Talk:History of biology

Lamarck

Hmm, actually I think Jean-Baptiste Lamarck actually coined the term biology in the late 17th century. Who was this Estonian doctor? --Lexor 13:40, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Lamarck was born in 1747. He could not do anything in the 17th century... Alexei Kouprianov 15:05, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, 1744, not 1747... Alexei Kouprianov 21:01, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Metabolism

I fixed the second item under "verify" tasks given above, on history of metabolism.DonSiano 14:37, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

New content heeds home

The history of science was getting too long, in mav's estimation. So I am looking for a new home for some of the content. Would it be allright with everyone if I injected some of the content here? Ancheta Wis 19:35, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It would only be appropriate for the history of biology, which is actually only given very briefly and unevenly here. Stevenmitchell 13:13, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Maybe you first post the insertions to the talk page? Then, after some appropriate discussion, they could be integrated into the History of Biology page itself? Alexei Kouprianov 15:05, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Stub?

This was a canidate for Stubsensor cleanup project. On the one hand, I certainly feel this article as it stands now is much more than a stub. On the other hand, the topic "History of Biology" is such a huge topic, and this article barely scratches the surface, it's clear that it needs expanding. What to do? For now, I'm going to leave the stub tag here --RoySmith 18:31, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The History of Biology article should act as a summary and a lead-in to other topics, with extensive use of the Main template. At the moment it has too much detail in some sections, such as Classical Greek biology. It does not have to be a long article to function properly. Bejnar 18:09, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

While I agree that the early sections of the article are extremely unbalanced, I don't think the ideal version of of this article would be simply summaries and lead-ins. Rather, it should have a broader narrative that ties together the histories of various biological fields and places them in a broader historical context. We've tried to do this with the 19th century section to some extent. Sectioning the article based on what other topics we have articles for is not appropriate, in my opinion, especially because many of the other articles (the various "history of discpline X" articles) are basically chronologically co-extensive with this one. It would disrupt the chronological coherency of this article to rely too heavily on summary. An additional problem is that our coverage in other history of biology articles is not well-balanced; this article has much information that isn't present elsewhere on Wikipedia. The better way to do it is to start from the big picture, and to create and reshuffle narrower articles based on the structure of the larger one.--ragesoss 20:38, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the article may need some grammar and language checks. Summer Song 14:01, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Intro para

The intro paragraph really needs to be improved if we want potential editors to take an interest in improving this article. I've got this running in the back of my mind and may get around to rewriting it myself this summer, but I thought I'd post an invitation here for real experts in the subject to take on that job. --arkuat (talk) 09:17, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

It is much improved now, but perhaps a little long. The fourth para in particular overlaps or is redundant with the text of the article. It might better be a more general overview, more like the preceeding ones. DonSiano 12:25, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I intended it as an outline for fleshing out the rest (which I'll help do in the coming weeks, hopefully); the 20th century part is redundant because that's one of the only developed parts of the article, but I tried to keep it concise as I could while still touching on the major points (which I found particularly difficult for the 20th century). Hopefully the entire intro will overlap with the article, eventually. However, I have an idea for improving the 4th paragraph, which I'll try out now.--ragesoss 13:35, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. It is much improved, only now the intro is a bit long for my preferences. But preferences vary and that's okay, it's still a lot better than it was. I may try to make the introduction a little more succinct (two paragraphs instead of four, perhaps?) and move the detail into the body of the article. --arkuat (talk) 03:16, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I think the intro paragraph is fine. It is getting the rest of the article to live up to it that is the trick :)

I think the section on 19th century natural history and philosophy is shaping up well thanks to contributions from several of us, but I wish somone who knew more about it than I do would expand the comments on embryology. My next planned step is to add a brief allusion to the debate over the nature of fossils to the Rennaissance section. Rusty Cashman 19:40, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

This article's needs

I changed "man's" understanding to "human" understanding and again down in the discussion of stem cells. I expect since I am a newcomer, some of you may feel sensitive about this. But, really, there is no reason to irritate readers unnecessarily in the first line of the article and omit all the women thinkers of the last few thousand years. (It was clear in the United States Constitution that "man" was not intended as an inclusive term. It isn't any more so now.) I hope I can make some more substantive contribution. I have a pretty strong biology background. Maybe I can expand the embryology section by a paragraph or two? Let me know if there's anything in particular I can help with.

Also, I have another general suggestion. It was Darwin's genius to recognize that organisms are individuals and all his ideas rested on that realization. For that reason, it's best to avoid phrases like "the fly," "the dolphin," or "man," as opposed to "flies," dolphins," and "humans," as the former is platonic/typological and incorrect and puts wrong ideas in people's heads. Sometimes, it's hard to avoid the platonic construction (as I have just lapsed), but I believe it's worth the effort. Eperotao 18:58, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

You make an excellent point about typological phrasing. Although in the case of model organisms like the fruit fly Drosophila, the platonic version is probably actually more appropriate, since the whole point of constructing and using model organisms is to eliminate all that nasty individuality that mucks up experiments.

