[WikiEN-l] Re: Categories and NPOV

Mon Jun 27 11:01:57 UTC 2005

On 6/26/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> [[Category:Pseudoscience]] is one which gets objections at fairly
> regular intervals. The reasons for the objections are pretty
> straightforward -- the users making such objections are almost always
> either Creationists or Eugenicists or other people who believe in
> bodies of thought labeled as "pseudoscience" -- and the response is
> generally pretty straightforward as well: Wikipedia is not claiming
> these so-labeled articles are actually "pseudoscience", but rather
> that they are labeled *by the mainstream scientific community* as
> "pseudoscience".

Well, I didn't finish my PhD but I am not creationist, neither a fan
of eugenics, is not very interested in ghosts and not involved in
alternative medicine. Still, I don't think science is the ruler with
which everything should be measured. Let's remember that the category
Pseudoscience is sorted under the category Science; we have a category
for non-sciency in the section for science. To me this is illogical.

Let's study what is not put in this category. The category Religion,
for some reasons, is not put as a subcategory to Pseudoscience. I'd
say the reason for this is that the major religions are to powerful to
be called pseudosciences, and then the other religions can follow.
However the difference, from a scientific point of view, is pretty
small - no, let's be frank. The difference between believing in
ghosts, or in Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ who died for us but lived
again is, from a scientific perspective, non-existent. The fact that
there are scientists who are Moslims and Christians doesn't make the
major religions of the world more scientific.  Btw I am sure there are
scientists who do believe in ghosts; they just don't say so in the
interviews as it doesn't look good.

Here I expect someone to say "but religion doesn't claim to be
science". Actually, a large part of what is in the Pseudoscience
category doesn't either. A fraction of the people who are interested
in ghosts imitate a scientific language, but that is mainly a way of
adopting to the prevailing paradigm. Most people who are deeply into
alternative medicine actually frown at science, and think the concepts
of science are not valid or at least greatly over-estimated. Sometimes
they try and get a treatment scientifically proven - but that is
mainly a way of trying to adopt to society and to the paradigm, to
gain acceptance. In their hearts, they don't believe in science. We
can study religions from outside, that is a kind of science - but if
so we can study antroposofy also, write papers about the roots and
consequences of their beliefs and publish in scientific journals.

Today, science has almost taken the place of religion. No, I am _not_
saying that science is a religion, but thinking about what decides
what we find important and valuable in life - what and who we let
guide us - science has taken a huge chunk of the space that some
hundred years ago was filled by religion alone. A Wikipedia created
in, say, 1650 would probably have a huge category for Heresy. Under it
would be subcategories for the slowly sprouting Western science and
the small pieces of quite advanced Arabian science that reached
Europe, another for pre-christian religions plus Islam and other
foreign religions, and a third for  "wrong" christian beliefs such as
gnosticism, catharism, and psilanthropism. IMO we should not have this
organisation in the reverse order. Today we should be able to look
more neutrally at our own prevaling paradigm.

A small subset of the articles in the Category Pseudoscience actually
is about science; old scientific beliefs now abandoned. For those, I
suggest the category Obsolete scientific theories. Possibly one could
complement it with a meighbouring category for questionable or not
accepted scientific theories; the line isn't easy to draw, but that
only illustrates that the concept isn't as easy as we sometimes like
to think. There is no need to lump this together with all kinds of
stuff that never was scientific in the first place. Actually, almost
all articles in the Pseudoscience category are already placed in at
least one other category - in most of the cases several. This also
speaks for the redundance of the category. The only hole it would
leave after itself, is that of the garbage can for those who through
everything they find non-scientific there and don't want to spend more
time finding out if this is Folklore, Quackery, Paranormal phenomena,
Creationism or something else.

/Habj