User talk:Syncategoremata/Archive 2

Help with sources for the sharia article
Hi, I'm getting at least somewhat close to finishing the despaminization of the sharia article, and have been laboriously going through the sources. I've generally been able to locate most of them, if not at work, then at the local library, but there are two which I haven't been able to find:


 * Tai, Emily Sohmer (2007), "Book Review: Hassan S. Khalilieh, Admiralty and Maritime Laws in the Mediterranean Sea (ca. 800-1050): The "Kitāb Akriyat al-Sufun" vis-à-vis the "Nomos Rhodion Nautikos"", Medieval Encounters 13: 602–12


 * Khalilieh, Hassan Salih (1998), Islamic Maritime Law, Brill Publishers, ISBN 9004109552

I actually have access to a book on "Islamic maritime law" which is probably as interesting as it sounds, and which I'm not keen on making the schlepp to the library to read, but mine only covers the medieval era in the Mediterranean.

Anyway, the claim is:

"Islamic law also made "major contributions" to international admiralty law, departing from the previous Roman and Byzantine maritime laws in several ways.[169][170]  These included Muslim sailors being "paid a fixed wage "in advance" with an understanding that they would owe money in the event of desertion  or malfeasance, in keeping with Islamic conventions" in which contracts should specify "a known fee for a known duration", in contrast to Roman and Byzantine sailors who were "stakeholders in a maritime venture, in as much as captain and crew, with few exceptions, were paid proportional divisions of a sea venture's profit, with shares allotted by rank, only after a voyage's successful conclusion." Muslim jurists also distinguished between "coastal navigation, or cabotage," and voyages on the "high seas", and they also made shippers "liable for freight in most cases except the seizure of both a ship and its cargo." Islamic law also "departed from Justinian's Digest and the Nomos Rhodion Nautikos  in condemning slave jettison", and the Islamic Qirad was also a precursor to the European commenda limited partnership. The "Islamic influence on the development of an international law of the sea" can thus be discerned alongside that of the Roman influence.[169]"

If you come across these sources it would be great if you could help in confirming the veracity of the claims made.Jayzames (talk) 00:05, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm glad to hear you've been making such progress on that article. Many thanks.
 * Judging from what's visible on Google books, some of the quotes are from the Islamic maritime law book, while the rest are from the book review (or maybe the underlying book). I can find the Medieval Encounters journal easily enough (the Warburg institute here carries it), tho' the books will need a trip to the British Library. I'll start with the book review, which I should be able to check by the end of the week.
 * If you want a copy of whatever I can dig up, I'm happy to email it to you if you would prefer that. In any case, I'll put a summary here of what they say vis-a-vis the article material.
 * All the best. –Syncategoremata (talk) 12:06, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I was near the Warburg this afternoon so I grabbed the book review. It turns out that the material is all taken from there, with nothing (so far as I can see) being taken from the author's other book.
 * The review begins by mentioning that "Khalilieh finds a number of points at which late Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic practice bore strong similarities" (610), only then moving on to note several divergences, which almost exclusively concern "the distribution of liability in maritime ventures". Otherwise most of the paragraph you have quoted above is taken accurately (and almost verbatim) from the review, though with some loss of context and qualifications.
 * The point on slave jettison could be qualified by the point that "a slave who was a strong swimmer might be jettisoned in sight of a coast" but is otherwise correct.
 * The last two claims in that paragraph are mentioned in the review but both are contested by the reviewer, e.g. "Khalilieh may be slightly overstating his case", but I think the way they are phrased by Jagged ("a precursor" and "can be discerned alongside") reflects the reviewer's view reasonably accurately.
 * The only other issue is the very first claim of the paragraph, where Jagged has "Islamic law also made 'major contributions' to international admiralty law". What the review says is that "Khalilieh characterizes these departures from Byzantine practice as 'a major Islamic contribution to international sea law'." This claim is later described by the reviewer as being one for which Khalilieh "argues" and it's unclear how far they might agree with it. Of course, this raises the question of whether anyone else would agree with any of these claims; but my guess is that the author and reviewer might well be the only people in the world with a view on the subject.
 * If you want any more background on any of this, the reviewed book and the author's other book on the subject are both nestled somewhere in the bowels of the British Library.
 * All the best. –Syncategoremata (talk) 21:36, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you so much! I think I'll be looking this up more maybe on google scholar to see how much it's cited and at least look through my own library's book on medieval Islamic Mediterranean maritime law to at least see if it's also filled with claims of influence on other legal systems. If not (as with the book I looked at on the early history of the waqf) I think it's probably time to get rid of this section too, as no similar section on the "hidden Islamic origins of western maritime law" appears in any of the various Encyclopedias of Islam etc. that I've encountered in their articles on Islamic law.


