Talk:Formation and evolution of the Solar System

"Stories" vs. "models" and such

How to talk about the speculations of scientists in fields like astronomy and astrophysics is debatable. Calling them "stories" strikes me as needless antagonistic, for the very use of the word "model" implies the model could be incorrect (ignore the climate change clique's abuse of models, or at least as far as I know astronomers are as willing to discard models proven incorrect as other normal scientists). Historian (talk) 09:43, 1 April 2016 (CEST)

Is there a better word for 'the recounting of a series of events that occurred long ago without any witnesses or ways to verify or reproduce it'? "Story" seems about right. Why should we ignore the abuse of one particular model but not that of another?

Note, please sign your comments with 4 tildes in a row in Discussion pages, we don't have SineBot running to do that automatically if we forget. Use colons to indent from the previous comment so replies are clear.

Thanks. Still trying to figure this out. Repeated use of the "Show Preview" button is very useful to sandbox your comments. Three colons at the start and it indents three times. Ah ha! The four tildes go at the end, also, add a space after the last sentence. Other Galaxian comments do not show tildes in the edit window. Rectified (talk) 12:34, 1 April 2016 (CEST)

What do you expect to gain by [expletive deleted] on astronomers who are making these speculations in good faith? Sure, they can't take a time machine and go back and prove it by direct observation, nor reproduce this in a lab with another universe they create and run on fast forward, but they do have theories and hypotheses based on observations, and at least some of them are falsifiable with further observations and additional data we collect from telescopes and probes.

"Creation myth" is far worse, and I believe beyond the pale. But I suppose this is something we're going to have to take to our own arbitration process, which we'll need to create ASAP. In the meanwhile, please don't make any more changes along this line until we hash out InfoGalactic's policy on this, "Be Bold" is not the right approach for making new policies of such fundamental nature, and it's edit warring at best. Historian (talk) 12:07, 1 April 2016 (CEST)

I expect to gain many [expletive deleteds upon] astronomers-in-good-faith. The nebular hypotheses is 'cast into doubt' by many observations, as well as by its un-reproducible nature. It cannot be falsified in the Popper sense; it cannot be either confirmed or denied.

The point is not to be contrarian, Rectified. This is exactly the sort of thing that we don't want on the Fact pages. Save it for when we've got Context and Opinion levels. The objective is to find the most impartial, least controversial language possible, not the most controversial that one can somehow justify.Renegade (talk) 14:43, 1 April 2016 (CEST)

Excellent. We've sandboxed the very first edit war. Rectified (talk) 14:59, 1 April 2016 (CEST)

If you wish to argue the semantics and the connotation of specific words (perfectly acceptable, imo) used in an Infogalactic article, should the "trigger word" be brought to the attention of the reader? Rectified (talk) 12:34, 1 April 2016 (CEST)