hewhocaves wrote:just for the record, speleology is the study of caves - from a science point of view. i.e. the processes, development, etc...
The category you're looking for (and which the forum does not have) would be something like 'spelean history'. Caving in the News might be an acceptable substitue as would the general discussion forum.
I have to disagree with hewhocaves. He perhaps has never heard of the 'Social Sciences' --i.e. history, sociology, psychology, political sciences etc., etc. There is a vast difference between the news and history-- to paraphrase Wordsworth: history is the news recollected (and analyzed) in tranquility.
There is (and likely always will be) a dispute between practitioners of classical rhetoric who believe history should be lumped in with the liberal arts such as drawing or music and those who believe it is quantifiable-- sort of in the same way that the story told by historical geology is quite different than doing an XRD rock analysis in a lab, but both are considered geology. The methods of historical research are no less rigorous than doing a review of the literature in one of the hard sciences.
In any event, there likely isn't enough traffic to support a separate forum, much as the Spelean History section is usually one of the smaller ones in the NSS. All disciplines are artificial divisions anyway, as anyone who has ever encountered biogeochemistry can attest.
Thanks for the post.