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archive of past discussions for the period 2001–2005. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
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Should these be put in subcategories, as:
The Origin of Species/Chapter 1 The Origin of Species/Chapter 2 etc.?
"although it is very wordy - a good general level of intelligence is a prerequisite for comprehending the arguments and subtle nuances put forth by Darwin"
What's a "good general level of intelligence"? I don't think there is common agreement on this point, and to the degree that there is, it's a rather pretentious statement anyway, sort of like saying "an iq of 120 is probably required to enjoy this book". Unless there are objections, I will remove this parenthesis. Vintermann
Implementing as I type ... jmlynch
Wow, this is fantastic. :-) I would recommend that we go through later and put some introductory context remark at the front of each chapter. Perhaps some language like this:
"What follows is the full text of Charles Darwin's famous work The Origin of Species. You may want to also start with our main index page for evolution."
That way, when people accidentally surf in from search engines that index this stuff, they will be able to find what they might be looking for.
I'm somewhat iffy on the idea of including the entire raw text of this book in an encyclopedia at all. It's already available in the public domain from many different sources, including project gutenberg; why not just provide an external link there? I know that Wikipedia is not paper, but still, including entire unannotated sources is a bit much. What benefit does it add?
Benefit added: Convenient local browsing and free access.
Many formerly useful web sites have gone commercial and wish to charge for access or have links embedded which are now out of date.
By including the information locally this will not happen to the wikipedia.
Related issue is addressed in the FAQ. It is stated that the wikipedia is not a dictionary. Why not? The prose is useless if one does not understand the words used.
Paper Encyclopedia's were limited by volume, weight, and cost of publishing on paper. With the current trend in hard drive size and cost this would not seem to be a large issue with the wikipedia. Perhaps namespace will become a problem or hashing routines but perhaps not. Computer capability is also growing quickly more inexpensive.
Another benefit: Access to original source material when wikipedeans are attempting to attain a neutral presentation. It is amazing the volume of opinion one can find published on controversial subjects without regarding to the orginal context.
Anyway, it can now be annotated. I recommend we annotate carefully to preserve the readability of the original source.
My ten cents. user:Mirwin
This debate has happened elsewhere on Wikipedia. Some people like primary sources as part of Wikipedia proper, some don't (I don't, for technical reasons). Anyway, please examine the debate there -- User:Robert Merkel
Hey, here's an idea. The Origin of Species/Glossary might actually be useful as a source of material for other articles in Wikipedia, though it's admittedly more dictionary than encyclopedia class material. I'm leaving it intact for the moment to take a closer look later on. Bryan Derksen
"Origin of Species" (without an initial "the") was a redundant article, which I've replaced with a redirect here. The other article was very brief, but there are two bits of information that might be worth integrating here:
-- Ryguasu
"It is often mocked by modern day specialists as being incredibly pompous in tone despite it's informative nature. As such, it is often lampooned both in literature and in pop culture." -- I don't think this is true, as written.
The text is often looked down upon by modern day scientists as being very condescending and pompous, despite it's usefullness and reader-friendly nature. As such, it is regularly the subject of mockery in pop culture, in both text and film. An example of this is the film Party Girl.
I dislike the theory of evolution and think Darwin was a dud, but criticism expressed in the Wikipedia must be up to standard. So I moved 1/2 the Party Girl thing to another article. -- Ed Poor
I don't doubt that some people find 19th century writing unapproachable, but surely this fact should not take up a third of what an encyclopedia article has to say about The Origin of Species? Accordingly, I've moved this bit back to talk. (also, it's its, usefulness, The, food-oriented, etc.)
"The text is often looked down upon by modern day scientists as being very condescending and pompous, despite it's usefullness and reader-friendly nature. As such, it is regularly the subject of mockery in pop culture, in both text and film. An example of this is the film "Party Girl" in which a library clerk is approached by a woman who simply says, with a lisp, "Orrngses n' spches." Ther puzzled clerk replies, "Oranges and Peaches? Well, you can try the food=oriented periodicals, but sometimes they're a little holier-than-thou.""
