Agreed, reporting proportionately on consensus and minority views would be wonderful, without folks trying to root out bad science, or bad philosophy, or bad theology, all of which are always with us. ;-)
The real issue I think is one of philosophy. The SPOV or materialist view wants to say that all knowledge we can have is acquired through our senses, and all occurrences can ultimately be explained in terms of natural processes and laws of physics, even if our current understanding of those processes and laws isn't up to explaining everything just yet. That obviously works very well in terms of the scientific progress that has been and is being made. One other view is that there are other ways of acquiring knowledge; perhaps divine or angelic revelation, perhaps via ESP or clairvoyance or from spirits of the dead. The 'supernaturalist' view allows for occurrences either contrary to or transcendant of what are usually thought to be the laws of physics, whether it's some miracle or healing or resurrection, or teleknesis, or some kind of qi manipulation. Obviously there are many variations on a theme, and many many different ideas of which or even what sort of revelations might be reliable, or which phenomena might be genuine or why. To ask whether these other phenomena are scientifically verifiable is to examine them from within the SPOV, and almost presupposes the answer. One might just as well ask whether some random miraculous healing can be explained in terms of qi or the five elements of traditional Japanese acupressure.
As far as reporting on consensus and minority views, it's fine to report that scientists are skeptical of this or that miraculous occurrence, and that some religious folks are skeptical of the morality or ethics of this or that application of scientific knowledge. These fields are not diametrically opposed at all, they often learn from each other or borrow from each other, but they do generally represent different ways of looking at the world. Neither should have a completely free pass to pass itself off as NPOV by itself.
On 12/13/05, charles matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
There's got to be a corollary to Godwin's Law that covers this.
-Phil
Strange, is it not, to have SPOV high on one's list of worries. Of course you could take it as read that NPOV copes swimmingly with troubles coming from politics, religion, economic self-interest, ethnicity, cultural blinkers and bad history. But somehow grinds to a halt when asked to cope with the verifiable/falsifiable nexus and those insidious claims on scientific method. When all we have to do is report proportionately on consensus and minority views, not root out the bad science (which of course is always with us).
Charles
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- User:Wesley