You're more than welcome to add/change whatever you want. The unsourced sections of the twentieth century could do for a total re-write, or at least some work to make the content have a little more big-picture coherence (and of course sourcing).--ragesoss 19:12, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Right about model organisms. Eperotao 19:20, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Central dogma

The caption on the image is misleading; the original central dogma was a one way street. --Peta 06:14, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

The first versions of the central dogma actually included the possibility of RNA-to-DNA, DNA-to-protein and RNA-to-RNA pathways; only the intermediate version was one-way. Maybe it would be better to include a fair use image of one of Crick's diagrams, rather than the free, ahistorical one there now. Crick wrote about this in 1970: [1] --ragesoss 18:18, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I was thinking that a better caption would do it; it should be pretty easy to get someone to create a free version of Cricks central dogma; User:Ilmari Karonen might do it. --Peta 22:02, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I just tried to make one, Image:Crick's 1958 central dogma.svg, but it has some issues with the arrows; it looks good when viewed natively in Firefox (and in Inkscape), but it doesn't show up right when rendered on-wiki. I put in a request for some help at Wikipedia:Graphic Lab, but it seems to be pretty slow lately.--ragesoss 22:22, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

A Graphist fixed it.--ragesoss 23:06, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

GA on hold

Very nice work, here are some issues I have picked up fix these and you'll have a GA, they're all pretty minor:

MoS issues

Some minor problems here:

• Overall the length is fine, but the lead is slightly long, It could be shortened by a couple of sentences. My suggestion would be to not worry so much about qualifying certain statements. If you can't see anything to cut that's fine, I'd rather it be slightly long than leave anything important out.
  • TimVickers condensed it considerably: diff --ragesoss 18:16, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
• Per the MoS section titles should not begin with "The".
  • Fixed. Samsara (talk • contribs) 13:58, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
• There are some instances of British spelling and some of American, pick one and then covert them to that style.
  • To save you time I went to find exactly what I saw in there, but unless I'm going nuts I don't see it in there anymore (if it ever was in there). I could have sworn I saw modelling (should be modeling), any more (should be anymore) and cosy (should be cozy). Oh well. Quadzilla99 17:55, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
• Duhrer's Rhinoceros pic and the Darwin sketch should be moved up per this section of the MoS.
  • Fixed. Samsara (talk • contribs) 14:04, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
• 20000 genes in "Recent developments" needs a comma (20,000).
  • Fixed.--ragesoss 18:12, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
• Individual years are half linked; either link all of them or none of them (I'd prefer none).
  • Fixed.--ragesoss 18:12, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
• This is very minor, but I personally find it annoying—apostrophes shoud be inside when linking if possible. Such as Darwin's theory of evolution, Mendel's work etc. See here; particularly the last sentence of the section.
  • I've changed it for now, but I'm chasing this up at the technical level so that this hopefully works automatically in future without all the extra wikitext. Thanks for pointing it out. Samsara (talk • contribs) 14:36, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Does the manual of style really say that? I much prefer 's not to be part of the link.--ragesoss 10:02, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

NPOV

Very solid work here too, one or two minor things.

• The caption of the first pic: "Like the tree of life itself, the history of biology is complex and many-branched." while nicely written, reads like a personal summary or personal observation. Maybe you could describe the picture and it's relevance to the article or find some other caption.
  • I provided a reference about the complexity of the history of biology, so it seems less like editorializing.--ragesoss 18:06, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Could still use a slightly different wording maybe but not worth holding up an otherwise fine article. Quadzilla99 18:21, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
• "Of the Arab biologists, al-Jahiz—the 9th century author of Kitab al Hayawan (Book of animals)—is particularly noteworthy.[citation needed]" This sentence needs a cite since it's saying someone or something is noteworthy. Maybe instead of saying he was noeworthy you could say "al-Jahiz did so and so" then you would not even need a cite if it's not something that's likely to be disputed. Incidentally it was tagged when I read the article.
• "This US$100 million effort is the largest biological research endeavor since the human genome project." Needs a cite.
  • I removed these two sentences. Al-Jahiz does not appear in any of my general history of biology sources, and mentioning the money is out of keeping the rest of the article, which largely neglects the structural/financial aspects of the history of biology.--ragesoss 18:06, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Prose

• Very well written, there are some minor things such as the use of a lot of additive terms, you could perhap cut some to tighten the prose. Not really necessary though, pretty minor.
• Some words like "nascent" and "elucidate" are eloquent, but since they are so similar to more well known ones like "developing" and "enlighten" I'd replace them. I tried to find major issues here and couldn't.
  • Fixed by nom. Quadzilla99 18:21, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Pretty minor stuff overall. Quadzilla99 09:14, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

GA passing

See my comments above, I have only one other thing that needs doing—you must notify me when you nom this for FA. Quadzilla99 18:21, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree that this article is now ready for FA. I would be happy to help.Rusty Cashman 18:53, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I put it on my watchlist so I won't miss the nom. Quadzilla99 19:54, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I think after we deal with Awadewit's forthcoming comments on the 20th century, and when we find sources for the last paragraph of the "Expansion of molecular biology" section, it will be ready. It would be nice to have more pictures for the 20th century, but it's hard to find anything but portraits (which I think should be avoided here) that are free.--ragesoss 21:25, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

