Talk:Physics/Archive 5

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History merge

I've added tags proposing that Physics#History be merged into History of Physics and replaced with a much shorter summary. The current history section dominates the article, accounting for probably more than half the text. Summarizing the history briefly would allow room to expand the sections on Theories and Research, which I think should constitute the bulk of this article. Gnixon 16:16, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to be (very) WP:BOLD and just cut the history section from this article. I've read through it along with History of Physics and I didn't see any information here that wasn't there. It might be worth having a short "History" section in this article that summarizes the other one, but the current section is nothing like a summary. Gnixon 22:58, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Changes

I've recently made a number of WP:BOLD changes to the article. My goal was to rearrange existing content into the skeleton of an article with expanded coverage. To make room for more discussions of theory and content, I made the following cuts:

• Moved content in "History" to History of Physics. This cut the total size of the article in half, since History previously dominated.
• Moved table of theories to Physics/Theories and linked to it. Table was too large to convey information at a glance, and it broke up the flow of prose.
• Moved table of fields to Physics/Subfields and linked to it. Same reason as above.

I also moved each of the theories and subfields into their own subsections. Each needs to be greatly expanded to justify its own subsection, but it seems entirely appropriate to do so. In addition to the above major changes, I also added a couple of images. Please help to expand the new subsections, or comment here if you think I'm a dunce for doing this. Cheers, Gnixon 00:38, 17 July 2007 (UTC).

Krea has made some changes which were from the development article. After adding this page to my watchlist, I was pleasantly surprised to see changes for the good in this article. Good work, Gnixon. Perhaps we might all work on this article together. --Ancheta Wis 11:17, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

More bold edits

About a week after proposing and making changes above, which left the article in sort of a skeleton form, only one or two of the sections had been expanded by others (my thanks to those who wrote something). Because of that, I've gone ahead and copied info into each section from the leads of relevant main articles. Unfortunately, most of those articles aren't very good, so the writing copied here is mediocre and inconsistent, but at least there's something. I've re-deleted the gigantic, awful History section twice after it was reinserted by people who seemed to think the deletion was simple vandalism. If people disagree with deleting that section, or with the other major changes I've made, please comment here so we can discuss them further. I'm not trying to WP:OWN this article, but there's been very little life on this page over the past few months. Gnixon 03:34, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Since the text copied from other articles isn't that great, I'd encourage knowledgeable editors to try rewriting a section from scratch. If incremental improvements are possible, that's great, too, but please try to avoid adding unnecessary detail into this very broad article. Gnixon 03:34, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I think you hit the nail on the head earlier when you said that having the Talk:Physics/wip pages puts people off from editing here (or there). You might persuade more people to contribute if you could come to a joint position with User:Krea and User:Ancheta Wis, who seem to be the only survivors of the wip wars. We now have two overview-level Physics articles with almost nothing in common; in particular, the "visible" Physics ignores the global structure that was thought out with some care in the wip debates. In fact, it seems to correspond just to two of the sections in Talk:Physics/wip/development_article (i.e. "Principles & concepts" and "Current Research"). It would be great if you all could produce an agreed merge of the two overviews, with creation of spin-off pages as appropriate, and finally delete the development article.

Sure, I'll try to talk with them. I remember being concerned at some point that the wip pages might be spending a lot of space waxing philosophical about the nature of physics, but when I've glanced at them more recently, there seems to be a good bit of useful material there. Gnixon 20:08, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

FWIW, here are some questions/suggestions based on a cursory reading:

• Do you have some sort of objection to use of WP:SUMMARY, specifically to {{main}} tags?

I intended to put in a bunch of "main" tags, but keep forgetting. I'll try to do that soon. Gnixon 20:07, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

• Physics should certainly include sections discussing definition and history. As usual they should summarise longer discussions on pages devoted to these topics (since both are large topics in themselves). The development article contains a lot of material that could be used for such pages, but I agree that, as it stands, it covers these topics in much too much depth for an overview. (I havn't checked to see whether the history content is already duplicated at History of Physics).

I agree that this article should have a history section, but as you say, it's a big subject, and the History of Physics page doesn't seem to have a good lead. I was loosely planning to try and write a summary of the history at some point, but it's a fairly big job to get it right, and I thought it would be best to just let that paragraph in the lead serve until someone comes up with something better. Gnixon 20:07, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks to anon 68.. for putting in a mention of statistical physics; this now needs to be fleshed out a bit in the section that now includes this in its title.

Should we describe stat mech as a subject distinct from thermo instead of as a part of it? I'm not aware of any applications of stat mech to areas outside of thermo. Admittedly, there isn't nearly enough coverage of stat mech in the thermo section, but I'm not sure it deserves its own section. Gnixon 20:07, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

• Richard Feynman identified the most important discovery of physics as "everything is made of atoms". Like many universities, mine includes a core physics course called "Gases, liquids and solids" (sometimes called "Properties of matter") which outlines the implication of the atomic theory of matter for...well, everything. I think this deserves a place among your core principles.

Good point. I tried to say something about continuum mechanics under "classical mechanics," but there should certainly be more stuff. I've never heard of a (U.S.) university with a course like the one you describe, but it seems like a good idea. Where would you suggest trying to work it in? Gnixon 20:07, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

• Why is some of the material you have spun off (e.g. the tables) on sub-pages of Physics rather than top-level pages?

It was a tough decision to remove those tables from the main article, since obviously a lot of work went into making them, but I thought their large size and level of detail made them disrupt the article without providing much at-a-glance info. The reason I put them into subpages instead of the main namespace was just that I didn't know if they were appropriate as actual articles. If someone wants to put them in the main namespace, and that conforms with policies and practices, etc., I'm totally fine with it. Of the three thing I put in subpages, I think Physics/Further reading is the most useful. Gnixon 20:07, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

• IMHO, one strategic mistake of the wip discussion was to focus on the most controversial stuff first, especially the lede. It seems to me that a good strategy is to (i) decide on the overall structure of the article (done rather carefully at Talk:Physics/wip already) (ii) fill in the sections starting with the least controversial, preferably on the visible Physics page to allow normal wiki process to help (iii) spin off any sections which threaten to grow too long, e.g. due to a controversy, to specialised pages (keeping a summary, of course) (iv) the lede then practically writes itself since it is supposed to be a concise summary of the rest of the article.

I agree. The lead right now isn't really a summary of the article, but I hope it will become one eventually. I've been putting off trying until a decent History section is available and the rest of the article settles into equilibrium. If anyone wants to try writing a good lead, I'd welcome it, but I'm quite concerned about letting the lead go off into long philosophical diversions about the nature of physics. Gnixon 20:07, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

• Also IMHO, as a physicist I find the discussion of what "physics" really means quite interesting, except for the "really" since obviously it means different things to different people. Maybe I'm naive, but I would be surprised in this case if people were so dogmatic that you would get Intelligent Design-style edit wars over each word in the main article summary, or revert wars in the page were the different POVs were described in depth. A nice page could come out of the discussion of the various philosophical, sociological, and practical ways the term is used. Nevertheless, I concur with practically everybody that the bulk of the Physics page should describe the academic discipline as it currently exists.

I agree it would be interesting to have a section for such issues, but I'm pretty worried that it could get out of control. Lots of editors who are drawn to Physics seem to be wrestling with the question of "what is physics," or "what is quantum," etc. There are too many big, interesting questions for me to easily write a concise, useful summary section, but if someone can come up with one that won't be vulnerable to exponential growth, I'd be glad to see it. Gnixon 20:08, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

• It would be nice to see the structure of the article reflect the fact that the theory/experiment distinction is essentially orthogonal to the division into sub-fields. For instance, the discussion of theory vs experiment could be part of the (currently non-existant) definition section.

Agreed. I just didn't know where to put it for now. Gnixon 20:08, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

PaddyLeahy 17:35, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks very much for your insightful comments, Paddy. I hope you don't mind that I've inserted responses. Gnixon 20:07, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Why I switched the Relativity and Quantum Mechanics sections

I have put the relativity section just before the quantum mechanics section, instead of just after it. My main reason for doing that is that the quantum mechanics section refers to relativity but not vice versa. Second, there is a widespread opinion that relativity represents less of a break with classical mechanics than does quantum mechanics. Third, relativity was largely complete by 1915, when quantum mechanics was still in its early stages. Cardamon 00:33, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I think those are all good reasons, and I like the move. Gnixon 04:27, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I also agree (FWIW) Amit 18:48, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Not Featured yet?!

I surprised this article has not been featured yet. Let's fix it up, folks! Amit 18:49, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd say it still has a way to go before it's ready to be featured. Maybe now would be a good time for a peer review, in order to get suggestions for improving things. I'm a little too busy in the real world to participate much right now, but it would be great if someone else could try to drum up some activity. Gnixon 14:56, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I'll get on with it as soon as I get some time off from work. I'm supposed to be a wikibreak right now :-/ Amit@Talk 07:57, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Lead section review

There's been a lot of work put into the lead section at the development page, and it hopefully also incorporates some elements from the current lead section: thus, I will now move it to the main article for some exposure. This is by no means the final product, and feel free to modify it as you see fit, but please help the article review process by also putting the reasoning for your changes at the wip page. Krea 02:28, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

If anyone can help with the translation of the word phusis, or whatever the appropriate progenitor word was, that would be helpful. Thank you. Krea 02:57, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

added link to Physis (φύσις) --Ancheta Wis 03:42, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Why a previous sentence was not so good

This sentence:

Generally seen as an important subject, advances in physics often translate to the technological sector, and sometimes resonate with the other sciences, and even mathematics and philosophy.

had a couple of problems. It seems to say that advances in physics are generally seen as an important subject, although one would expect it to say that physics is an important subject. Also, in physics, translate and resonate can be verbs describing motion so, at least to my ears, the sentence comes off as an unintentional pun. I find myself wondering if there are subjects with which advances in physics occasionally rotate or vibrate. I did a minimal rewrite of the sentence. Cardamon 07:17, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Good point and good point! I've made the changes directly to the referential copy since they make the sentence much clearer and don't involve any major changes. Krea 14:53, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Previous Lead Section

Let me note here that El C made a revert to the old lead section and mentioned that he thought it was better. Firstly, please refrain from reverting back to the old lead without more discussion, especially as the new lead section is only here for general review: I did not delete the old one.

I wont go into the reasons why I think the new lead supersedes the old one here unless anyone explicitly brings it up, but I would note that this issue is far from resolved amongst a few editors, and I encourage people to discuss their objections. Thank you. Krea 15:38, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Comments

I won't have much time to work on the article in the near future, but I'd like to make a couple comments about recent changes. I'll sign each paragraph here to help with threading. Gnixon 06:11, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

First, I have to admit I'm not a big fan of the new lead. My main gripe is that it waxes too philosophical about the nature of physics and its importance. It's better, I think, to lay out facts about the topic simply. The new lead is not a summary of the article, as WP:LEAD indicates it should be. The old lead wasn't perfect, particularly on the point of summarizing the article, but I personally think we should revert to it until the new one improves some more. Gnixon 06:11, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Second, the new section on applied physics contains useful information, but the presentation is horrible. Articles should use bulleted lists only sparingly (as a guideline somewhere indicates), but that section has a list of probably 30 or more topics that are somehow related to physics. Until the list can be reformatted into readable prose, I think it should be removed. Gnixon 06:11, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Finally, I'm glad you guys from the "work in progress" page are back to working on the main article. I haven't looked at those pages recently, but I look forward to seeing what you've come up with. One request: before you make big changes like replacing the lead, please post here (with a copy of the text) to get comments from those of us who haven't been following along at the WIP pages. Gnixon 06:11, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Gnixon, thank you for your response to the contributions; I am concerned about the dropping of the History section. Joke137 in fact suggested that the History Section be the 2nd after the lead. For philosophical reasons, this is sound. One of the influences in Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Ludwik Fleck, notes that it is impossible to view any developing subject without also noting its history. Otherwise, we are left with an article which is fundamentally incoherent.

As you note, there is a problem with the bulleted lists in the Applications section. I simply added explanatory text to elements of the table which formerly inhabited the article, and have no problem simply dropping it. However, that leaves out topics which could lead to further evolution of the article. For example, just as 'biophysics' is now recognized as a seminal field, there is a so-called 'econophysics' field of physics which could be seminal. There are editors of Wikipedia who got their employment in this, after getting their Ph.D.'s in more traditional fields of physics; there is a 'financial engineering' major at MIT now, etc. How could this have happened? It simply turns out that the flexibility of mind needed in physics has been finally recognized to be a 'door opener' to employment. What might this have to do with physics? Well, 'open-mindedness' is a well-known attribute for success in the field.

I have no problem dropping the bulleted items, if the community of editors agree. So be it.

The new lead is from the development article, which was intended to replace this one, eventually. Now that this article is improved, changes are not quite so urgent, I suppose. But the new lead sets the stage for items in the development article. That brings us to the question of organization of this page, upon which consensus was reached in the development article. The subject is thousands of years old, and yet reaches into the future as far as the mind's eye can go. That is one reason for Krea's stately lead.

Interested readers can view the current state of the development page here. Krea considered bringing its entire content to the talk page here, which might have forestalled your concerns. Yet that could also have introduced issues which might be avoided by simply viewing the linked page.

--Ancheta Wis 09:16, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Regarding "econophysics", "biophysics", etc., I agree they deserve a mention. It would be great to add a small subsection to "Fields" entitled "Interdisciplinary Research" or something like that. The fact that the WIP version was intended to replace the article does not necessarily mean that it deserves to do so. I'm not ripping on the WIP stuff, but if we're going to bring in material from it, let's do so bit-by-bit to address specific weaknesses of the current article. The current article is at least decent, so let's go with evolution, not revolution. Remember, even after we recognize that physics is a grand subject, there's a lot of work left to do in order to achieve an article that reflects its grandness. Best not to aim too high at first, or we'll be left with over-broad generalities with little concrete content; I know that from personal experience. Gnixon 15:47, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Just a quick comment about the history section: I am also very concerned that it has been dropped completely. What we need is for somebody to make a summary of the history of the subject that mentions the major aspects, and glosses over the finer details rather than just cut a chunk of the main history article out, or discard it completely.

Now, about the lead section, I did try (to an extent) to make a brief summary of the article: it mentions it's history, influence, and mentions that it is subdivided into major subfields. I didn't go into too much detail (especially on the last point about it's subdivision) since it would make the lead too long. Also, I'm not sure I prefer mentioning specific areas like QM and GR in the lead since physics, as a whole, is much more than two about two collections of theorems. I think physics is too broad a topic for one to adhere to the guidelines on summarization too strictly. In fact, I tried to do this, and the lead ended up horrendously long. I do agree and think that maybe he influence bit of the lead is a bit too long though.

About it being too philosophical about the nature of the subject, I personally don't see it; but then again, I need your, and other editors, help in order to show me what bits you don't like. The problem I have with the old lead (and I've been moaning about this for a very long time!) is that it was simply incorrect (at least, to me). I've argued before that if one wishes to put a definition of the subject in the lead, to define it as "the study of energy, space, time" etc. was technically incorrect since no serious definition of the subject ever defined it dependent on ideas developed within it. In the course of discussion, some people have taken issue with this, but plenty of textbooks (for a start) support my position. One can, quite appropriately, simply request its removal based on it being too philosophical (as opposed to it being incorrect) but I think that would be a mistake. Quite frankly, it's not that philosophical (and you'd hate to see what I'd put in there if it was left to my own devices!), but again, I need your input and to help me find a solution acceptable to everyone: more specific criticism would be nice.

Finally, about moving the lead to the article, I said before that there was nothing more that I wanted to add and I needed others to help me improve it further: I moved it to the article for this purpose instead of this talk page since exposure to it in these talk pages can be quite low actually (especially at this point in time when general activity seems to be low). I've seen this before since I did move a previous version of the lead to these talk pages and received precious little comment. We've been arguing about the lead for quite some time now, and quite frankly, I think we're at the stage now where we need to finalize it and move on. What we need is a good definition of the subject, and a paragraph or two that summarizes the rest of the article; as long as the lead has these, and there is nothing incorrect, I want to avoid bickering about details as much as possible. Krea 20:28, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I guess what I liked about the old lead was that it was pretty concise and that it had a nice little summary of the history of the field. I was never too thrilled with its definition of physics, but I couldn't think of one I liked better. There's a recurring problem with this page: since "physics" is such a broad subject, subsections of the article (particularly "history" and the lead) tend to grow much too long, losing their focus. The very long history section from awhile back was a good example of this problem; bringing it back in much, much shorter form would be great. I think the current lead and the current astronomy section suffer from the growth problem, too. For the lead, I'd like to (a) find a simple, concise definition of "physics", (b) use a brief exposition of its development to clarify what "physics" means (i.e., bring back that part of the old lead), and (c) summarize the sections of the article, much as it does now. I would cut everything else. Gnixon 03:10, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Krea, for addressing my above comments. More are below. I don't mean to "bicker about details", but it's also not like we're going to write one perfect lead and move on; the lead, like everything else in the article, will continue to improve over time. Let's continue making small, gradual improvements to the lead as well as the rest of the article. Gnixon 15:47, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

