Ah, but "beliefs" is a touchy word. If you put "Origin beliefs" on
the
article about the Big Bang, I'm betting some people would get
irritated -- "Science isn't about mere belief."
Of course, in a sense they're right -- if you take "belief" to just
mean something held on unsubstantiated faith, then scientific facts
are generally held to be a bit more than that. But of course the
Creationists don't consider their beliefs to be of that nature either
-- they're more than happy to give you what they considered to be
reasonable substantiation! In the end it comes down to disagreements
about methodology, interpretation, etc.
So what words to use? "Origin considerations"? Now we're getting into
the absurd and the meaningless. The need to have some meaning
indicates we will have to perhaps sometimes have some statements which
are less neutral than others.
But I agree with the notion that Wikipedia will always reflect a
certain POV. It is impossible to do anything truly "objectively" --
what would it mean to be an observerless observer? But I think the
issues here are a bit more complicated than this. The Apollo moon
landing article is mostly about what is most widely considered by
*relevant authorities* to be true -- it doesn't matter if 60% of the
world population doesn't believe it happened that way if 99% of
scientists do, in my opinion, as this sort of knowledge is firmly
within the domain of scientists to provide the best answers on. So
they get the "unmarked" POV.
Of course, enough people believe that the landing was a hoax to make
that a notable interpretation. There have been books, magazine
articles, television programs, etc. about the question -- it is a
relevant POV which must be addressed. And so at the end of the article
it says, "See this other article for the hoax theory." (Not all
alternative interpretations are notable enough to discuss at length,
of course. Some require only a small paragraph and a link to provide
enough relevant coverage, in my opinion).
I think writing "Homeopathy is a pseudoscience" is too strongly worded
-- the question of whether certain aspects of homeopathy (not the
diluting part, but the other "like helps like" part) is unclear. I've
heard certain parts of homeopathy discussed by biologists and
physicians in a positive light during a class at a major American
state university. It is best to say, "Many aspects of homeopathy are
considered to be pseudoscientific by the mainstream medical community"
or something along those lines. Attribute the POV, "mark" it a bit,
but honestly it is not a deep "mark".
FF
On 6/30/05, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote:
We have an overview article [[Origin beliefs]], which
seems to be a
reasonably neutral yet succinct and descriptive term for the class of
beliefs about the origin of the universe that lay outside the scientific
community. How about [[Category:Origin beliefs]]?
-Mark
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