Talk:Scientific enterprise/Archive 1

This article is longer than the science article.
I notice that this article is longer than the science article. Ancheta Wis 12:42, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Cleanup needed
I've listed Scientific enterprise for cleanup for three reasons: 1. the formatting is very inconsistent with typical Wikipedia standards (and makes it difficult to read), 2. it contains a lot of re-definitioning which can be accomplished better by wiki links (why repeat an explanation of the scientific method? Brevity is a good thing!), and 3. I think it is somewhat incoherent what the point of it is, because the connection between the sentences and paragraphs is often fairly cryptic. Which is not at all to imply that I don't think an article on the scientific enterprise -- science as an enterprise -- is a bad idea, or that the contents are poor -- I just think it needs a lot of work, and I think it needs to be edited down quite a bit, made more concise. As it stands it looks a lot like an awkward essay on science, and I think that something which implies that science can be understood as not just a philosophical program would be a good article.. but I don't think it is there yet. --Fastfission 02:09, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Not what I thought it would be
(William M. Connolley 12:28, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)) If you look back at the talk from sci meth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Scientific_method/Archive_8 where this article was originally proposed you'll find a rather different prpoosal for this page - about the enterprise of science, not about science-done-by-enterprises. I'm disappointed. But, OTOH, I'm only spectating at this point.

I re-read the archive and I have to admit that that's not flowed out of my fingertips. I am willing to re-start, it's just bits on the hard disk, and I will strike the scientific method work which has recently stabilized. I recall that I was tip-toeing around the "why the SM did not arise in China" because of the shutting down of Chinese Wikipedia, but it is quite clear that political oppression is a factor in the rise of science (Einstein, Fermi, etc). But give me a clue - where might I let my fingertips lead me? Ancheta Wis 18:23, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * (William M. Connolley 19:11, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)) I hoped that sci ent would be about science: how its done (and some history); with most of the philosophy left on sci meth.


 * OK, I will re-order the topics, push the list to the end, and re-consider "the enterprise of science" (WMC) and "science as enterprise" (FastFission). More Science and History, minimal Philosophy. I will leave the scientific explorations in the middle, and start with some bad stuff, like the distribution of IQ - That seems explosive and dangerous as a starter. My point is that the subject is not academic, but highly practical. To cheer myself up, I will also consider one of Benjamin Franklin's favorite studies - Weather and its attendants (such as Lightning, hence Electromagnetism). Ancheta Wis 10:27, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

comment from cleanup
formatting is all over the map, article repeats a lot from, say, scientific method, and reads more like an incoherent rant than an encyclopedia article. There's some interesting stuff here but it's VERY hard to make any sense of, what with the majority of it being small sentences, strangely indented, and without much connection to one another (and lots and LOTS of re-definitioning which can be accomplished better by adding wiki links). --Fastfission

The Perspective Problem
There's a subtle non-NPOV element to the entire premise of this article, which probably informs its apparent incoherence. It is this: There are people who believe that all great scientific endeavors are achieved through profit-motivated enterprises. It's a sort of neoliberalism. Some advocates of this perspective will admit the &ldquo;pure academic&rdquo; form of &ldquo;scientific achievment&rdquo; can accomplish things, but they are always abstract and inapplicable to the real world until they are developed by some &ldquo;scientific enterprise&rdquo;.

An example would include genetic engineering, an academic curiosity for decades because it seemed impossible to manipulate molecular structures. And, to the mindset I've indicated, it would still be a curiosity if enterprising individuals had not turned it into a profit endeavor. Patents on genes are a great thing to these folks, because they allow an academic curiosity to affect the real world.

The reason the article is incoherent, then, is because it's written by a busiman trying to describe science. It should probably be written by an economist, instead.

This article is seriously bloated
I just rewrote the definition and refactored the intro. This article is extremely bloated. It is supposed to about scientific enterprise: deep discursion into logic and the scientific method, scientific change, etc., seems meandering at best. Those details should be in their respective articles, I think, and referenced in principle with minimum expansion at most. Sections like "Protective agency" and "Stages of understanding" should, in my view, be reduced to mere sentences and links: they are way off the subject. --NathanHawking 01:26, 2004 Oct 30 (UTC)

Big cuts
Ok I've done the dirty deed and removed everything that seemed off topic, which unfortunately was most of the article. Gone are discussions of scientific method, lengthy discourse on exploration in the new world, various scientific institutions that do not have an entrepreneurial focus (i.e. military-backed science) etc. I think the article could be much longer but should stick to enterprises that are largely based on scientific advances or scientific institutions that are set up to further enterprises. --LeeHunter 01:32, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Good work. &mdash;Daelin 11:33, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)