 * As for progress, I've come to believe that making a "good article" level entry on any Islam related topic is going to be no easier than doing the same on a Scientology related article, there are always going to be people interfering on (religious and not encyclopedic) grounds of one kind or another.Jayzames (talk) 04:25, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Another evolution claim
Nasir al-Din al-Tusi article says,on the biology section,that he developed an early theory of evolution.Only one source is used,and it´s Azerbaijan international.This magazine one said that Leonardo Da Vinci´s mother was azerbaijani.Can we trust this nationalistic source?And in such an exceptional claim?--Knight1993 (talk) 03:23, 27 April 2010 (UTC)


 * As it happens I'm collecting material on various Islamic ideas on evolution right now, so this is a useful page to add to my collection, especially as I hadn't realised those claims were on there. The primary source for them is available in English, so I'll go and have a look at it this week.


 * The main figure I'm looking at right now is al-Jahiz who really did have some ideas that count as precursors of the theory of evolution. I'm not yet clear exactly how far his ideas went (the primary source is only available in a seven volume Arabic edition and the best secondary sources are in French, which I'm slowly reading my way through) but as soon as I've understood what there is there I'll update some of the pages here, if necessary.


 * A lot of the "evolutionary" ideas that have been found in Islamic (and other) thinkers tend instead to be some version of Neoplatonic emanationism on a closer look (I removed the claim from the Miskawayh page on that basis, but there are probably similar claims on the ibn Khaldun page that might need to be checked).


 * If I have the energy I'll either put together a new page on this ("Neoplatonic emanationism and evolution") or else add something to the history of evolutionary thought page.


 * All the best. –Syncategoremata (talk) 08:55, 27 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks a lot,Syncategoremata.This evolution thing really worries me.--Knight1993 (talk) 16:14, 27 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Yet another evolution claim - You may have addressed this claim elsewhere, but Science_in_medieval_Islam has statements similar to those you have found problems with in the past, and may need to be corrected. Dialectric (talk) 08:40, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Classical Mechanics
Hi Syncategoremata, I hope you are fine. I want to ask your opinion about the article classical mechanics. In order to balance Jagged´s edits I've been gathering a lot of information and checking the sources already used in the article. But there´s an specific claim I cannot verify, and that I find rather dubious:

"An early mathematical and experimental scientific method was introduced into mechanics in the 11th century by al-Biruni, who along with al-Khazini in the 12th century, unified statics and dynamics into the science of mechanics, and combined the fields of hydrostatics with dynamics to create the field of hydrodynamics". The source is :Mariam Rozhanskaya and I. S. Levinova (1996), "Statics", in Roshdi Rashed, ed., Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, Vol. 2, p. 614-642 [642], Routledge, London and New York

This means mechanics was developed as such by al-Biruni and al-Khazini, and that before there was nothing like that, just statics and dynamics. And then we learn that they invented Hydrodynamics too. As you have noted in J8079s talk page, this same article in the encyclopedia makes the mistake (serious in my opinion) of saying al-Khazini was the first to realise Gravity varies with the distance to the center of the Earth. This huge mistake affects the credibility of the entire article. Unfortunately, I cannot see what what the article really says about mechanics and hydrodynamics. Maybe the information is misrepresented. But even if it´s right, can we trust that information?

