steven l. rubenstein wrote:
I appreciate RK's work on developing our NPOV
policy concerning
historical context for articles such as ones on religion. For what it
is worth, I think we can explain it in a simpler and more direct way.
1) NPOV often means multiple points of view. This means providing not
only the points of view of different groups today, but different
groups in the past.
2) Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. One important task for articles is
to explain things. In the case of human beliefs and practices,
explanation encompasses not only what motivates individuals who hold
these beliefs and practices, but an account of how such beliefs and
practices came to be and took shape.
Well put. It's not just for history and religion that this is
important, but for science too. The story of the development of
scientific ideas can be very interesting too. From a modern perspective
some of the abandoned paths are too easily dismissed as speculative
pseudoscience. When you consider how few scientific tools they had to
work with, I am amazed that they ever got anything right.
Ec