Talk:Canonical

Arabic etymology
This article had this sentence, 'the Arabic word "Qanuun" which essentially means "rule", "law", "standard", and has come to mean "generally accepted" or "authoritatively correct." ' This is in error.

The Arabic word qanuun (or قنن ) is itself directly derived from the Greek word canon. It loan word into Arabic. see page 24 here

Nwbeeson 19:49, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Wiktionary
This is a wiktionary entry, relating to the Wikipedia entry Canon. What other reading could be offered? User:Wetman (date added: 2003-11-11T21:33:43)

standard base is canonical
I disagree on the statement that the standard base of coordinate space would not be canonical. It is, because this is not just  a convenient choice, but a canonical choice. It is, btw, preferably called "canonical base" in many other languages ("base canonique" in French, "kanonische (Einheits-)Basis" in German,...). &mdash; MFH: Talk 17:34, 27 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Did you mean standard basis? Michael Hardy 20:24, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Also note that the whole bit on vector spaces is confusing: first, it's not at all clear that "being canonical in mathematics is stronger than being a conventional choice" holds for this example, even in the case of Rn, since the "standard basis vectors" in this case are usually given as meaningless symbols — what, other than convention, leads one to prefer {e1, e2,. . ., en} over {f1, f2,. . ., fn}, say? A basis is merely a linearly independent spanning set, and category theory merely allows one to show the logical equivalence of ("non-canonical") choices. The only thing that's "special" about Rn and friends is that it's defined as a "formal linear combination of n meaningless symbols with real coefficients," while many other vector spaces are typically defined in terms of certain operations on a set, in which case the given set is typically not a basis. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.184.125.61 (talk) 08:32, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

canonical redirects
What are canonical redirects? AndrewRH (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 22:20, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Paul Johnson (British historian) states in his "A history of the Jews" that, "The word canon is very ancient, the Sumerian for `reed', whence it acquired its sense of straight or upright; to the Greeks it meant a rule, boundary or standard." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.61.168.80 (talk) 03:53, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Organization
Shouldn't the organization canocial be mentioned here?
 * Jmans25 (talk) jmans25 Jmans25 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:41, 17 January 2010 (UTC).
 * If this is a disambiguation page (is a bit of a hybrid now), then I'd think the company of the same name would be appropriate. dtype (talk) 17:45, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm confused
What exactly does canonical mean when relating it to a religious text? Does that mean that the text is ruling or significant? Please explain, the article was not clear enough for me. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.93.39.26 (talk) 13:13, 12 August 2010 (UTC)


 * It means the text is accepted as part of an authoritative set of texts; see Biblical canon. —Tamfang (talk) 19:25, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Sorting of contents items desirable?
The contents currently displayed are Does this order has some specific meaning such that the word is mostly used in religious context, then literature, etc.? If not, is it not better to sort these items alphabetically? Sae1962 (talk) 12:24, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Religion
 * 2) Literature and art
 * 3) Mathematics
 * 4) Computer science
 * 5) Physics

Is this an encyclopedia article?
This article reads like a combination of a dictionary article with a disambiguation page. Remember, WP is not a dictionary, and so it is not organized around words (with their multiple meanings) but around things or concepts. I'd propose to put it more clearly into the disambiguation format. --Macrakis (talk) 16:09, 6 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Seeing no objections to the above, I recently put it in disambiguation format. An anon reverted.  As reverted, the article clearly violates the Wikipedia is not a dictionary, in the following ways:
 * It covers the meanings of a term in a variety of domains.
 * "Canonical" is an adjective, not a noun.
 * It covers various concepts in which "canonical" is just part of their usual name,
 * It covers topics which already have their own articles (some of them quite complete), which may include the word "canon" or "canonical" (e.g. canonical form in mathematics) or which have alternate names (e.g. conjugate variables in physics).
 * It even covers topics which are only tangentially related (canonization).
 * Strangely, it even covers content which is normally not described using the adjective "canonical", but the noun "canon".
 * Could anyone who objects to converting to a disambiguation page please discuss here? --Macrakis (talk) 21:54, 19 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Macrakis' conversion to a disambiguation page certainly makes sense to me: cf. Wikipedia disambiguation page Canon. Any editor logged in at Wiktionary might be good enough to transfer the current dictionary definitions text there.--Wetman (talk) 22:08, 19 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Adjectives don't make encyclopedia articles. --Wetman (talk) 17:06, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

