Talk:Empirical limits in science

"God" has no place on this page

It would be better - more comprehensive and clear to say "ideas not yet developed into a rational construct".

Citations needed

Several uncited claims were in the article but had been tagged since 2008. Please find good citations if you want to add in these claims as contributions to the encyclopedia. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 12:48, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

imponderables

see, e.g., "Which came first, chicken or egg ?"

perhaps a set of imponderables can be used to expand this article. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 14:14, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

recent edits

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment.

Airstarfish (talk) 04:53, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

About the lead section

The second last sentence and the dot points in the lead are just the same information repeated without a citation. It may be better to just keep the second last sentence since it has a citation and is more succinct. Airstarfish (talk) 11:36, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

I removed the quote from Rudolf Eucken as it did not fit the lead of this article. It could perhaps be used elsewhere in the article with later edits Airstarfish (talk) 12:15, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: rejected by BlueMoonset (talk) 05:05, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
Article no longer exists; the page is now a redirect, and hence ineligible for DYK.

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that scientists don't all agree on the gene concept and this is one of the empirical limits in science? Source: Arabatzis, Theodore (2019-06-11), "What Are Scientific Concepts?", What Is Scientific Knowledge?, Routledge, pp. 85–99, doi:10.4324/9780203703809-6, ISBN 978-0-203-70380-9, S2CID 197990250, retrieved 2022-04-30

5x expanded by Airstarfish (talk). Self-nominated at 11:28, 7 May 2022 (UTC).

• @Airstarfish: The 5x expansion occurred in mainspace over the course of around 2–3 weeks. According the the letter of the rules, this would be permissible had the expansion occurred in a draft or sandbox. Since this is a student I'm going to count this as a technicality and say it follows the spirit of being new and long enough. It is within policy, Earwig detects no copyvios, and a QPQ review is not needed for a new user.

The hook uses vague language and needs to be reworked or replaced: "scientists don't all agree on the gene concept" doesn't capture the article's discussion of the genotype/phenotype distinction. I'd also double-check that paragraph against the source (which I don't have access to at the moment); my instinct is that evolutionary biologists would emphasize phenotype while molecular biologists would emphasize genotype, which is the reverse of what the article says. John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk) 23:12, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

• @John P. Sadowski (NIOSH): User:John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) would it be better if it read "... that scientists differ in their conceptualisation of the gene and this is one of the empirical limits in science?" as this is more consistent with the main point and wording in that section of the article. Also the article has the same order as written in the source in the genotype/phenotype discussion. I've found and cited an additional source: Stotz, Karola; Griffiths, Paul E.; Knight, Rob (2004). "How biologists conceptualize genes: an empirical study". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. 35 (4): 647–673. doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2004.09.005, which is more explicit (and should preferably be used instead for the DYK nomination), in which the Author of the source also suspected it would be the other way around but upon investigation found it to be the way that it is written in the article. Airstarfish (talk) 08:00, 20 May 2022 (UTC)
• @John P. Sadowski (NIOSH): alternatively to be even more specific it could read "... that scientists differ in their conceptualisation of the gene whereby some scientists think of the gene at a cellular level while others think in terms of its apparent effect and this is one of the empirical limits in science?", but this hook might be giving too much away Airstarfish (talk) 08:37, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

@John P. Sadowski (NIOSH): The nominator hasn't edited since late May. Have your issues been addressed yet or do they still remain? Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 04:41, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

@Narutolovehinata5: The nominator responded on the article talk page instead of here; I just moved their response above. @Airstarfish: Does the source explicitly say that this difference in conceptualization is an empirical limit of science? Conceptualization would seem to me to be a theoretical rather than empirical limit. It would be easier if I could see the source myself, but I don't have access to it. John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk) 01:09, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

• The nominator hasn't edited since May and the issues raised above remain unaddressed. Unless another editor adopts this I don't see a path forward for the nomination at this time. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 02:50, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

I think it just needs a different hook. I can take a look and suggest one over the weekend. John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk) 06:12, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Will you be willing to adopt the nomination and propose a new hook? We'll probably need a new reviewer at that point, though. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 06:59, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

What about this? John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk) 21:25, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

• ALT3: ... that scientific evidence is ultimately derived from human senses, leading to empirical limits in science? Source: [1]

• Hi @John P. Sadowski (NIOSH):. I like your ALT3. Your suspicion about the genotypic/phenotypic paragraph appears to be correct, given the source below which was cited. If you want to go ahead and correct that problem in the Wikipedia article, and ping me, I can do a final round of review. Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 17:31, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

"Hypothesis One. We expected to see a strong divergence between molecular and evolutionary biologists, given the emphasis on the investigation of the intrinsic, structural nature of the gene in the former discipline and the emphasis on genes as markers of phenotypic effects in the latter discipline. " ... "Hypotheses one and two, which suggest, in broad terms, that biologists whose research focus is in evolutionary biology conceptualize genes primarily via their effects on phenotypes, are supported in some tests but not others. The fact that the hypotheses are supported when indirect questions are used, but not when direct questions are used..." How Biologists Conceptualize Genes: An empirical study

• I just saw that this article has been nominated for deletion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Empirical limits in science Thriley (talk) 16:25, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Placing on hold while article is at AfD. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:44, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

@Mary Mark Ockerbloom: It's good to have your eyes on this. I've made the change. Any other improvements would be welcome. John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk) 03:01, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

• Even if the article is kept, I do not think it appropriate to publicize it on DYK as the content is abysmal and should not be promoted as a legitimate expansion. I request that this nomination be rejected entirely. jps (talk) 12:26, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
• The AFD discussion was closed as redirect. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 04:55, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

Redirect

I looked through this article and cannot see anything worth keeping. Our article on empiricism can use some expansion, I would wager, but this should be done over there and not here. To start, the article did not even define what was meant by a "limit" and, because of that, never really established what the scope of the article was supposed to be. There are physiological limits to the senses, there are epistemological limits to what knowledge can be gained empirically, and there are even political arguments as to what empirical evidence is good for in the context of persuading others or making claims about questions of moral or legal judgements. None of these points are adequately identified in the lede and then the rest of the article goes on to give a pretty half-assed description of how sensory perception works without really engaging in the literature that argues that our division into five senses is arbitrary and cultural, for example. Finally, the article went on about certain advances in science that are made through improved observations and then questions about language. Yuck. Wikipedia is WP:NOT a place to write original essays like this. It is a place to summarize the best available sources in context.

Some of the text might be usable on other articles, but as a standalone, this one just wasn't worth keeping. I think preserving the history is fine in case someone wants to use some of this material elsewhere.

jps (talk) 12:14, 6 July 2022 (UTC)