We already know that much of the claims in our article are wrong. It says that the proportionality between force and acceleration was discovered by Nathanael, when it was already known to Simplicius of Cilicia, who lived 500 years before. It says the principle of action and reaction was discovered by ibn Bajjah, when Aristotle himself had stated 1400 years before. So, what´s your opinion, shall we trust Mariam Rozhanskaya and I. S. Levinova or not? Regards--Knight1993 (talk) 14:51, 15 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for bringing another example of Jagged's work to the fore; let me chime in with my two cents worth. I'd be very cautious about any ancient or medieval claim of a relation between force and acceleration.  Quasi-mathematical relationships of force and velocity have been around since Aristotle; acceleration is another issue entirely. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 16:15, 15 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I've got a copy of that chapter here somewhere so let me check that this evening. But yes, I would be very careful about using any of the interpretative matter from it.
 * And just to emphasise Steve's comment: I would go so far as to distrust anyone who writes about ancient or medieval theories using terms such as "force", "mass", "velocity" or "acceleration" without making it clear that even these concepts were foreign to that period. Even their notion of "weight" is a bad match for ours, seeing as they frequently confused it with "density" ("specific gravity").
 * (My typing is a little slow as I made a valiant attempt today at cutting the end of my finger off, so I'll not add more for the moment.)
 * All the best. –Syncategoremata (talk) 18:04, 15 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Ok, some quotes from sources. First, about Nathanel (rather better known as Abu'l-Barakāt – I'll revert that piped link recently added by after this).
 * First, from
 * "The second cause of the acceleration of falling bodies is that the force (i.e. gravity) generating natural inclination resides in the falling body and produces a succession of natural inclinations in such a way that the strength of the inclination increases throughout the fall. [This] seems to anticipate in a vague way the fundamental law of classical mechanics, according to which a continually applied force produces acceleration. (p. 28a)"


 * Note that the analysis is applied only to natural inclination: so projectile motion (and all other cases of moving something) are excluded from this analysis. Also, apart from the shift from an external source to an internal one (as per Philoponus' original impetus theory) this is not so immensely different as yet from some material from the early Peripatetics, tho' is certainly on a path that will lead to big changes.


 * As for your original question about the "Statics" chapter, the page reference (p. 642) is to the conclusion of the paper, where the statements are at their most general. The relevant material says:
 * "Using a whole body of mathematical methods [...] Arabic scientists raised statics to a new, higher level. [...] The classical results of Archimedes [...] were generalised and applied to 3D bodies, the theory of the ponderable lever was founded and the 'science of gravity' was created and later further developed in medieval Europe. The phenomena of statics were studied by using the dynamic approach so that the two trends—statics and dynamics—turned out to be inter-related within a single science, mechanics. The combination of the dynamic approach with Archimedean hydrostatics gave birth to a direction in science which may be called medieval hydrodynamics. [...] Arabic statics was an essential link in the progress of world science. It played an important part in the prehistory of classical mechanics in medieval Europe. Without it classical mechanics proper could probably not have been created."


 * So, two points:
 * Jagged's use of this material is typical of his exaggeration and misrepresentation.
 * The last three sentences of the chapter (which I have quoted above) indicate that the chapter's authors are not historians of science; such a notion of "essential" and necessary links is ludicrous.
 * All the best. –Syncategoremata (talk) 20:56, 15 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Oh, I´m sorry to hear that Syncat. The same thing happened to me once( and it was really painful). So, going back to the mechanics article, thanks a lot for checking that. Regarding Baghdaadi, I also think we should be cautious with that. Interestingly, there´s a book written by a greek engineer named Dimagoronas that claims the neoplatonist Simplicius believed in the proportionality between force and acceleration. See here. Unfortunately I cannot visualise the entire book, not even the emtire page, but I think the fragment is enough to know Dimagorona´s opinion. But you´re right, we should be cautious with these hypothesis. Dimagoronas says Simplicius wrote that in the commentary to Aristotle´s On Heavens, but never says exactly where.
 * So, given that the authors of the statics article are not historians of science, and have commited important omissions, stating arabic authors were first in things they merely took from greek sources, don´t you think we should remove that sentence from the article, or at least contrast it with another opinion? Hope you get better soon!--Knight1993 (talk) 23:14, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

I have marked you as a reviewer
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Jagged 85 sock puppet case
I have now finished the draft of such a case which I will hold off lodging for a few more hours. Please feel free to provide feedback on my talk page. David Wilson (talk · cont) 08:21, 14 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Wow, just when I think he can't sink any lower, and I ought to at least give him some credit he goes and uses proxy servers.Jayzames (talk) 01:13, 18 June 2010 (UTC)


 * It's now up.
 * David Wilson (talk · cont) 20:38, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Article in Spectator
After I published my blog two weeks ago, James Hannam got in touch with me about an article he wrote in the Spectator last year: Did Al-Farabi really invent sociology.

