Ære Encyclopædiæ Inhærently Ævil?, Hi-Ævil, Lo-Ævil, Or Medi-Ævil? Options

[Herschelkrustofsky]

Dispite the ostensibly fluid nature of Wikipedia articles, the goal remains essentially the same as that of other encyclopedias: the systemization and codification of knowledge.

The 18th Century Encyclopedists were part of Jimbo's beloved "Enlightenment," and were deployed to stifle what remained of the Renaissance. The Renaissance, with its Idea of Progress, was considered to be highly disruptive by the European oligarchy. It was engendering all sorts of undesirable social change. The Encyclopedists, by purporting to encapsulate all known knowledge of any real importance, conveniently set out to put a stop to the origination of new knowledge.

So, could it be that encyclopedias are an inherently feudal concept? If so, could anything be more detrimental to humanity?

[KamrynMatika]

No, they're not. When I was growing up I had Brittanica on disk and it was damn useful. And Wikipedia is even moreso. Say what you like about it being unreliable, I won't disagree, but I've personally found it to be invaluable over the past few years for getting information about albums, TV shows, movies, and the occasional overview of science topics. I know people here bitch and whine about how awful the place is but 95% of it is useful information, however badly written and poorly presented it may be. Flawed, but not evil.

[ThurstonHowell3rd]

Dispite the ostensibly fluid nature of Wikipedia articles, the goal remains essentially the same as that of other encyclopedias: the systemization and codification of knowledge.

At one time I thought Wikipedia could be of high value by organizing knowledge. But no, my proposals about putting Wikipedia articles into some meaningful organization was soundly rejected.

[wikiwhistle]

To be honest, when I was younger I found encyclopedias a bit basic and felt they talked down to the reader. I don't know if that was a kiddies' encyclopedia I was reading or what (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif) But I don't feel like that about Wikipedia articles.

[Herschelkrustofsky]

Dispite the ostensibly fluid nature of Wikipedia articles, the goal remains essentially the same as that of other encyclopedias: the systemization and codification of knowledge.

At one time I thought Wikipedia could be of high value by organizing knowledge. But no, my proposals about putting Wikipedia articles into some meaningful organization was soundly rejected.

I launched this thread in the "Meta" forum because I am hoping to get at questions of epistemology, rather than practical uses. It is often the case that something which has an obvious benefit has a more significant, though less obvious, damaging effect.

As an example, consider the fact that authoritarian, police-state governments are good at reducing the crime rate, which is why, initially, some people might welcome them. The bad effects become apparent over time.

A different example: "googling" is very fast and convenient, but in the long term, highly destructive of a person's ability to do actual research.

[Moulton]

Before launching into a serious discussion of Epistemology (and I am more than prepared to do that, if people can stand the bloody pedantry of it all), it's useful to enjoy this cautionary tale from Philosopher/Logician Raymond Smullyan...

An Epistemological Nightmare

[Milton Roe]

Before launching into a serious discussion of Epistemology (and I am more than prepared to do that, if people can stand the bloody pedantry of it all), it's useful to enjoy this cautionary tale from Philosopher/Logician Raymond Smullyan...

An Epistemological Nightmare

That was absolutely delightful (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/biggrin.gif). Sort of an epistemological My Dinner With Andre. Wish they tought dry philosophy classes like that!

No, they're not. When I was growing up I had Brittanica on disk and it was damn useful. And Wikipedia is even moreso. Say what you like about it being unreliable, I won't disagree, but I've personally found it to be invaluable over the past few years for getting information about albums, TV shows, movies, and the occasional overview of science topics. I know people here bitch and whine about how awful the place is but 95% of it is useful information, however badly written and poorly presented it may be. Flawed, but not evil.

Many of the BLP parts are evil. But on the whole, however, I agree with your utilitarian assessment.

[Milton Roe]

So, could it be that encyclopedias are an inherently feudal concept? If so, could anything be more detrimental to humanity?

No, a good encyclopedia article is merely a good university introduction to X course, sort of like the OpenCulture iPOD-casts, but in page form. WP's basic problem lies elsewhere: to wit, they don't have a professor to give the course!

Imagine you send a bunch of bright but ignorant 18 year olds into a library of primary medical literature books and bound journals, to write a term paper on AIDS, or into a history library to do one on The French Revolution. To make this interesting, you have removed all the encyclopedias. You've left in the review papers, because you know there are thousands of them, and they're scattered to hell and back. Also, some of them aren't very good, and most are badly biased in favor of whatever aspect the writer had just finished researching in the process of writing a grant proposal.

