Milos Rancic wrote:
* Encyclopedia follows scientific method, not
religious, not political. *
Put this way, your statement sounds far more like a religious
dogma than a scientifically established truth.
Let's apply the scientific method: I propose an alternative truth,
and we'll see if you can prove me wrong. I suggest that
"scientific" is a word used in the *marketing* of traditional
encyclopedias, that has little or no real meaning for the actual
contents. The term is used because it has prevailed in marketing.
If two competing encyclopedias were equal (do we have any
examples?) except for the use of the word "scientific", the one
that used "scientific" in its self-description would sell better.
In many cases, that an encyclopedia describes it self as
"scientific" often means nothing more than people employed in
science (well-known professors) have contributed articles.
In fact, "compiled by prominent scholars" is an even stronger
marketing term than "scientific" for an encyclopedia. This is
"the authoritarian trick" that Citizendium tries to pull on
Wikipedia. It would be interesting to know what effect that
difference in marketing would have if the contents were
comparable.
But the contents of CZ and WP are not comparable. Wikipedia wins
in comprehensiveness. And this is "the size trick" of
encyclopedia marketing, as in "20 volumes must be better than 10".
Just look at the Spanish "Enciclopedia universal ilustrada
europeo-americana" (70 volumes, 1908-1930). If the size trick was
useless, this venture would go bancrupt, but they didn't and they
were able to output a 10 volume appendix in 1930-1933. Apparently
they were very successful. But just how scientific were they?
The fact that so much discussion within Wikipedia now focuses on
verifyability and being scientific, is only explained by the fact
that raw size has already been taken care of. (The Spanish
Enciclopedia universal was 165 million words, a size that the
English Wikipedia database passed in March 2005.) It is not a sign
of scientificality (?) being the most important.
In order to be scientific, we must dare to question the need for
being scientific.
--
Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik -
http://aronsson.se