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[gnuastro-commits] master edb62e3: Book: Gnuastro manifesto citing the M
From: |
Mohammad Akhlaghi |
Subject: |
[gnuastro-commits] master edb62e3: Book: Gnuastro manifesto citing the Maneage paper |
Date: |
Tue, 16 Mar 2021 20:51:09 -0400 (EDT) |
branch: master
commit edb62e3eb8f8199ab0d01165a93fec913ef64a4b
Author: Mohammad Akhlaghi <mohammad@akhlaghi.org>
Commit: Mohammad Akhlaghi <mohammad@akhlaghi.org>
Book: Gnuastro manifesto citing the Maneage paper
Until now the second section of Gnuastro's book was simply called "Science
and its tools", but this wasn't too clear on its purpose. Also, within the
text, previously we had only given the Gitlab page for the very old version
of Maneage. But since then a paper has been submitted on Maneage which is
much more clear and purposefully written (arXiv:2006.03018).
With this commit, the section is now called "Gnuastro manifesto: science
and its tools" to be more explicit about the purpose of this chapter. From
the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a manifesto is "a written statement
declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer".
Also, I noticed that the famous quote from Buckheit & Donoho (1996) fit
very nicely in the part where we discussed how English papers aren't enough
to convey the science result, so it has been added.
Finally the double quotations have been removed from the word 'puzzle' when
referring to Kuhn's usage of the term to make it more readable. It is clear
from the footnote immediately after it that this comes from Kuhn's book.
---
doc/gnuastro.texi | 19 +++++++++++--------
1 file changed, 11 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)
diff --git a/doc/gnuastro.texi b/doc/gnuastro.texi
index 3aba1d1..de00c64 100644
--- a/doc/gnuastro.texi
+++ b/doc/gnuastro.texi
@@ -852,7 +852,7 @@ In @ref{Tutorials} some real life examples of how these
programs might be used a
@node Science and its tools, Your rights, Quick start, Introduction
-@section Science and its tools
+@section Gnuastro manifesto: Science and its tools
History of science indicates that there are always inevitably unseen faults,
hidden assumptions, simplifications and approximations in all our theoretical
models, data acquisition and analysis techniques.
It is precisely these that will ultimately allow future generations to advance
the existing experimental and theoretical knowledge through their new solutions
and corrections.
@@ -888,7 +888,7 @@ This kind of subjective experience is prone to serious
misunderstandings about t
This attitude is further encouraged through non-free
software@footnote{@url{https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html}}, poorly
written (or non-existent) scientific software manuals, and non-reproducible
papers@footnote{Where the authors omit many of the analysis/processing
``details'' from the paper by arguing that they would make the paper too
long/unreadable.
However, software engineers have been dealing with such issues for a long time.
There are thus software management solutions that allow us to supplement
papers with all the details necessary to exactly reproduce the result.
-For example see @url{https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1163746, zenodo.1163746}
and @url{https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1164774, zenodo.1164774} and this @url{
http://akhlaghi.org/reproducible-science.html, general discussion}.}.
+For example see Akhlaghi et al. (2021,
@url{https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.03018,arXiv:2006.03018}).}.
This approach to scientific software and methods only helps in producing
dogmas and an ``@emph{obscurantist faith in the expert's special skill, and in
his personal knowledge and authority}''@footnote{Karl Popper. The logic of
scientific discovery. 1959.
Larger quote is given at the start of the PDF (for print) version of this
book.}.
@@ -924,11 +924,7 @@ Therefore, while it empowers the privileged individual who
has access to it, it
Exactly at the opposite end of the spectrum, Gnuastro's source code is
released under the GNU general public license (GPL) and this book is released
under the GNU free documentation license.
You are therefore free to distribute any software you create using parts of
Gnuastro's source code or text, or figures from this book, see @ref{Your
rights}.
-With these principles in mind, Gnuastro's developers aim to impose the
-minimum requirements on you (in computer science, engineering and even the
-mathematics behind the tools) to understand and modify any step of Gnuastro
-if you feel the need to do so, see @ref{Why C} and @ref{Program design
-philosophy}.
+With these principles in mind, Gnuastro's developers aim to impose the minimum
requirements on you (in computer science, engineering and even the mathematics
behind the tools) to understand and modify any step of Gnuastro if you feel the
need to do so, see @ref{Why C} and @ref{Program design philosophy}.
@cindex Brahe, Tycho
@cindex Galileo, Galilei
@@ -949,9 +945,16 @@ The same is true today: science cannot progress with a
black box, or poorly rele
The source code of a research is the new (abstractified) communication
language in science, understandable by humans @emph{and} computers.
Source code (in any programming language) is a language/notation designed to
express all the details that would be too tedious/long/frustrating to report in
spoken languages like English, similar to mathematic notation.
+@quotation
+An article about computational science [almost all sciences today] ... is not
the scholarship itself, it is merely advertising of the scholarship.
+The Actual Scholarship is the complete software development environment and
the complete set of instructions which generated the figures.
+@author Buckheit & Donoho, Lecture Notes in Statistics, Vol 103, 1996
+@end quotation
+
Today, the quality of the source code that goes into a scientific result (and
the distribution of that code) is as critical to scientific vitality and
integrity, as the quality of its written language/English used in
publishing/distributing its paper.
A scientific paper will not even be reviewed by any respectable journal if its
written in a poor language/English.
A similar level of quality assessment is thus increasingly becoming necessary
regarding the codes/methods used to derive the results of a scientific paper.
+For more on this, please see Akhlaghi et al. (2021) at
@url{https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.03018,arXiv:2006.03018}).
@cindex Ken Thomson
@cindex Stroustrup, Bjarne
@@ -983,7 +986,7 @@ Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth
place of decimals.
@cindex Puzzle solving scientist
@cindex Scientist, puzzle solver
-If scientists are considered to be more than mere ``puzzle''
solvers@footnote{Thomas S. Kuhn. @emph{The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions}, University of Chicago Press, 1962.} (simply adding to the
decimals of existing values or observing a feature in 10, 100, or 100000 more
galaxies or stars, as Kelvin and Michelson clearly believed), they cannot just
passively sit back and uncritically repeat the previous (observational or
theoretical) methods/tools on new data.
+If scientists are considered to be more than mere puzzle
solvers@footnote{Thomas S. Kuhn. @emph{The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions}, University of Chicago Press, 1962.} (simply adding to the
decimals of existing values or observing a feature in 10, 100, or 100000 more
galaxies or stars, as Kelvin and Michelson clearly believed), they cannot just
passively sit back and uncritically repeat the previous (observational or
theoretical) methods/tools on new data.
Today there is a wealth of raw telescope images ready (mostly for free) at the
finger tips of anyone who is interested with a fast enough internet connection
to download them.
The only thing lacking is new ways to analyze this data and dig out the
treasure that is lying hidden in them to existing methods and techniques.
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