Now, what is the result? Without anything to hang it on, you get some really funny and biased papers. They aren't exactly wrong, but they have very little balance. A professor giving a course on AIDS could have done a much better job just sitting there doing an article of the top of his/her head.

Wikipedia doesn't really have any mechanism to fix this. Somewhere, at some level, in order to start on an article on anything, you really have to have somebody who knows the subject and has some common sense and a sense of proportion. I can hear Wikipedians saying now: "But we don't forbid such people to write articles or edit them!" Answer: no, but you don't give them any special authority, either. They aren't recocognized. There's no professor standing in front of a classroom, giving a course, by which you know who is the professor and who the students. The formal experts, who have the decent and balanced overview might be present, but they are just one among many, in a crowd. And they're not even wearing a tie. The crowd, without reading facial or body or age clues, is suposed to recognize (finally) that one is among them who is an actual subject-matter expert, without any claim to, or checking of, credentials. This may take a long time (maybe forever-- see the articles on Global Warming) and it usually winds up being a little like What's My Line. "User:LaserOptiksDude, is the sort of stuff you work on experimentally usually larger than a breadbox? Might I get an interferrence pattern from it? I take it that light is involved in some way?"

I've been trying to explain all this to Lar, who seems to think it's a straightforward matter to simply parcel out a subject according to the various subareas of it which interest the academic community,and then give each one treatment according to the measure of belief which the academics have in seeing the subject in just that way. Hmmm, and who's going to do this? No identified experts are needed AS SUCH, I'm told. Or, if we happen to have an expert passing through, it will be obvious instantly who he/she is, without any arguing, or pissing matches.

Well, I've participated in creation of a lot of WP articles, and that idea is just flatly, experientially, wrong. And that's a problem with Wikipedia.

Milt

This post has been edited by Milton Roe:

[Herschelkrustofsky]

Imagine you send a bunch of bright but ignorant 18 year olds into a library of primary medical literature books and bound journals, to write a term paper on AIDS, or into a history library to do one on The French Revolution. To make this interesting, you have removed all the encyclopedias. You've left in the review papers, because you know there are thousands of them, and they're scattered to hell and back. Also, some of them aren't very good, and most are badly biased in favor of whatever aspect the writer had just finished researching in the process of writing a grant proposal.

Now, what is the result? Without anything to hang it on, you get some really funny and biased papers. They aren't exactly wrong, but they have very little balance.

Obviously, students need direction, but traditionally this comes from professors, not encyclopedæ. The use of encyclopedæ to direct research efforts (which I'm certain is common practice) will tend to result in unoriginal, cookie-cutter scholarship.

[the fieryangel]

So, could it be that encyclopedias are an inherently feudal concept? If so, could anything be more detrimental to humanity?

encyclopedias feudal? Do you have any idea about why encyclopedias were developed in the first place?

Encyclopedias were intended to be completely subversive.

Imagine a world in which everything that you think is controlled by the Church, and so everything is judged through that filter.

What encyclopedias tried to do from the beginning is to level the playing field. In other words, an article about a saint could be along side an article about a famous courtesan. And there would be no distinction made as to their relative importance.

This is why an exclusionary outlook goes against the ideals of what an encyclopedia should be, which is a means of destroying artificial boundaries of knowledge.

If there weren't issues about child welfare involved, I would be 100% for the inclusion of the infamous "Cleveland Steamer" article...and would be against any and all deletions....since an encyclopedia, by definition, is not supposed to make any judgments as to importance, relative or otherwise....

To say that the "Enlightenment" was a means of stifling the Renaissance is to misunderstand the historical context. The "Enlightenment" comes directly out of Renaissance thought and the proof of that is that Louis the XIV, who was allergic to the Renaissance on any number of levels (have a look at Versailles to see what he was into...), was not exactly a huge fan of the Encyclopedists.

This post has been edited by the fieryangel:

[Moulton]

Before launching into a serious discussion of Epistemology (and I am more than prepared to do that, if people can stand the bloody pedantry of it all), it's useful to enjoy this cautionary tale from Philosopher/Logician Raymond Smullyan...

An Epistemological Nightmare

That was absolutely delightful (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/biggrin.gif). Sort of an epistemological My Dinner With Andre. Wish they tought dry philosophy classes like that!

If you liked that one, you might like this one even more...

Is God a Taoist?

[Herschelkrustofsky]

To say that the "Enlightenment" was a means of stifling the Renaissance is to misunderstand the historical context. The "Enlightenment" comes directly out of Renaissance thought...