Someone else 21:44 Oct 8, 2002 (UTC)
Moved EasterBradford's comments, and my reply, here from my user page:
I do not appreciate your removal of my totally relevant commentary in "The Origin of Species" entry. What I added was a direct quote from an actual movie along with factual information regarding how many esteemed scientists look upon the text; you removed it with a comment that it was a "crap joke." I am re-adding it, and if you remove it again I will have to take it up with the admins. -Easter Bradford-
I have added pop culture reference as to the current scientific viewing of this text as very pompous and holier-than-thou, and quoted a very popular film as reference. It has been deleted once, and I am adding it again. I request it not be deleted again without proper justification. - Easter Bradford-
From the article:
I'm an admin, what's the trouble? Some want the Party Girl thing here, some say keep it all in the Party Girl article. C'mon, let's hear some proposals. -- Ed Poor
Hey, I don't care if the joke is in or out -- although I like jokes. Let's just find the right place for it.
And if Origin of Species needs criticism, for stodgy writing style or faulty scientific reasoning, let's go ahead and start filling out the article.
How important is one mumbled reference of a book title, anyway? -- Ed Poor
Looks like the disputed passage is going to stay out, unless:
Apparently the oranges & peaches thing wasn't convincing enough by itself. How about a text reference? -- Ed Poor
(Sorry I forgot to register; my ID is François-Dominique on the French Wikipedia. I am not that sure of the quality of my English, so I would be grateful to any native english speaker to correct it if needed, and copy that part in the main topic, if she of he feels it wothwhile; this point is already described ad such in the French wikipedia, if anybody wants to take a look)
Though a common thought is that Lamarck believed in the inheritance of acquired characteristics while Darwin did not, the careful reading of the book's first edition shows that the reality is not exactly that simple. Darwin writes :
"It may be doubted whether any one would have thought of training a dog to point, bad not some one dog naturally shown a tendency in this line; and this is known occasionally to happen, as I once saw in a pure terrier. When the first tendency was once displayed, methodical selection and the inherited effects of compulsory training in each successive generation would soon complete the work" (the emphasis is ours, not Darwin's).
This belief in "the inherited effects (...) of compulsory training" appears like a slight error today (probably due to the youth of the theory) compared to the insight of the rest of the book. However, this shows that the popular characterization of Lamarck's and Darwin's positions at that time is not that exact, a fact that was honestly signalled by Stephen Jay Gould.
Je crois que votre contribution est trop long, et (pardon, mais) je suis soupçonneux de votre motivation est patriotisme pour Lamarck. Dunc_Harris| ☺ 13:11, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
"immediately sold out its initial print run" -- that would imply that it sold out the day it was published. is that so? Kingturtle 17:29, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
In the last line of the second box after the article, there is a list of Darwin's eponyms; there are a couple missing, minor but very significant: 1. the farthest west, one of the smallest and the most isolated island on the Galapagos Archipelago is Darwin. 2. the biological research station at the Galapagos National Park is Darwin Research Station. The box cannot be edited from the page, how is it done? Lcgarcia 07:00, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I have removed the following:
This statement appears to be wrong. In Wallace's 1858 essay [1], he states that evolution is "...produced by the action of principles constantly at work in nature."
Also removed:
Besides being unencyclopedic and POV, this is also wrong on its own terms: Patrick Matthew has a better claim to the title.-- Johnstone 02:25, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Organisms do not evolve according to Darwin. It is populations that evolve.
The first section of this article asserts that modern scientific evidence supports Darwinism. This is plainly not the case. Monkeys have totally incompatible DNA to humans - you cannot copulate with a monkey and expect to create fertile offspring. This article is plagued with anti-creationist POV. It must be changed to highlight both sides of the argument.
I am not a religious zealot, and I do agree with certain aspects of Darwinism. But the point is that scientific evidence does NOT prove it, so this article shouldn't be written as such. Darwinism is a just a theory (albeit a very sketchy one), not proven fact. When I tried to edit this page to make it have a more balanced view, my modification was unjustly denied. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rennie84 ( talk • contribs) .