• Also, I'm hoping someone responds to the request I left at WP:Requested templates for a history of biology navigation template for the bottom of the article. Not many other articles link to this one, and a general history of biology template would provide a nice mechanism to draw readers here.--ragesoss 21:29, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Also, the lead picture and caption are up for grabs. More than one editor has objected to the cheesiness of my caption, without which, the image itself loses its significance here.--ragesoss 21:52, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

My suggestions

Really, just minor ones:

• The lead is far too long.
  • Awadewit agreed in the peer review. Between TimVickers' edits and the further trimming I just did, I think it's now about as small as a it should go.--ragesoss 21:21, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Looks fine to me. Remember that the one that goes on the main page is often a trimmed version of the actual lede, e.g. Charles Darwin. Regards, Samsara (talk • contribs) 22:23, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
• "However, some people who dealt with medical issues still studied plants and animals as well." (Wiesel word?)
  • Weasel sentence. Don't know how that snuck through.--ragesoss 21:21, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
• "The discovery and description of new species and collecting specimens became a widespread passion of scientific gentlemen." (I think we should avoid using words like widespread as passion alone is also enough.)
  • I reformulated this sentence, although I think widespread and passion are orthogonal here.--ragesoss 21:21, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
• "By 1900, much of these domains overlapped, while natural history and (and its counterpart natural philosophy) had largely given way to more specialized scientific disciplines" (The same case, largely is unnecessary.)
  • I think "largely" is an important qualification.--ragesoss 21:21, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
• The sections about molecular biology couldn't be shortened (the History of molecular biology covers nearly everything)? The Expansion of molecular biology sections is very long.
  • Molecular biology had a huge impact on the rest of biology. I think it's important to explain how molecular biology interacted with and affected other disciplines. Molecular biology is a fuzzy thing (in terms of what is and is not molecular biology), but I've done my best to tell a more nuanced story than "the history of molecular biology covers nearly everything), even if a large amount of content that isn't strictly molecular biology falls into the nominal molecular biology section. I'm still looking for a better way to work in (and find sources for) the information in the last paragraph of the "expansion of molecular biology" section. There is probably a better way of arranging the sections that I haven't thought of.--ragesoss 21:21, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

• "In 2006 a large international consortium began a collaborative effort to enable researchers to conveniently obtain mice that have any one of its approximately 20,000 genes knocked out" (reference?)
  • I'm thinking about just deleting this whole last section on recent developments, since it starts to cross the border from history to science reporting.--ragesoss 21:21, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Seconded. Samsara (talk • contribs) 22:18, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

• An other external link? (History of biology)
  • Very nice.--ragesoss 21:21, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

NCurse _work 18:43, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments and work! NCurse _work 06:13, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

WP vs. CZ

It might be worthwhile to compare this article to Citizendium's Biology article, which is basically a history of biology. Overall, I think this article compares favorably, but obviously I'm too close to see things in clear perspective. What does the CZ article do better than this one?--ragesoss 22:33, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd say theirs is written textbook style. More butter, less bread. It would never pass Wikipedia QA - people would complain about the flowery language. Large sections are unverifiable. I deliberately didn't suggest looking at it, even though I saw it when it was newly approved. Maybe the homunculus image is a nice touch. I'm surprised that I can't find a copy of the famous "Watson and Crick standing by cardboard model" photo. Surely it would have been released to PD?! Maybe we could work on the images a bit? They're a bit grey atm. (Of course, more text and fewer image makes for nicer layout, like at cz.) Samsara (talk • contribs) 22:50, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

That DNA photo has been the subject of litigation, actually; it's been widely used and reproduced, but the photographer has had little success capitalizing on it.--ragesoss 23:07, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. I see now that the images are all original illustrations. We have to be careful not to let this article become an exhibition of our ability to obtain original material. Clearly, this is one example where cz is following a different rationale, although some of their image choices are quite bizarre in turn - like a zebra finch popping out of nowhere (hey, we actually have an article on the bird!) Samsara (talk • contribs) 23:13, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Interesting indeed, though of course I'm no expert. Their idea of "Natural history (the study of individual species like white-tailed deer, sugar maple trees, box jellyfish and timber wolves) was one of the first areas to develop; in natural history, whole organisms are studied in an attempt to make sense of the order of nature." clearly differs from Natural history as defined here and shown in more reliable sources. More to the point, I've disambiguated Uniformitarianism (science) and mentioned James Hutton as the previous claim that Charles Lyell "introduced" it seemed wrong to me. ... dave souza, talk 10:05, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, but they're the authorities, see? They don't need sources. They just know. "Revelation is an uncovering or disclosure via communication from the divine of something that has been partially or wholly hidden or unknown." ;) Samsara (talk • contribs) 10:08, 23 April 2007 (UTC)