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Talk:Christopher Langan

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Should this article be at Christopher Michael Langan? That's the name on his PCID and Uncommon Dissent papers, and on his e-book The Art of Knowing. Media usage varies from "Christopher Michael Langan" to "Christopher Langan" to "Chris Langan", but the first is how he signs his essays. Tim Smith 20:59, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

No one's disagreeing, so I've moved the article to Christopher Michael Langan, leaving Christopher Langan as a redirect. Tim Smith 20:38, 30 November 2005 (UTC)



I removed the "pseudoscience" and "crank" links from the "See Also" section as they provided no relevant information and amounted to mere name-calling. I added "metaphysics" as that is the discipline to which Langan has said that his theory belongs. It appears to me that the "pseudoscience" and "crank" labels are due more to Langan's politically unwise linking of the explicitly evolutionary CTMU with Intelligent Design (and thus in mainstream opinion, Creationism) than to the merits of the main line of argument of the CTMU.

That said, some of the characterizations of Langan's CTMU in this article seem to be more hopeful assertions than demonstrated facts. This article's characterization of the CTMU as mathematical is only partially borne out by Langan's published writings. The mathematics in the CTMU is only occasionally symbolic, rather it is generally presented in verbal form. Also, the applicability of the CTMU to any specific area of natural science has not been demonstrated or refuted, so far as I have seen. Enon 15:35, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

The reason that I added the "Pseudoscience" and "crank" links is precisely because Langan's ideas are not science, and yet are passed off as such (if one reads the entries for these terms one will see why they fit): while his ideas have certainly not been demonstrated, they are actually fairly easily refuted by anyone with an understanding of what he is on about; the problem is that simply we don't bother, because we have more important work to do than write papers ripping apart pseudoscientific theories. While Langan may claim that his ideas are "metaphysical", they do not conform to the generally accepted norms and standards of rigour for academic metaphysics either, belonging more properly to the sort of "metaphysics" one might pick up in the esoteric section of a bookshop.

Perhaps "crank" is a little over the top, but I really feel that a link should be provided to pseudoscience, perhaps with a proviso included somewhere about how this is how some critics construe his work? If the purpose of an encyclopaedia is to educate, then surely one must allow the reader the opportunity to evaluate the merits of an individual's claims in the light of current scientific opinion, without being misled?--Byrgenwulf 11:19, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

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