On 4/3/06, Philip Welch wikipedia@philwelch.net wrote:
On Apr 3, 2006, at 11:04 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:
On 4/3/06, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
My biggest problem with "simple" is that many of the articles I have seen on there are just plain *incorrect* (i.e. one which listed
It seems to me that whereas normally between wikipedias, we can't guarantee a one to one correspondance. Is there any reason that should be the case for SE? Perhaps by default every En page should contain a (red)link to its simple equivalent, and definitely vice versa. Perhaps even stubs should be created for every single en article on simple, saying "we don't have this version in simple english, in the meantime, click here" or something?
Simple English has one fatal flaw: sometimes there is no way to describe a subject without using big, confusing words. I would shudder at any presentation of any important topic in philosophy that's restricted to a 1,000 word vocabulary.
Typically though you can use a simple vocabulary to define words as you use them, though, which gives you a little room to work. "Nuclear fission" certainly isn't in the simple 1,000 but you can build up an explanation of an atom, a nucleus, a neutron, and so on.
Of course there's no real way to do justice to Heidegger that way, but one should be able to get the basic points across. "Heidegger believes that technology makes people see the world as only a resource to be used (which he calls 'standing-reserve'). He thinks this is bad, and that people will never be able to understand things as they really are." Not perfect, but it's close...
FF