A "split" tag was added to the article in December 2011, and has resulted in no objections. Given the above discussion, I say we move forward on the split. --Macrakis (talk) 19:43, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

illiterate
This page looks like something written by and for illiterates who don't know that words existed before they were used in the field of computer science. Five years ago it was much better. Michael Hardy (talk) 05:49, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
 * The present content of this page makes it impossible to believe that it was not primarily written be dishonest persons who were deliberately being stupid. It's vandalism. Michael Hardy (talk) 05:52, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I've posted on this currently imbecilic and criminally dishonest article at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. I'll be back. Michael Hardy (talk) 05:57, 13 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I've reverted back to a versions when it was a real article and not just a bad. Is it still illiterate?--Salix (talk): 18:13, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
 * It shouldn't be an article at all - it should be a disambiguation page. What was wrong with this version? StAnselm (talk) 21:25, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

I think there is an article there, because there is a story to tell: This is more than a dictionary definition, it is the evolution of an idea, mirroring the development of western society. A dab page does not capture this rich history. Yes I agree the page does not need to go into such depths short summary style sections would be ideal.--Salix (talk): 21:59, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) The word "canon" comes from the Greek "κανών", meaning "rule" or "measuring stick"
 * 2) It was used in reference to Christian scriptures
 * 3) This developed into the Biblical canon which became the authoritative scriptures.
 * 4) It was widened to refer to describing bodies of literature or art: those books that all educated people have supposedly read, or are advised to read, make up the "canon", for example the Western canon.
 * 5) It was then adopted by mathematics for a specific and very precise purpose
 * 6) Later its was adopted by biology, physics and computer science for the own specific needs.

The version cited by "StAnselm" is not bad. I might edit it to put it into something like chronological order, with "Religion" first and "Business" last, and the other stuff between those. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:11, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

This page needs cleanup
This page contains a lot of dictionary entries and further clarification that break the conventions detailed at MOS:DAB. They need to be removed, not changed or left alone. The current state of the page may reflect the fact that editors which added the excess information might have come from the French Wikipedia. &#60;&#60;&#60; SOME GADGET GEEK &#62;&#62;&#62; (talk) 22:59, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Not a dab page
This page is not really a disambiguation page at all. It's a laundry list of partial title matches. None of these are called "canonical" by themselves; they are used in phrases with the word canonical as an adjective. This is basically a list index article about things described as canonical. Other than simply deleting it outright, I would suggest converting this to a broad concept article and include a list of things canonical. Or just a link to All pages with titles beginning with canonical Coastside (talk) 17:02, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I disagree. Hard cases make bad law: the dross needs to be cleared out. I have already done a few. It may be that there is a case for an article equivalent to Canon (basic principle) but we still have and should have canon (disambiguation). Feel free. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:32, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I found just one more misplaced link (which I have moved). Could you be more specific? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:37, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
 * There is one, and only one article where the topic can be called Canonical, and that is Canonical (company). Every other article listed in this page is a partial title match, meaning you wouldn't call it "canonical"; it simply begins with the word canonical.  Can you find an example in Wikipedia where an article refers to canonical by itself and where the word is used ambiguously and intended to mean one of the topics listed on this page?  I can't. Here's a search link: Search for Canonical.  Here's an example of where it might be considered ambiguous: Religious text.  In that example, the word simply links to Wiktionary. That's because the word by itself doesn't mean ANY of these topics listed on the disambiguation page. It's just a dictionary definition usage of the word by itself. Here's another example: Canonical basis. In that article the word canonical appears by itself in the first sentence, i.e.,  The use of the word there is once again the dictionary sense of the word. It's not one of these topics.  Every other reference to the word canonical in this article appears in the phrase canonical basis. These topics only have meaning when used as phrases. Coastside (talk) 00:58, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Oddly enough, I came back here to say exactly the same thing because I had realised my error. I agree completely and withdraw my objection.
 * So where do we go from here? Write an article about the general principle and include the current catalog as a massive See Also? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:06, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Following on from the above discussion, I have just been bold and removed the invalid disambiguation template. I have written a one-sentence lead that no doubt can be improved. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:16, 7 November 2021 (UTC)