I disagree. As an example, take "Candide," which pits the boundless cynicism of Voltaire against the boundless optimism of Leibniz.

[Milton Roe]

To say that the "Enlightenment" was a means of stifling the Renaissance is to misunderstand the historical context. The "Enlightenment" comes directly out of Renaissance thought...

I disagree. As an example, take "Candide," which pits the boundless cynicism of Voltaire against the boundless optimism of Leibniz.

Well, the Renaissance is the celebration of man and the old non-Roman Catholic traditions of knowledge. it took a while to get going (heh) and it was closed by the double bangs of Newton and first big-gun blast of science as world system, and by the end of the reformation, which finally took out the Catholics once and for all as the be-all and end-all authorities on knowledge in the West.

The "enlightenment," fast-forward half a century, is just the logical outcome to that arc Not only don't we need Catholic priests, we might not need any kind of clerics. Science can be learned by anybody (Voltaire was a big interpreter of Newton), and so can anything else. The encyclopedia was just an extension of the Wycliff bibles and so on, for the masses. All of these, tweaks at authority all the way.

Votaire tilted at too many windmills in his life to be a true cynic. He was an idealist, like any encyclopedist. He simply hated any authority not based on superior knowledge. As have intelligent people in all ages, from Socrates to Einstein. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

Man will finally be free when we strangle the last king in the entrails of the last priest, said Diderot. The first priest being the first conman, who'd met his first fool, added Voltaire.

This post has been edited by Milton Roe:

[Herschelkrustofsky]

Well, the Renaissance is the celebration of man and the old non-Roman Catholic traditions of knowledge. it took a while to get going (heh) and it was closed by the double bangs of Newton and first big-gun blast of science as world system, and by the end of the reformation, which finally took out the Catholics once and for all as the be-all and end-all authorities on knowledge in the West.

The "enlightenment," fast-forward half a century, is just the logical outcome to that arc Not only don't we need Catholic priests, we might not need any kind of clerics. Science can be learned by anybody (Voltaire was a big interpreter of Newton), and so can anything else. The encyclopedia was just an extension of the Wycliff bibles and so on, for the masses. All of these, tweaks at authority all the way.

Your version of history is inaccurate. For example, a key personality in the Renaissance was Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, the founder of modern science. The Council of Florence was a key event in the Renaissance. So, your anti-Catholic "spin" has no basis in fact. I do agree that Newton played a big role in ending the Renaissance, but his "big-gun blast" was aimed squarely at the scientific method itself (remember hypotheses non fingo?)

As far as the Enlightenment is concerned, the encyclopedists were were establishing authority, not flouting it. They were promoting a system of "politically correct" knowledge. What was eliminated was metaphysics, a term which has lately been bastardized into the equivalent of "New Age" foolishness, but which is actually the study of causes and universals. Newton claimed that it wasn't necessary to know the "why," only the "what." He managed not only to plagiarize Kepler, but to neuter his ideas.

[Peter Damian]

You may be interested in my article on the Continuity thesis, the hypothesis that there was no radical discontinuity between the intellectual development of the Middle Ages beginning in the twelfth century and the developments in the Renaissance and early modern period, and that the idea of an intellectual or scientific revolution following the Renaissance is a myth.

The thesis originated with Pierre Duhem, but received strong recent support from James Franklin, who is discussed in the article.

The punchline of this being Franklin's comparison of the 15th century invention of printing to television, which produced "a flood of drivel catering to the lowest common denominator of the paying public, plus a quantity of propaganda paid for by the sponsors".
Franklin was just a little too early for the internet but he might have said the same of that. I wonder what he thinks of Wikipedia?

[Herschelkrustofsky]

You may be interested in my article on the Continuity thesis, the hypothesis that there was no radical discontinuity between the intellectual development of the Middle Ages beginning in the twelfth century and the developments in the Renaissance and early modern period, and that the idea of an intellectual or scientific revolution following the Renaissance is a myth.

There was a political revolution, beginning with the foundation of the first nation states by Louis XI and Henry VII. These monarchs made an alliance with the commoners against the nobility, and began a policy of educating the commoners, which enormously strengthened France and England, economically, militarily and otherwise. This ended the feudal policy of fixed social relations.

The ideas which led to the Renaissance were certainly present in the Middle Ages, kept alive by teaching orders such as the Brotherhood of the Common Life.

[Milton Roe]

Your version of history is inaccurate. For example, a key personality in the Renaissance was Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, the founder of modern science.