I am writing from an IP as before - I foolishly agreed to the petition being published on WP:AN and the result was much as expected. Strong support for those for whom content is important, strong opposes from the adminstrative community. I was a little disappointed not to see any support from those involved in the clean-up. However, people see a word like 'sockpuppet' and think the worst. 109.154.118.144 (talk) 09:33, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

PS: I note the problems mentioned in the Spectator are still there. "Farabi made notable contributions to the fields of logic, mathematics, medicine, music, philosophy, psychology and sociology." This is another Jaggedism made in December 2007. In fact, the whole article on Al-Farabi is a mess. It says 'Al-Farabi was also the first Muslim logician to develop a non-Aristotelian logic'. I don't think that is true and I will check this when I am next at the Warburg. Or rather, it is probably a Jagged-ish exaggeration and distortion and out-of-context edit that gives a misleading impression. Most of the medieval philosophers, Islamic and Christian, modified or amplified Aristotle's logic in some way. E.g. Supposition theory goes considerably beyond anything Aristotle said in On Interpretation and elsewhere. But it is misleading to call this 'non-Aristotelian logic'.

Suggestion: if I pick out errors here and provide references, could you modify the articles accordingly? If you stand by the edits then there won't be the problem of the absurd 'editing by a banned user' rule. Happy to meet up at the Warburg if you like - I can provide academic references if you like, although that counts for nothing on Wikipedia. 109.154.118.144 (talk) 11:35, 19 June 2010 (UTC)


 * (I meant to write this earlier on, but got a little short of time.)
 * If you can provide references and bring any problematic claims to my attention, I would be very glad to have a look at them (assuming they are in an area in which I have some interest and competence). There is a obvious WP:MEATPUPPET issue here and I obviously can't edit on your behalf; but any assistance you could provide, in reviewing articles here or providing resources, would be greatly appreciated.
 * All the best. –Syncategoremata (talk) 17:19, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Reference 1: "[Al-Farabi] was one of those philosophers who believed in the essential unity of Plato and Aristotle ... and it is equally clear that in logic, natural philosophy and ethics he followed Aristotle and his commentators ...". My emphasis. This is in Hyman and Walsh, Philosophy in the Middle Ages, p. 221. I will look for other references. 109.154.118.144 (talk) 11:43, 19 June 2010 (UTC)


 * My guess is that the claim about his being "the first Muslim logician to develop a non-Aristotelian logic" is simply a reference to the fact that he also wrote on aspects of logic that were wider than those treated by Aristotle, e.g. Stoic logic. But Al-Farabi is working in a tradition of an "Aristotelian" school, which, as far as I understand it, included a large amount of Stoic logic by this point (e.g., the attribution in that tradition of a work on hypothetical syllogisms to Aristotle) so in that sense he is not doing anything new.
 * Thus we get the following quote: "Walzer has shown that al-Farabi's programme [in logic] closely reflects the Alexandrian scheme at the last stage of its development. "
 * If you have any other references on this, I would be very happy to look at those with an eye to improving this (and many many other articles). I won't edit this immediately, partly due to my overbearing caution and partly due to the fact that I've got fingers in too many hot pies right now (such as Sockpuppet investigations/Jagged 85) and I am just finishing gathering material on supposed Islamic theories of evolution, which may well stir up a certain amount of noise.
 * But my summer reading includes a lot of history of logic, so I will get around to this article sooner or later.
 * All the best. –Syncategoremata (talk) 14:06, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

