I agree, Edwina, though I tell my students to always check with other sources (and don’t copy!). One of our brightest students, and my TA for a couple of years, was a big contributor of articles and editor for Wikipedia. He took it very seriously. There are rules about citing sources (failures to do this are typically noted). There is supposed to be no creative writing, just reporting wahat is said in identifiable sources. Both of these rules are often violated.
John Collier Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Associate Philosophy, University of KwaZulu-Natal http://web.ncf.ca/collier From: Edwina Taborsky [mailto:tabor...@primus.ca] Sent: Tuesday, 13 December 2016 5:09 PM To: Benjamin Udell <baud...@gmail.com> Cc: Peirce List <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce and Science (was Democracy) I don't think one should take a 'snooty' or elitist approach to Wikipedia. Their site is not totally filled with simplistic ignorant commentary by and for the unwashed masses. Their political commentary is, yes, biased as are most political commentaries. But their strictly mathematical and scientific comments are, as written by mathematicians and scientists, usually quite acceptable and informative. Edwina ----- Original Message ----- From: Benjamin Udell<mailto:baud...@gmail.com> Cc: Peirce List<mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu> Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2016 9:58 AM Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce and Science (was Democracy) I stated that it was Wikipedia to make clear that it was "for what it's worth". I confess that I was pressed for time. I did subsequently send a link to an article on the Planck length for the general public from Fermilab Today: http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/archive/archive_2013/today13-11-01_NutshellReadMore.html . The other links that I sent were from the NYT (2009) about the 2009 paper in Nature, and the abstract of a scientific paper (2014) which contained a link to a PDF of the 2014 paper itself. In addition, here's a link to Nature's summary "An intergalactic race in space and time: A burst of γ-rays lets scientists test quantum theories of gravity", for the general public, of the 2009 paper: http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091028/full/news.2009.1044.html . Here's a link to the 2009 paper itself (requires payment) "A limit on the variation of the speed of light arising from quantum gravity effects" http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7271/full/nature08574.html . Here is the abstract http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009Natur.462..331A : A cornerstone of Einstein’s special relativity is Lorentz invariance—the postulate that all observers measure exactly the same speed of light in vacuum, independent of photon-energy. While special relativity assumes that there is no fundamental length-scale associated with such invariance, there is a fundamental scale (the Planck scale, lPlanck ~1.62×10-33 cm or EPlanck = MPlanck c2 ~1.22×1019 GeV), at which quantum effects are expected to strongly affect the nature of space-time. There is great interest in the (not yet validated) idea that Lorentz invariance might break near the Planck scale. A key test of such violation of Lorentz invariance is a possible variation of photon speed with energy. Even a tiny variation in photon speed, when accumulated over cosmological light-travel times, may be revealed by observing sharp features in γ-ray burst (GRB) light-curves. Here we report the detection of emission up to ~31GeV from the distant and short GRB090510. We find no evidence for the violation of Lorentz invariance, and place a lower limit of 1.2EPlanck on the scale of a linear energy dependence (or an inverse wavelength dependence), subject to reasonable assumptions about the emission (equivalently we have an upper limit of lPlanck /1.2 on the length scale of the effect). Our results disfavour quantum-gravity theories in which the quantum nature of space-time on a very small scale linearly alters the speed of light. [highlighting added] Best, Ben On 12/13/2016 9:29 AM, kirst...@saunalahti.fi<mailto:kirst...@saunalahti.fi> wrote: If Wikipedia is taken as a scientific authority, then the situation is really bad. Kirsti Jerry LR Chandler kirjoitti 11.12.2016 22:36: Ben, List: On Dec 11, 2016, at 1:48 PM, Benjamin Udell <baud...@gmail.com><mailto:baud...@gmail.com> wrote: According to Wikipedia, the Planck length is, in principle, within a factor of 10, the shortest measurable length – and no theoretically known improvement in measurement instruments could change that. But some physicists have found that that's not quite as much of a barrier as it may seem to be. Your post is unclear. I know of no mathematical nor physical nor chemical reason for such a conclusion about measurements of commensurabilities. Is the mathematics of electric field theory constrained by the physical principles that motivate this conclusion about this measurement of Planck’s constant? Perhaps others may be able to expand on the origin of this conjecture. But, from my perspective, it is merely another example of the problems of scientific epistemologies and Wikipedia’s style of informing public opinion. Historically, this issue has arise on this list serve with respect controversial Wikipedia articles that appear to be authored by a member of Peirce-L. Cheers Jerry ________________________________ ----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu<mailto:peirce-L@list.iupui.edu> . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu<mailto:l...@list.iupui.edu> with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
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