This is an
archive of past discussions for the period 2001–2005. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | → | Archive 5 |
Should these be put in subcategories, as:
The Origin of Species/Chapter 1 The Origin of Species/Chapter 2 etc.?
"although it is very wordy - a good general level of intelligence is a prerequisite for comprehending the arguments and subtle nuances put forth by Darwin"
What's a "good general level of intelligence"? I don't think there is common agreement on this point, and to the degree that there is, it's a rather pretentious statement anyway, sort of like saying "an iq of 120 is probably required to enjoy this book". Unless there are objections, I will remove this parenthesis. Vintermann
Implementing as I type ... jmlynch
Wow, this is fantastic. :-) I would recommend that we go through later and put some introductory context remark at the front of each chapter. Perhaps some language like this:
"What follows is the full text of Charles Darwin's famous work The Origin of Species. You may want to also start with our main index page for evolution."
That way, when people accidentally surf in from search engines that index this stuff, they will be able to find what they might be looking for.
I'm somewhat iffy on the idea of including the entire raw text of this book in an encyclopedia at all. It's already available in the public domain from many different sources, including project gutenberg; why not just provide an external link there? I know that Wikipedia is not paper, but still, including entire unannotated sources is a bit much. What benefit does it add?
Benefit added: Convenient local browsing and free access.
Many formerly useful web sites have gone commercial and wish to charge for access or have links embedded which are now out of date.
By including the information locally this will not happen to the wikipedia.
Related issue is addressed in the FAQ. It is stated that the wikipedia is not a dictionary. Why not? The prose is useless if one does not understand the words used.
Paper Encyclopedia's were limited by volume, weight, and cost of publishing on paper. With the current trend in hard drive size and cost this would not seem to be a large issue with the wikipedia. Perhaps namespace will become a problem or hashing routines but perhaps not. Computer capability is also growing quickly more inexpensive.
Another benefit: Access to original source material when wikipedeans are attempting to attain a neutral presentation. It is amazing the volume of opinion one can find published on controversial subjects without regarding to the orginal context.
Anyway, it can now be annotated. I recommend we annotate carefully to preserve the readability of the original source.
My ten cents. user:Mirwin
This debate has happened elsewhere on Wikipedia. Some people like primary sources as part of Wikipedia proper, some don't (I don't, for technical reasons). Anyway, please examine the debate there -- User:Robert Merkel
Hey, here's an idea. The Origin of Species/Glossary might actually be useful as a source of material for other articles in Wikipedia, though it's admittedly more dictionary than encyclopedia class material. I'm leaving it intact for the moment to take a closer look later on. Bryan Derksen
"Origin of Species" (without an initial "the") was a redundant article, which I've replaced with a redirect here. The other article was very brief, but there are two bits of information that might be worth integrating here:
-- Ryguasu
"It is often mocked by modern day specialists as being incredibly pompous in tone despite it's informative nature. As such, it is often lampooned both in literature and in pop culture." -- I don't think this is true, as written.
The text is often looked down upon by modern day scientists as being very condescending and pompous, despite it's usefullness and reader-friendly nature. As such, it is regularly the subject of mockery in pop culture, in both text and film. An example of this is the film Party Girl.
I dislike the theory of evolution and think Darwin was a dud, but criticism expressed in the Wikipedia must be up to standard. So I moved 1/2 the Party Girl thing to another article. -- Ed Poor
I don't doubt that some people find 19th century writing unapproachable, but surely this fact should not take up a third of what an encyclopedia article has to say about The Origin of Species? Accordingly, I've moved this bit back to talk. (also, it's its, usefulness, The, food-oriented, etc.)
"The text is often looked down upon by modern day scientists as being very condescending and pompous, despite it's usefullness and reader-friendly nature. As such, it is regularly the subject of mockery in pop culture, in both text and film. An example of this is the film "Party Girl" in which a library clerk is approached by a woman who simply says, with a lisp, "Orrngses n' spches." Ther puzzled clerk replies, "Oranges and Peaches? Well, you can try the food=oriented periodicals, but sometimes they're a little holier-than-thou.""