This 'non Aristotelian logic' thing is also misleading in another way. The standard and received understanding of the term 'Non Aristotelian logic' is of the logic that begins with C.S. Peirce and Gottlob Frege and which was developed into the modern predicate calculus. The understanding is that all logic before that was essentially Aristotelian, i.e. it analyses the proposition into two terms and a copula, and is incapable of dealing with multiple generality. In that sense, these articles misleadingly suggest that Islamic logicians like Al-Farabi and Avicenna anticipated predicate calculus, which is absurd. It is also a bit silly, by the way, to use the term 'Islamic logician', as though logic - the most universal of sciences - were somehow dependent upon one's faith or culture.109.154.118.144 (talk) 11:49, 19 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Hmm, I've obviously been working at the wrong end of history too long. I usually read "non-Aristotelian logic" to mean Stoic logic but your point is entirely right in that the usual understanding of that term would be contemporary "post-syllogistic" logic.
 * Actually there is another meaning which derives from Lukasiewicz, meaning any logic that denies fundamental principles such as Excluded middle. But in that sense al-Farabi probably wasn't 'non-Aristotelian' either. 109.154.118.144 (talk) 14:56, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * As for "Islamic logician": there is a problem of what term we might use to denote people from that tradition. We use "ancient Greek logician" and "medieval logician" (sometimes adding "European" or "Christian" or "Latin" when we remember that there were other medieval civilizations besides "ours"), but there's a lack of a settled term for that "other" civilisation. I quite like "Islamicate" but it seems not to have ever taken off. Both "Islamic" and "Arabic" fail to be accurate (not all such figures were Muslim, not all wrote in Arabic) but Wikipedia seems to have settled on "Islamic" for the moment.
 * All the best. –Syncategoremata (talk) 14:13, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Agree. Although I prefer to think of there being a single tradition which began with Aristotle, was adopted by the Arab logicians, then taken up by the logicians in the Latin West, and finally joined with the separate Stoic tradition in the 19th century, and developed into something else entirely.  Predicate calculus didn't entirely supersede 'Aristotelian logic' anyway. Think where all the Latin terms like modus ponens originated!  And 'subject' (subiectum), predicate (praedicatum), proposition and all the others. 109.154.118.144 (talk) 14:56, 19 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Turns out the issue was bugged me so I checked a range of the usual sources and none of them talk of al-Farabi developing a "non-Aristotelian" logic (in any sense of the term) so I've assumed that the claim involves an over-reading of his use of "non-Aristotelian" elements in his logic (and even that claim might itself be slightly over-egging it). It turns out that the al-Farabi article was the only one that made that particular claim in any case: all other discussions of his role in logic had a more plausible claim, so I used one of those in its place.
 * All the best. –Syncategoremata (talk) 23:45, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

- Ugh. Sociology in medieval Islam is almost entirely written by Jagged. This is anachronistic. Sociology is a discipline that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop theories about human social interaction. There is no evidence, even in the article itself, that Islamic discussion of society was 'sociology' in precisely this sense. It contains such gems as "Social responsibility and corporate social responsibility in commerce was stressed in early Islamic sociology during Muhammad's time.", "Muhammad is considered a pioneer of environmentalism for his teachings on environmental preservation.". And practically every link you follow takes you to more of the same. This will never be cleaned up. 109.154.118.144 (talk) 12:49, 19 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I did remove some of the nonsense about that very issue from some articles (as it was a clear misuse of the sources) but I've yet to make a real dent in Jagged's presentism. Steve McCluskey has discussed this somewhere; it was referenced in Jagged's RfC/U I think.
 * Anyhow, I really must must leave now or else I'll be starving again tonight.
 * All the best. –Syncategoremata (talk) 14:19, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