Yikes! That is, shall we say, an extreme minority view. Natural science in the modern sense is characterised by the scientific method, which in turn is observational, mathematical (not numerological), and statistically testable. Cusa had none of these things, though he did have an admirable non-Earth-centric view which puts him in line of grand tradition (albeit one that goes back to Aristarchus of Samos-- it doesn't just start off with Nicholas). For me, modern science begins with the idea that the language of God is mathematics, and that is due to Galileo (and perhaps his father). Dynamical mathematics in physics starts in about 1600. That's algebra as opposed to geometry.

The Council of Florence was a key event in the Renaissance. So, your anti-Catholic "spin" has no basis in fact.

Eh, what? The Council of Florence is just a bunch of Catholic administrators trying to get some power away from the pope. It's internal Church politics and has nothing to do with the idea that you don't have an enlightenment (religious or scientific) without first a reformation and getting out from under the thumb of Catholicism. Can the Council of Florence be seen as the beginning of the reformation? If you like. Or not. The Catholics had been having schisms, popes and anti-popes for centuries. Some political church bruhaha had to preceed the days of Martin Luther and German political independence from the church (without which desire, Luther would have been toast). Pick one. Personally, I think the Roman Catholic church was in trouble the moment the movable cast-type printing press was invented ca. 1450, and that Guttenburg was ultimately responsible for both reformation AND scientific enlightenment.

I do agree that Newton played a big role in ending the Renaissance, but his "big-gun blast" was aimed squarely at the scientific method itself (remember hypotheses non fingo?)

There is no full scientific method at that point to aim at! One cannot expect poor Newton to understand the modern scientific method as we know it, completely in 1713 or whatever-- it being still under the process of invention (partly by himself). Newton at this point is still participating in it, and too closely to be able to stand away from it. Frankly, he reminds me of Ayn Rand here-- he has entirely too much confidence in his powers of reason, and doesn't know the pitfalls of induction, nor realize that because of the uncertainty of induction, hypotheses of some type are always thus inescapable. But that's okay--he's easy to forgive (easier than Rand).

As far as the Enlightenment is concerned, the encyclopedists were were establishing authority, not flouting it. They were promoting a system of "politically correct" knowledge. What was eliminated was metaphysics, a term which has lately been bastardized into the equivalent of "New Age" foolishness, but which is actually the study of causes and universals. Newton claimed that it wasn't necessary to know the "why," only the "what." He managed not only to plagiarize Kepler, but to neuter his ideas.

A lot depends on what you mean by "authority." Any encyclopedia tries to be authoritative in one sense.

Newton is pre-enlightenment, very metaphysical and theistic, and he's not monolithic. He can at one moment pretend that his methods are pure because he's been caught with his pants down and can't explain (say) gravity. But that's narcissism. Newton wasn't above drawing on metaphysics when it came to "whys"-- for example his explaination of absolute time and absolute space in the Principia is that God is omnipresent and omniexistent, and thus guarantees both time and extension everywhere in the universe (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif). And like Leibniz, Newton wrote a lot of bad theology, which (unlike Leibnitz) he had the good sense to keep unpublished. The kind of thinking Newton pretended to, occasionally, didn't actually enter into science until the French materialists-- and that WAS the "enlightenment". But the metaphysical is nearly impossible to expunge from science, and as late as 1905 we have Einstein trying to do it (while attacking Newton's time and space), and then relenting 20 years later before Heisenberg, who really wanted a science of observables-only (which Einstein said was the kind of thinking he'd once played with, but that was nonsense all the same). At present, the jury is out on the matter of what happens when nobody looks. But nobody in the englightenment attacked hypotheses in the nonthesistic (but surely metaphysical) sense. By then, they were just getting used to statistics. Laplace told Napoleon he had no need for the hypothesis of God, but he didn't mean he had no need for any hypotheses at all!

As for Newton plagarizing Kepler, I have no idea what you mean. Newton credits Kepler in the Principia. Kepler was a geometer, not a mathematician (as Newton and Galileo were), and besides his correct laws he had a lot of incorrect geometrical nonsense involving Platonic solids and astrology. There was nothing to plagarize. Newton, who with people like Descartes was one of the founders of analytical geometry, as well as (with Galileo) of mathematical kinematics and kinetics, merely explains Kepler in analytical mathematical terms. Newton does give Kepler credit for his three (more or less geometrical) laws of planetary motion, but Newton shows how Kepler's planetary laws (and many other laws of motion) can be deduced from three much simpler laws of motion (of which one is due to Galileo), plus a law of gravity. Newton fully earned the place we give him traditionally.

