On 1/17/07, Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/16/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/16/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
You seem to know more about it. Are you saying her accusations are unfounded?
Mgm
No idea. It's not an area I know much about since other than a few skirmishes it isn't something that chemistry has much in the way of dealings with.
The problem is the categorization of disciplines can be a very controversial issue even if the discipline itself does not come with specific and explicit political or cultural agendas, much less tied up in questions of identity or the ability of individuals to make decisions on account of their cultural heritage.
There is absolutely no easy answer to it. The question of where ethnic/gender studies (and its variants) fall within the organization of knowledge has been something the American academy has been periodically battling with for forty years (Peter Novick's _That Noble Dream_ has some great accounts of how the discipline of History in the US struggled with these issues in the 60s and 70s). The question of disciplinary disputes (what sociologists sometimes call "boundary work") has existed since before Copernicus (the question of whether mathematicians could make statements which impinged on areas of philosophy was a big one in his era). Categorization of knowledge was one of the most radical aspects of the original Encyclopedie, and some scholars (Robert Darnton in particular) have argued that it was in categorizing religion in the same tree as black magic (rather than a source of revealed truth) that really invoked the ire of the Church (rather than the snippy little asides poking fun at the Eucharist).
Which is just to say that while I don't think this is necessarily any example of systemic racism or sexism on Sanger's part (there are legitimate reasons for not considering these fields to be top-level categories, one need not attribute such opinions to philosophies of prejudice), it is an example of what some of the difficulties with an "expert-driven" system will be. The problem is, experts don't even agree on very basic things at times, such as whose knowledge counts as genuine, such as how knowledge should be organized, such as where a discipline stops and ends. No matter what decision is made in these sorts of issues, they will alienate entire disciplines of experts.
I think Wikipedia gets around it, paradoxically enough, by not pretending to have any expert rule, as well as having a relatively democratic categorization system (things can be redundantly categorized). If you don't make the assumption that the material is heavily mediated by experts, then you don't feel quite as bad if it doesn't align with one point of view or the other. Or maybe experts just don't pay a lot of attention to issues like this on Wikipedia for one reason or another.
In any case... it will be interesting to see how Sanger works this out over time. He really can't afford to alienate the entire humanities and if he is perceived as shutting out or, god forbid, segregating ethnic/gender studies he will probably end up doing just about that. (I'm not saying he's doing that, I'm just talking about how he will be perceived.) If he insists on making determinations like this on his own (if that is indeed what he has done), he will likely end up stepping on a lot of toes.
FF
This is a really insightful post. Categorization, and how one categorizes knowledge (any kind of knowledge) is very far from being cut and dried; and how one decides to organize the world does say a great deal about how one perceives it. (Though Geni doesn't see discipline debates affecting chemistry much, I bet that he doesn't think chemistry is a part of alchemy anymore either). People sometimes make their entire academic careers around arguing over classifications, by developing new subdisciplines and branches when the old ones aren't good enough; this seems to be part of what the citizendium conflict is about.
I think Fastfission is right that Wikipedia gets around most controversies by being redundant, allowing people to categorize as they see fit, and by allowing do-overs: nothing has to be permanently decided. Sure, it's inefficient in a lot of ways, but it also (like the whole project) provides a fascinating map of the world and how topics are perceived. It seems like this particular debate in Citizendium comes from taking a much more traditional view of deciding that topics have to go in a particular order, as if the work existed in a hierarchical link structure or was going to be printed.
-- phoebe