fields of physics

There is a section currently called fields which I propose to rename fields of physics, if no one objects in the next several days. My problem is that the bare word field is ambiguous in a physics article, as field has a defined meaning which conflicts with its use as a header. --Ancheta Wis 10:31, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Good point, but "fields of physics" is still vague, and it's redundant with the title of the article. How about "Research Fields" or "Fields of Research". Gnixon 14:46, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

interpolation into Newton's quotations

For annotating Newton's quotes, it is possible to interpolate footnotes directly, thanks to the wiki technology. Might this be acceptable? It feels strange to do so, because it may interfere with the readings directly from Newton's mind, as it were. Might that be alright? --Ancheta Wis 11:29, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

For example, Feynman Vol. 1 chapter 22 directly explains part of Newton's 3rd quote. I can use a wiki link or interpolate a footnote, or I could just talk about it outside the quote, so as not to disturb it. Which might be preferable? --Ancheta Wis 11:36, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

After waiting, I propose to interpolate the Feynman note as a footnote within the 3rd quote. --Ancheta Wis 23:50, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it makes sense to have a History section that consists almost entirely of two long Newton quotes along with a few vague statements about the development of science and physics' claim to be "the most fundamental science". This article is starting to look less like "Physics" and more like "The role of Physics in the Philosophy of Science." Gnixon 14:43, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

physical approximations

The history section implicitly contains Newton's physical approximations. Looking back on this, which seems natural because of my training in physics, Newton's approach to these physical approximations is the subject of academic research to this day. There does not seem to be enough material in the encyclopedia about this. Do any editors have any suggestions? --Ancheta Wis 10:02, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Can you be more specific about which approximations you mean? The link is to a book about Einstein's formative years. (!??) The level of detail you're discussing seems more appropriate for a sub-article. Gnixon 14:49, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Some comments

Ancheta, Krea. I'm really glad you guys are back to working on the article directly, but it would have been nice if, before making sweeping changes, you'd post the new text on this page for pre-discussion. I know much of the content you've brought in exists at the WIP pages, but not everyone looks at those.

In my opinion, there are a number of problems with the new material, and I think the previous versions were better---my first instinct is to revert and work on proposed new text here. Instead, in the interest of avoiding edit warring (which I don't have time for, anyway), here are some comments: (Gnixon 15:30, 20 September 2007 (UTC))

• Phrases like "in everyday terms", "the world around us", "Physics is generally seen as an important subject" are too informal. Generally, the lead could could be phrased in more formal language without becoming inaccessible to the novice. Gnixon 15:30, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

• I like the structure of the new lead, particularly how it is based on the layout of the article. The first paragraph needs more work, though. For example, pronunciation and etymology should be give parenthetically at the very top. We should work on the definition. How do dictionaries define phsyics? Watch the qualifiers---"such as" and "for example" are redundant; better to avoid them when possible, anyway. "It is the general analysis of nature, conducted to understand how the world around us behaves" tells me very little about what is "physics"; it applies equally well to "science." It's clearly difficult to define physics without being circular: "Physics is the study of the physical world." Still, we can do better. We should be guided by WP:LEAD. Gnixon 15:30, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

• Basing the entire history section on two Newton quotes is a mistake. Newton was an important figure, but so were several others, and we can't afford to give so much detail in the top-level article. The info is good, though, and someone should check that it's included in the Newton article. It's unfortunate that History of Physics is too crappy to offer much guidance. If we figure out a good History section, it'd be great to use that as an outline for modifying History of Physics. Maybe we should cut "History" and try to put together a version on this talk page. Gnixon 15:30, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