[dtobias]

Eh, what? The Council of Florence is just a bunch of Catholic administrators trying to get some power away from the pope. It's internal Church politics and has nothing to do with the idea that you don't have an enlightenment (religious or scientific) without first a reformation and getting out from under the thumb of Catholicism.

...just like the Magna Carta had nothing to do with the rights of commoners, being a revolt of some high-level nobles against the king.

However, at least one possible way of viewing the trends of history over the last thousand years has been a long, cascading series of revolts against centralized power of church, state, and other institutions, which started with minor and easily-dismissed internal struggles of high, powerful people against even higher and even more powerful ones, but gradually (and sometimes against the beliefs of the people who started the earliest such rebellions and never wanted them to go further) extending to the point where more and more people got in on rebelling against whoever was exerting power against them from loftier places.

Where religion was concerned, first you had power struggles against the pope within Catholicism, then you had reformation splitting off entire churches and denominations from it, then you had separation of church and state where even outright atheists had rights.

Where government was concerned, first you had some power sharing from the monarch to other aristocracy, then you had limited franchise from some parts of the general public (like white, male property owners), then the vote expanded to other groups until by the mid 20th century you had a full-fledged civil rights movement for discriminated-against minorities.

[Milton Roe]

Eh, what? The Council of Florence is just a bunch of Catholic administrators trying to get some power away from the pope. It's internal Church politics and has nothing to do with the idea that you don't have an enlightenment (religious or scientific) without first a reformation and getting out from under the thumb of Catholicism.

...just like the Magna Carta had nothing to do with the rights of commoners, being a revolt of some high-level nobles against the king.

However, at least one possible way of viewing the trends of history over the last thousand years has been a long, cascading series of revolts against centralized power of church, state, and other institutions, which started with minor and easily-dismissed internal struggles of high, powerful people against even higher and even more powerful ones, but gradually (and sometimes against the beliefs of the people who started the earliest such rebellions and never wanted them to go further) extending to the point where more and more people got in on rebelling against whoever was exerting power against them from loftier places.

Oh, I cannot disagree. I only suggest that this kind of thing is a subtheme of all history that we know! People fighting for empire and unification. After which little bits fight for indpendence. There's no particular reason to start the clock running in 1415 or whatever, even religion-wise. Before that there were wars within the church that I alluded to (different papal claims) and before that it was all those ecumentical councils I can't keep track of, and all the shisms you can read about in The Eastern Orthodox Church, which are truly, ah, Byzantine. And before Rome there was Greece and before Greece there were little Greek states, and so on.

Are you going to argue that there's one time, after which we've been moving toward more individual freedom on Earth, but before which, we were making no headway and things were getting worse?

Careful, now. There's no worse despotism than your little clan you can't get away from, and in which laws are enforced arbitrarily, by the local currupt warlord. That's like Wikipedia. Enough of that, and you'll be praying to your local Gods for some version of the Corpus Juris Civilis, which gives you (at least as a Roman Citizen) some basic human rights regarding due process. No, that wasn't invented by Magna Carta.

[Moulton]

At present, the jury is out on the matter of what happens when nobody looks.

The jury may be out, but this juror came in a long time ago. Perhaps one has to have been a student of Systems Theory and System Modeling to resolve the issue, but it occurs to me that anyone can appreciate that the Model is not the System, just as the Map is not the Territory and the Photograph is not the Scene. A Magritte painting of a pipe is not a pipe. The whole point of looking is to update the looker's model.

From the Catholic Encyclopedia (1913 edition): "The astronomical views of the cardinal are scattered through his philosophical treatises. They evince complete independence of traditional doctrines, though they are based on symbolism of numbers, on combinations of letters, and on abstract speculations rather than observation. The earth is a star like other stars, is not the centre of the universe, is not at rest, nor are its poles fixed. The celestial bodies are not strictly spherical, nor are their orbits circular. The difference between theory and appearance is explained by relative motion. Had Copernicus been aware of these assertions he would probably have been encouraged by them to publish his own monumental work."

As a student of Semiotics, I can appreciate the joys of the Gematria, but only for the intellectual and recreational value of digging into secondary and tertiary meanings of cultural signs and symbols. It hardly seems like a scientific way to apprehend astronomy. As near as I can tell, Gallileo still gets credit for conducting earthbound experiments to understand gravitational motion, and carefully observing the motion of the moons of Jupiter to assess the gravitational dynamics of heavenly bodies.

This post has been edited by Moulton: