there aren't any Sumerians around to complain. That's hardly a difference worth
changing titles for. --LDC
- As I see it, it's easy to justify that. To wit, there aren't (to my knowledge, anyway) Greek, Roman, and Sumerian religionists about to complain that their stories are actually true, and that we should not be prejudicing Wikipedia's readers against them. There are many Christians, Muslims, and Jews about who will rightly complain that saying that their stories, which they believe are true, are part of a "mythology" is inherently biased. If everyone stops believing those stories, then in the context of Wikipedia with its neutral point of view policy, we can safely label them "mythology." --LMS
Readded the influence on story telling to science. The problem was brought up by James Burke.
Some of the examples of how story telling affects scientific education are my own, but
1) I think I am qualified to make those statements based on personal experience and 2)
they aren't particularly controversial statements among science teachers. -- Chenyu
James Burke is not, to my knowledge, a well-respected authority on the history of science: he is a popularizer, isn't he? --LMS
Joseph, with great respect for your expertise otherwise, I very much doubt you are an expert on this. Am I wrong? In what articles or books have you developed this theory? --LMS
- For example, according to Joseph Wang scientific myths often contain an inspired "heroic" genius, and this obscures the role of social communication and collaboration in the scientific process as well as contributes to the perception that science is too hard for mere mortals to undertake. Also, scientific myths often contain an "evil" establishment, and this obscures the fact that there are often good reasons why the establishment believes what it does and that in many cases, the established view turns out to be correct. Scientific myths also tend to either overstate or understate the role of chance in scientific discovery, and the tendency to emphasis the dramatic, tends to understate the incremental progress that consitutes most scientific advancement.
- Also in the effort to create a dramatic story, scientific myths tend to reduce theory verification to one dramatic experiment which is claimed to prove a theory (i.e. Michaelson-Morley). This leads to the misperception that scientific theories are fragile in that they are based on a few crucial facts, when in fact most scientific theories are robust in that they are based on many independent lines of evidence and can withstand cases in which some interpretations of data later turn out to be incorrect.
I think I'm enough of an expert in this area. I'm making these statements on the basis of my
five years of personal experience teaching astronomy at a university level and my doctorate in
astrophysics. There huge amount of effort goes into "unteaching" stories and misconceptions
that people have about science. Also, those statements aren't particular controversial,
especially among people who have actually taught science to undergrads. --
Chenyu
Just wondering--when did "original research" become a recognized term on Wikipedia? It seems to be popping up with increasing frequency as a justification for deletion, putting the burden of proof on the contributor instead of the deleter. --
TheCunctator
Burke is indeed a popularizer, but he is also a pretty well-respected historian. And this is,
after all, an article about
popular stories and oral traditions within the culture, (i.e., mythology)
not an article about the history of science (except as it relates to those stories), and so the "experts"
on that would be the popularizers, not the working scientists or historians. It's also hardly original stuff--Dennett talks about it, as does Gould, Asimov, Feynmann ("Cargo-cult science"), and others.
Chenyu is right that his stuff is not particularly controversial, but I suppose it does have some flavor of commentary to it (indeed, it reads a lot like my own [Myth of the Lone Inventor]), so I could see leaving it out until we find some more relevant specific quotes. --LDC
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