The individual that wrote some information on Ibn Sinas page; under Physical Exercise
Hi, Thank you for noticing that i had written something. This is the first time that i have read your message, that was just 15 minutes ago. Since then i have created the account by the name 'CanonofMedicine'. The first day that i was trying to write out the information, it took me atleast 5-6 hours just to figure out how to cite anything, whether correctly or incorrectly. And it was since then that i did not pay much attention, but rather just cited using the same 'poor' format; that i am coming to learn that it was. I am very sorry about that. I do not quite understand what my mistakes were? Were they just mistakes of misplaced spaces? Just simple format errors? And, also, you asked for some information from the book. Please reply telling me the information you need, and i will do my best. Sorry, i just was a little confused since i did not fully understand your message. Thank You. —Preceding unsigned comment added by CanonofMedicine (talk • contribs) 07:39, 11 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi there and thanks for getting back to me. I know the feeling about the complexity with the reference systems on Wikipedia, and I'm glad you didn't give up.
 * The format problem I mentioned on your talk page was fixed by http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Avicenna&diff=364128709&oldid=364082116 this edit] (one of your edits, I guess), so there's nothing to worry about (and thanks for sorting it out).
 * As for the information I was asking for about the book, it would be good if you could provide enough information in your references to allow people to identify which edition of the text you are working from. Without this, the page numbers are not very useful, unless they happen to be the standard page references for that text, but even that would be worth mentioning.
 * One comment: My guess is that the material you have added consists of large quotes from a translation of Ibn Sina's work. You might want to check the Wikipedia policy information about primary sources and also the information on copyright use of non-free sources if this is the case, your additions might well fall foul of one or both of these policies.
 * Also, and as one of your edit summaries said, that entire section might be better off in the article on The Canon of Medicine.
 * All the best. –Syncategoremata (talk) 00:08, 12 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi, thank you for your reply. I will reply to the questions as you have asked of them. First one, that has already been resolved, is the formatting one as i understand it. The next one is which edition of the text i am using? From the information i have this is the only volume that has been translated into english out of the total of 5 volumes that exist in the complete 'canon of medicine'. This edition, which i understand is the only one, has been 'Adapted by Laleh Bakhtiar', From translations by 'O.Cameron Gruner and Mazar H. Shah' Correlated with the Arabic by 'Jay R. Crook' with Notes by 'O.Cameron Gruner'. This is the only edition available. The next question about the primary sources/secondary sources; i did not even know about the policy; but i think its the greatest. The quotes that i have written are directly from the text itself, and i do understand that there are some things that i have written that may fall into 'my own interpretation' rather than the 'correct secondary sources.' However, this has not been my overall way of writing, since more than 80% of what i have written is the primary source. However, as i understand it, i should 'remove my analysis of the writing' and 'choose a secondary source that explains the text'. And for the very last question of that this article is better under the Canon of Medicine, i agree. I was thinking of having a much smaller version of the topic under Ibn Sina`s page, and the complete version of what i have written to be in the Canon of medicine. Just as a summary of what you want me to do are (1) take out my interpretations, and use the notes in the book as a secondary source; or just leave the text to explain itself (2) make a smaller version for this page, and move this to the Canon of medicine. Thank You. —Preceding unsigned comment added by CanonofMedicine (talk • contribs) 18:18, 13 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the book information: so the edition you are using is the following (not sure if this is quite the most perfect Cite template usage ever ...):


 * I've added this information to the Avicenna article and also changed your references over to the harv style to reduce the number of footnotes (there are other ways of achieving that, but this way works).


 * As for moving the material to the Canon of Medicine article, I think that would be a very good idea, if only to reduce the length of the Avicenna article, which was already too large before these latest additions.


 * Lastly, about primary vs. secondary sources and adding your own analysis to the article, one of my main worries is that you have quoted such large fragments of the translation that you have probably broken the rules about the use of non-free sources and that the result is a breach of copyright. It would be better if you could remove much of the direct quotation from that source and replaced it with your report of a good secondary source for that information. (Such a secondary source might be any editorial commentary in the translation you have, or some other source.)
 * I hope this helps. –Syncategoremata (talk) 18:06, 14 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I will do that asap; thank you. And yes the book you have named is the correct one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by CanonofMedicine (talk • contribs) 06:49, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

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Hipparchus‎ (Theological→Theoretical)
Hi Syncategoremata, it was actually the word "Theology" that seemed strange for a 2nd century BCE Greek genius who by all accounts, was amazingly scientific. Above all, their philosophy embraced rational explanation of the natural world without recourse to the gods. "Metaphysics" sounds much more appropriate to me—except that the inflexibility wouldn't be due to church/dogma so much as the intellectual paradigm.

I think Aristotle basically used aesthetic rhetoric (truth in beauty) to justify the prevailing view of perfectly concentric crystal spheres rotating with perfectly constant speed. For him, it went without saying that the circular was the most perfect geometry, and the most surpassingly excellent motion.

Zeus and Olympus were associated with the sky, (aether), and he actually dive give a nod toward the divine with his 47 "movers"... or 55, he couldn't do the math and he wanted one "mover" for each celestial sphere. Medieval scholars only popularized the "prime mover" (which corresponded to the sphere of fixed stars).

