Talk:Canonical example

Why Do We Need This Article?
Yesterday I tried to find an article on canonical examples in Wikipedia, but I couldn't. I think we need this article, because many other Wikipedia articles talk of "canonical examples", but you have to guess what a canonical example is from context. So we need a definition. But we don't just need a definition: that would make it just Wiktionary's problem (I couldn't even find a definition at www.dictionary.com). It would also be useful to have some idea of how the use canonical examples has migrated from mathematics (where I suspect it started) to other fields, and some discussion of how canonical examples are used in philosophy. And of course it would be useful to discuss what makes a canonical example "canonical". It seems to me that there is a clear link between the ideas of "canonical example" and "ostensive definition" (which already has a Wikipedia article), but the two things aren't the same.

To be honest I haven't been able to even work out how to describe a canonical example clearly (and it's not like we can say "the canonical example of a canonical example is..."!), and I haven't seen any nice direct references, so what I've done is just started this article, and, rather like planting a seed, I'm hoping that the sun and rain of other editors will help it grow.

I realise that there may be a temptation to immediately delete this article because it's scanty and poorly referenced. I hope that at least some people who read this will feel that we do need to cover this topic, and be able to help turn it into a valuable article.

Thank you in advance. RomanSpa (talk) 22:45, 25 July 2010 (UTC)