It seems to me that several words get thrown around here in Hillberts. And the way that an individual interprets (or misinterprets) that word has a lot to do with the misunderstandings on this board.

In an attempt to prevent this, I present this thread. I will post the most common and contentious words that come up often. I would ask that you add words to the list BUT DON'T DEFINE THEM.

We will then have another thread where everyone can define what words they want. In the subsequent posts of this next thread, I would ask that we debate the interpretation and come to as close to consensus as we can on their definition.

Then a third thread will be created from this that can be "stickied" to hillbert as a "semantic primer" for anyone that wants to talk here so they understand were WE are coming from.

So the words that I put up for disambiguating are:


Science:
Theory:
Fact:
Model:


Religion:
Dogma:
Doctrine:
Ritual:


Classical Mechanics:
Quantum Mechanics:
Relativity:
Statistical Mechanics:
Particle Physics:


Darwinian Evolution:
New Synthesis Evolution:
Intelligent Design Evolution:
Von Daniken Evolution:


Please add to the list or give me comments on the usefulness or waste-of-time-edness of this idea.

An excellent idea, but I fear it might be somewhat problematic in some cases.

A few words I'd like to see are;

Christianity: ( I am aware that certain types of fundamentalists aren't exactly the majority, so perhaps we should clarify what in general is meant with this. )
Creationism: ( especially in context of the big bang's 'created out of nothingness' vs. 'divine creation' )

There's probably some more..

Evidence

i think that one's missing

Nice idea. We should work on a Hilbert glossary in our spare time, that would be fun and I would definately want to contribute. jcl has some stuff on his infinity website but Im afraid its all in German.

I would add:

scientist
research
observation
law
pattern

also since people are fond of calling fundamentalist Christians like me crazy or nutjobs, I'd like to review the criteria for that also.



intelligence

CURRENT LIST
-------------------------------------------------------------
Science:
Religion:
Philosophy:


Experimental Science:
Theoretical Science:
Computational Science:
Mainstream Science:
Theory:
Fact:
Model:
Law:
Axiom:
Proof:
Scientific Method:
Research:
Observation:
Pattern:
Evidence:

Classical Mechanics:
Quantum Mechanics:
Special Relativity:
General Relativity:
Statistical Mechanics:
Particle Physics:
Cosmology Physics:



Religion:
Dogma:
Doctrine:
Ritual:
Soul:
Heaven:
Hell:
Christianity:
Islam:
Buddhism:
Taoism:
Atheism:
Agnosticism:
Mainstream Religion:



Creationism Evolution:
Darwinian Evolution:
New Synthesis Evolution:
Intelligent Design Evolution:
Von Daniken Evolution:



Intelligence:
Sentience:
Thinking:
Crazy:
Ignorant:
Reason:
Rational:
Emotions:
Emotional:

----------------------------------------------------------

I would not add "Scientist" to the list; at least not now. Once we define Science, a scientist becomes merely one who holds to it's tenets. Hence IMO we should focus on "science" first.


Please note that once we start defining this list, we will post the "wikipedia definition" as a link to an external definition but our definitions as text. After all, this is meant to be OUR wording, not theirs. In cases where we agree that they are the same (ie: wikipedia pretty much nails it), we'll make a note of that. We may not even NEED to come up with our definitions in some/most cases if wikipedia summarizes our views exactly.

Thus I suggest the following format:

Science:
To follow the Scientific Method -- F69

Scientific Method:
A process to answer a question based on the following procedure... --F69