He even suggested that the "ancients" expressed the idea of "duration" (unchanging eternal motion) through the gods (immortality and eternal youth). The metaphysical foundation of his entire Physics and natural philosophy rests on natural law being "moved" by the beauty of the music of the spheres (as they, themselves, are "moved" to emulate the "movers" with incomparable fidelity).

Hope that wasn't tldr! It's all just to say I think I see where you're coming from and that I think "Metaphysics" would be perfect! Thanks—Machine Elf 1735 (talk) 17:30, 25 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi there. And it's not TL;DR — tho' it slowed down my response by making me go off and look up a few things to jog my fading memory.


 * First off: my bad on theology; I was using it as a direct translation of Aristotle's term theologia which he used (more or less) as a synonym for 'metaphysics'. I've no idea on exactly how 'rationalist' Hipparchus might have been, but very few writers of that period denied that the gods existed. Aristotle certainly was happy to combine a belief in (a single) god with his rational and 'scientific' approach to astronomical phenomena, for example. I would have thought that it's unlikely Hipparchus would be an exception to this.


 * As for whether Aristotle's argument was 'aesthetic' or 'metaphysical', I would resist it being described as aesthetic. If you believe that simpler is better and that the home of the gods must be as good as possible, you will think that the orbits will be based on uniform circular motions. As you say, he would have seen this as the "most perfect geometry" and the "most surpassingly excellent motion", which are value judgments, but not necessarily aesthetic ones.


 * I'm not clear quite what you mean by 'natural law being "moved" by the beauty of the music of the spheres'. My understanding is that the causes of all change in the sublunar world can be traced back to the movements of the Sun (more precisely, to its movement along the ecliptic) and I had always understood that it was an efficient cause, rather than a final one (as it would be in the role you describe for it).


 * What does seem to move by desire in Aristotle's account (at least, in Metaphysics XII) is the orb of the fixed stars, which is moved by the unmoved mover, which acts as an object of desire. (I'm not at all clear whether the other celestial spheres are moved directly by such emulation of the unmoved mover, or whether the motion of the fixed stars moves them as an efficient cause; and it's now too late for any more clarity to emerge in my mind tonight.) In this sense, the first cause of all change, celestial or sublunar, is the first mover, considered as a final cause; but this is mediated via a chain of efficient causation beginning with the Sun, so it's not true to say that sublunar change is a case of (direct) final causation.


 * Hmm, I might be getting TL;DR myself here, so I'll draw to a close there. And I realise that I didn't need to revert all that you had done at the Hipparchus article, and I'll re-do some of it now.
 * All the best. –Syncategoremata (talk) 00:27, 26 June 2010 (UTC)


 * It's been years since I studied Aristotle. I'd forgotten (or never noticed) theologia so that's really a very interesting discovery for me, thanks! Point taken about Hipparchus' beliefs and simplicity rather than aesthetics (surprisingly akin to Occam's Razor). It was probably socially awkward, if not downright unwise, for anyone to give offense to the Gods too egregiously, even though Aristotle strongly denounced Zeus and Athena at some point. After all, one of the charges against Socrates was impiety.


 * I was just tarting it up with "music of the spheres"... (I find myself jumping at the opportunity to cast off the encyclopedic tone when not in the main article space). My favorite description teleological action is "as the soul is moved by beauty" and when I think of art, I think of music. I haven't seen where even the Pythagoreans likened the ratios of planetary periods to those of musical scales; it just seems to me like should have.


 * Aristotle implied a sort of hierarchical teleology. "From [the fulfilment of the whole heaven] derive the being and life which other things, some more or less articulately but other feebly, enjoy" (de Caelo I). The Sun as efficient cause for sublunar change sent me happily down a few rabbit holes, mostly to do with Plato, to whom I've never given the attention I should have. (It sounds like his Form of the Good). Aristotle describes a number of efficient causes in Meteorology attributed to the movement of the Sun's sphere, primarily, but also the other celestial spheres (surprisingly). Of course, it's a bit hard to fathom as they should all behind the sphere of the moon. But there would typically be more than one type of cause for everything with the final causes being most enlightening (yielding the others) and movement would cover any property change (including biology birth/growth/thinning/death as well as what we'd call motion today). He definitively wasn't one for long chains of efficient cause. Since the spheres were all made of aether, those below the First Heaven also wouldn't be capable of not moving the way they do eternally/unchangingly and so their motion can't result from an efficient cause. There's some kind of teleo–logic that's very murky but has to do with the accidental relation of the other celestial spheres and the sphere of fixed stars (maybe due to its uniqueness). But that seems to be essentially why each sphere needs its own unmoved mover and why one of them is the prime mover.


