It will divide Wikipedia's contributors into two classes - experienced, trusted editors, and everyone else - altering Wikipedia's implicit notion that everyone has an equal right to edit entries
The right to edit an entry still holds for all users. They just cannot publish the edited article anymore.
While those qualifications are not necessary, they certainly are worth to be mentioned. Let me elaborate:
Copernicus is not considered a great scientist because he woke up one day and said, "Gee, maybe the earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around!"
This would imply that earlier heliocentric models where just that, i.e. wild speculations. It doesn't seem to me that the advances of astronomy in the hellenistic period can be described and explained that way. There is however a...wild speculation in the historiography of science, which goes like this:
In the 3rd century BCE, Aristarchus of Samos proposed an alternate cosmology (arrangement of the universe): a heliocentric model of the solar system, placing the Sun, not the Earth, at the center of the known universe (hence he is sometimes known as the "Greek Copernicus"). His astronomical ideas were not well-received, however, and only a few brief references to them are preserved. We know the name of one follower of Aristarchus: Seleucus of Seleucia.
The argument that we can estimate the reception of the heliocentric model from the references known to us is rather weak. On the contrary, there are far more hints that indicate the following: it is not the case that the heliocentric model was somehow forgotten, instead, because of the instrumentalistic outlook of hellenistic astronomy, astronomers didn't enter into a cosmological dispute over which model was more "real" and regarded both models as equivalent regarding the purpose of predicting celestial phenomena (this is known today as underdetermination of scientific theories). The choice of one model other another was dictated by convenience and it changed from one computational context to another.
His greatness came from all the insight, creativity, and mind-boggling hard work he put in to make this idea objectively sound.
Being the first to have an idea doesn't give you precedence. It's inventing the scientific structure that allows people to validate (and, more importantly, invalidate) your ideas that matters. That's what separates real science from mere speculation.
I totally agree with you. But: You seem to conflate this view with an hidden misconception, i.e. that we can determine the scientific advancement just by looking at the temporal relations between to points in this development (If point A precedes temporally the point B, then the point A denotates a less advanced step in the development of science). While this rule of thumb generally holds for the period starting with the 17th century up to now, we have to be careful to extend this rule inductively to other historical periods. It seems to be the case that this rule doesn't hold for the hellenistic period as compared to later periods, because we have evidence that the "invention of scientific structures that people to validate (and, more importantly, invalidate) your ideas" must be dated to the hellenistic period. Just by saying that this cannot be, exactly because of the rule of thumb, you are transforming this empirical rule of thumb (which is open to falsification by historians of science) into an analytic statement... and this, for one, doesn't fit into a scientific attitude.
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It will divide Wikipedia's contributors into two classes - experienced, trusted editors, and everyone else - altering Wikipedia's implicit notion that everyone has an equal right to edit entries
The right to edit an entry still holds for all users. They just cannot publish the edited article anymore.
Please. All these qualifications are unnecessary.
While those qualifications are not necessary, they certainly are worth to be mentioned. Let me elaborate:
Copernicus is not considered a great scientist because he woke up one day and said, "Gee, maybe the earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around!"
This would imply that earlier heliocentric models where just that, i.e. wild speculations. It doesn't seem to me that the advances of astronomy in the hellenistic period can be described and explained that way. There is however a ...wild speculation in the historiography of science, which goes like this:
In the 3rd century BCE, Aristarchus of Samos proposed an alternate cosmology (arrangement of the universe): a heliocentric model of the solar system, placing the Sun, not the Earth, at the center of the known universe (hence he is sometimes known as the "Greek Copernicus"). His astronomical ideas were not well-received, however, and only a few brief references to them are preserved. We know the name of one follower of Aristarchus: Seleucus of Seleucia.
The argument that we can estimate the reception of the heliocentric model from the references known to us is rather weak. On the contrary, there are far more hints that indicate the following: it is not the case that the heliocentric model was somehow forgotten, instead, because of the instrumentalistic outlook of hellenistic astronomy, astronomers didn't enter into a cosmological dispute over which model was more "real" and regarded both models as equivalent regarding the purpose of predicting celestial phenomena (this is known today as underdetermination of scientific theories). The choice of one model other another was dictated by convenience and it changed from one computational context to another.
His greatness came from all the insight, creativity, and mind-boggling hard work he put in to make this idea objectively sound.
Being the first to have an idea doesn't give you precedence. It's inventing the scientific structure that allows people to validate (and, more importantly, invalidate) your ideas that matters. That's what separates real science from mere speculation.
I totally agree with you. But: You seem to conflate this view with an hidden misconception, i.e. that we can determine the scientific advancement just by looking at the temporal relations between to points in this development (If point A precedes temporally the point B, then the point A denotates a less advanced step in the development of science). While this rule of thumb generally holds for the period starting with the 17th century up to now, we have to be careful to extend this rule inductively to other historical periods. It seems to be the case that this rule doesn't hold for the hellenistic period as compared to later periods, because we have evidence that the "invention of scientific structures that people to validate (and, more importantly, invalidate) your ideas" must be dated to the hellenistic period. Just by saying that this cannot be, exactly because of the rule of thumb, you are transforming this empirical rule of thumb (which is open to falsification by historians of science) into an analytic statement... and this, for one, doesn't fit into a scientific attitude.