• "Applications and Influence" should be moved to a subsection of "Fields" as "Applied Physics." Also, the language is too vague. We need to give specific examples of the major areas and applications of Applied Physics. Too informal are phrases like "had to be discovered before they could be used; today they can be taught to schoolchildren", "what do we know and when do we know it....", "physics reasoning can handle items which normally would be mired in conundrum and uncertainty." (I assume the "thus happiness..." line was just added by some pseudo-vandal passerby; it should obviously be cut.) The section seems to be trying too hard to make very general statements; for example, little content is added by "there are many fields of physics which have strong applied branches," especially when it stands alone, without any supporting examples. The 2nd-to-last sentence of the first paragraph has a grammatical error. Gnixon 15:30, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

These new blocks of text are well-motivated, but they need a lot of work. Gnixon 15:30, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

One of the problems of the development article is that it stayed on the talk page too long. It motivates editors when they see text on the article page. So I propose leaving the text on the article page, if only as an irritant, and copying sections to the talk page to work toward consensus. That, I imagine, was your motivation for the alterations to the history section, after all.

One of the convenient features of physics is that it has a very long half-life. Thus we can still study equations that are centuries old but which are still vital. So one of the features of the 'History' is that it is still alive. In fact, that is a marker of good physics.

I am serious about the 'happiness'. Jeremy Bentham's utilitarianism was about happiness, even if it doesn't play very well to American ears. Anyone who has used a good digital camera, or a decent car, knows what I mean. They are utilitarian, but a good engineer designed and built them. That could only have come from a decent physics education.

But if we consider the physics of Newton, etc (everything in the 'core theories'), they are history, and at the same time, not obsolete. This is hardly the case in any other field of knowledge. Please let me know if you know other examples in other branches of knowledge.

So if we work over sections such as History or Applications, I propose deconstructing specific sentences, and replacing them one sentence at a time in an evolutionary scheme, as you suggested above.

That said, it occurs to me that History and Core theories might be combined as examples of 'vademecum physics' (meaning from the handbook). But the bald statement of say, Newton's dynamical equations, leaves out a lot of subtleties that the founders considered, and restated, and which live on without alteration. That kind of perfection took centuries, and I would like to have that conveyed in the article. So the 3rd quote of Newton would be a nice precis of mechanics, in my opinion, for a History section. I took care in the footnotes of the history section 3rd quote, to show how the motion of the planets can now be simulated by high school kids on their programmable calculators. That is real progress in education, in my opinion, which is what I meant by "had to be discovered before they could be used; today they can be taught to schoolchildren". Those word may have been too informal, and I welcome your critique. --Ancheta Wis 01:32, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

"Happiness" is a strange word to use in a physics article; I'm going to have a hard time coming around to that. I'm okay with going sentence-by-sentence through parts of the article that are already decent. For example, I think the lead is decent enough for that process. On the other hand, I don't think the History section has enough value right now to try evolving from it. We would do better to start with an outline, and to remember to stay concise when we start writing paragraphs. Gnixon 04:09, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

My point is that all our changes should be small improvements, with emphasis on both "small" and "improvement". An exception would be a comprehensive, yet very concise, History section, if and when that's available (talk page first!). I see the argument for sticking something new and experimental in the article. That's fine as long as it (1) has some minimum level of quality (the current History fails there; likewise, I never come up with something worth inserting), and (2) doesn't delete useful content (replacing the previous lead may have done so). Gnixon 04:09, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I think we can evolve the current lead, and I think the Applications section can be evolved as an Applied Physics subsection, as long as neither of those sections are abandoned as-is. That should be plenty of work to keep us busy and justify deleting History for now, right? Let me be totally clear that I think a great future project would be to develop a decent, concise (!!) History section; I'm just afraid that if we slap something together now, it will detract from the article, not add to it. Finally, I've said it before, and I'll say it again, please, please, please resist allowing philosophy to creep into the article---the subject is broad enough already. Gnixon 04:09, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

As I mentioned on your talk page, sorry if I'm coming off as too critical. I'm glad you and Krea are working on this, and I hope it brings even more attention to the article. Sorry I haven't had time to contribute more constructively. Gnixon 04:09, 21 September 2007 (UTC)