 * Of course, medieval theology wouldn't have placed any importance on the other movers (and I know next to nothing it) but Aristotle would have had in mind replacing Zeus et al. with an "unembellished" quasi–astrological theology (which he said was commonly believed to be the primitive basis for all religion), as well as Plato's philosophy. Here's a link I thought was interesting about why Plato's eternally fixed/moving soul. Thanks again—Machine Elf 1735 (talk) 15:33, 8 July 2010 (UTC)


 * In case you haven't seen it, there's a reasonable historical discussion of these issues at Dynamics of the celestial spheres. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 15:50, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Naskh (tafsir)
Have no idea whether Ksweith is a sockpuppet or not, but what I do know is that his recent "contributions" to the article seem to consist of undoing all my careful formatting fixes, and replacing arbitrary names in the article -- apparently completely at random, and certainly without bothering to offer any explanation -- with garbled ungrammatical gibberish about "orientalist"[sic] (later revised to "Western authors", without major improvement in the edits). AnonMoos (talk) 03:07, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Nightwish discography
Hi, can you vote here please? Thank you. DreamNight (talk) 13:32, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Science in the Middle Ages
Hello. You are invited to take part in the discussion on Science in the Middle Ages. The question is should we keep or remove the section on the Islamic world. Regards Gun Powder Ma (talk) 08:28, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Brahmand Pujan Article
APPEAL TO YOU Reg: [BRAHMAN PUJAN], [UNIVERSAL PRAYERS]. written by [Naresh Sonee] On wikipedia, These above two pages are far older than the present article [Brahman] References of above titles are also available on New York site - http://www.printsasia.com/BookDetails.aspx?Id=445813482 Meanwhile, Can your good selves in Wiki Project Indian Community re-create a precise pages on [Naresh Sonee] & his book [Brahmand Pujan] – [Brahmaand Pujan]. However, Sonee is the writer of  this  book  [Brahmand Pujan] written in 1999. registered with Government of India- HRRD. Details of the registration is provided here on http://brhmaandpujanbook.tripod.com/. More than sufficient, news and reviews are there on http://brhmaandpujan-news-reviews.tripod.com/ Since 5-6 yrs, for one or the other reason pages of [Naresh Sonee] & [Brahmand Pujan] are faced by communal bias from outside India  so these articles over and again get deleted here in Wikipedia for minor reasons. However, many hits of - Naresh Sonee reflects on google search engine also. So, I request Wiki Indian community to kindly come forward and generously help these two pages to grow, as I am fed up to fight my case alone here [left] and moved out long back. Meanwhile, such an important info/issue on ‘Indian literature’  which adds & spell  ‘new meaning /dimension’  to Brahman -should it stay lost else ignored? Your community panel has to judge at last. Myself, will not be on Wikipedia, for the same i apologise, but- pls. help these two pages to get reinstalled, reap, sow and grow, if you too feel so, I appeal to do this munificent favour. Regards- Dralansun (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 07:53, 27 December 2010 (UTC).

MfD nomination of User:Syncategoremata/Archive/Draft
User:Syncategoremata/Archive/Draft, a page you substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Syncategoremata/Archive/Draft and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes ( ~ ). You are free to edit the content of User:Syncategoremata/Archive/Draft during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Hey Mid  (contribs) 23:56, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Jagged 85 RFC/U and cleanup has been appealed to ArbCom
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Thanks, -Aquib (talk) 04:33, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Jagged 85 cleanup: article stubbing
Hello. You are invited to take part in this vote concerning the clean-up effort in connectuion with Jagged 85's RFC/U. Regards Gun Powder Ma (talk) 11:40, 21 March 2011 (UTC)