Someone else 21:44 Oct 8, 2002 (UTC)
Moved EasterBradford's comments, and my reply, here from my user page:
I do not appreciate your removal of my totally relevant commentary in "The Origin of Species" entry. What I added was a direct quote from an actual movie along with factual information regarding how many esteemed scientists look upon the text; you removed it with a comment that it was a "crap joke." I am re-adding it, and if you remove it again I will have to take it up with the admins. -Easter Bradford-
I have added pop culture reference as to the current scientific viewing of this text as very pompous and holier-than-thou, and quoted a very popular film as reference. It has been deleted once, and I am adding it again. I request it not be deleted again without proper justification. - Easter Bradford-
From the article:
I'm an admin, what's the trouble? Some want the Party Girl thing here, some say keep it all in the Party Girl article. C'mon, let's hear some proposals. -- Ed Poor
Hey, I don't care if the joke is in or out -- although I like jokes. Let's just find the right place for it.
And if Origin of Species needs criticism, for stodgy writing style or faulty scientific reasoning, let's go ahead and start filling out the article.
How important is one mumbled reference of a book title, anyway? -- Ed Poor
Looks like the disputed passage is going to stay out, unless:
Apparently the oranges & peaches thing wasn't convincing enough by itself. How about a text reference? -- Ed Poor
(Sorry I forgot to register; my ID is François-Dominique on the French Wikipedia. I am not that sure of the quality of my English, so I would be grateful to any native english speaker to correct it if needed, and copy that part in the main topic, if she of he feels it wothwhile; this point is already described ad such in the French wikipedia, if anybody wants to take a look)
Though a common thought is that Lamarck believed in the inheritance of acquired characteristics while Darwin did not, the careful reading of the book's first edition shows that the reality is not exactly that simple. Darwin writes :
"It may be doubted whether any one would have thought of training a dog to point, bad not some one dog naturally shown a tendency in this line; and this is known occasionally to happen, as I once saw in a pure terrier. When the first tendency was once displayed, methodical selection and the inherited effects of compulsory training in each successive generation would soon complete the work" (the emphasis is ours, not Darwin's).
This belief in "the inherited effects (...) of compulsory training" appears like a slight error today (probably due to the youth of the theory) compared to the insight of the rest of the book. However, this shows that the popular characterization of Lamarck's and Darwin's positions at that time is not that exact, a fact that was honestly signalled by Stephen Jay Gould.
Je crois que votre contribution est trop long, et (pardon, mais) je suis soupçonneux de votre motivation est patriotisme pour Lamarck. Dunc_Harris| ☺ 13:11, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
"immediately sold out its initial print run" -- that would imply that it sold out the day it was published. is that so? Kingturtle 17:29, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
In the last line of the second box after the article, there is a list of Darwin's eponyms; there are a couple missing, minor but very significant: 1. the farthest west, one of the smallest and the most isolated island on the Galapagos Archipelago is Darwin. 2. the biological research station at the Galapagos National Park is Darwin Research Station. The box cannot be edited from the page, how is it done? Lcgarcia 07:00, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I have removed the following:
This statement appears to be wrong. In Wallace's 1858 essay [1], he states that evolution is "...produced by the action of principles constantly at work in nature."
Also removed:
Besides being unencyclopedic and POV, this is also wrong on its own terms: Patrick Matthew has a better claim to the title.-- Johnstone 02:25, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Organisms do not evolve according to Darwin. It is populations that evolve.
The first section of this article asserts that modern scientific evidence supports Darwinism. This is plainly not the case. Monkeys have totally incompatible DNA to humans - you cannot copulate with a monkey and expect to create fertile offspring. This article is plagued with anti-creationist POV. It must be changed to highlight both sides of the argument.
I am not a religious zealot, and I do agree with certain aspects of Darwinism. But the point is that scientific evidence does NOT prove it, so this article shouldn't be written as such. Darwinism is a just a theory (albeit a very sketchy one), not proven fact. When I tried to edit this page to make it have a more balanced view, my modification was unjustly denied. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rennie84 ( talk • contribs) .