Talk:Segmented sleep

Roger Ekirch: original research?

I added the original research tag as a quick google reveals that virtually every reference to this term comes back to EKIRCH who wrote the page linked at the bottom of the article. The term seems to be his invention? 84.71.164.145 07:07, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

A Roger Ekirch is a profesor of Early American History at Virigina Tech (http://www.history.vt.edu/Ekirch/index.html) and author of "At Day's Close: Night in Times Past." W. W. Norton & Company, 2005 ISBN: 0393050890. This appears to be one of his principal areas of research .Some critics have doubted some of the conclusions he draws his work ( http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/articles/050530crbo_books) but not his scholarship nor the evidence he presents for segmented sleep. In any case these conclusions do not appear in the wikipedia article.

Other academics have done research on this phenomenon. This article (http://www.newstarget.com/016768.html) refers to the work of National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) psychiatrist Dr. Thomas A. Wehr. (Cited by Ekirch elsewhere: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/opinion/19ekirch.html). The article here does rely extensively on the paper linked to, though this is a valid reference. Perhaps it can be expanded/rewritten to included citations to the work of Wehr. Wehr's work is the sleep research being refered to, though it is likely that the claim made for prolactin come second hand through Ekrich, and it is difficult to judge whether these claims are Ekrich's own interpretation or come from the original research (though this is the source for the increase in prolactin levels).

Thomas A. Wehr, "A 'Clock for All Seasons' in the Human Brain," in Hypothalamic Integration of Circadian Rhythms, R. M. Buijs, et al., eds. (Amsterdam, 1996), 319–40; Wehr, "The Impact of Changes in Nightlength (Scotoperiod) on Human Sleep," in Neurobiology of Sleep and Circadian Rhythms, F. W. Turek and P. C. Zee, eds. (New York, 1999), 263–85; Natalie Angier, "Modern Life Suppresses Ancient Body Rhythm," New York Times, March 14, 1995; personal communications with Thomas Wehr, December 23, 31, 1996. (ekrich citations in linked article)

Tallus 20:13, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

An anonymous editor just added a nice link to the Science News archives from 1999, which summarizes the anthropology of sleep at the time, and links to the research:

• Slumber's Unexplored Landscape: People in traditional societies sleep in eye-opening ways

If I might contribute my own original thinking, perhaps what is reported as insomnia today was in traditional times also insomnia. People used to die at age 40, they certainly suffered far more maladies than we do today, and more neurosis, so wtf. Even if there is merit to these claims, the article should be half or a third in length. That whole modern examples section provides no illumination whatsoever, save that the terms "first" and "second" have been used. While that is interesting, "roll over and go back to sleep" is not supporting evidence for the "theory". And get rid of that word "theory". 68.174.97.122 (talk) 15:09, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

“dorveille”?

I cannot find “dorveille” in any of the French->English dictionaries I have. Is this a genuine (but obscure) French word? --75.15.117.228 22:14, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

It's not in my Petit Robert 1, one of the better French-French dictionaries, either. kwami 21:06, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I found this reference via google and it does mention the frenchness of the word directly and expounds upon the definition.

http://books.google.com/books?id=z1Hw7d_Cs9YC&pg=PA94&lpg=PA94&dq=dorveille&source=web&ots=6ge_wdrhvl&sig=l0DSc4uPuwmJVwhCIGb_pbHDqBw

c8h10n4o2 18:08, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

"There is no common word in English for the period of wakefulness between, apart from ... the generic watch". Would this be the original meaning of "night watch"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.159.196.72 (talk) 16:03, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

The OED attests "night watch" from ca. 1000, and although I cannot actually read it, it is from Luke 2, so I can approx. translate: Hyrdas ... waciende & niht wæccan healdende ofer heora heorda. "Now ('and') there were shepherds nearby out in the field, keeping guard over their flock by night ('keeping the field and guarding their flock')." kwami (talk) 19:59, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

There is a similar Spanish word: "duermevela", but I didn't find a translation into English or French. --213.27.187.78 (talk) 09:25, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Segmented sleep (2010)

'Segmented sleep' is the same thing as Polyphasic sleep, therefore I propose that they be merged. makeswell (talk) 13:56, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Oppose. Segmented sleep is the term usually used for this (historical) phenomenon: a night's sleep with the period of quiet wakefulness in the middle. It is not "the same thing" as polyphasic sleep. The article Segmented sleep is long enough to be its own article, and is a unique form of biphasic sleep. (The other common form of biphasic sleep with the traditional long siesta, could also be mentioned in the Biphasic section of Polyphasic sleep.) The article Polyphasic sleep is plenty long and doesn't need a big section about segmented sleep added, though it is a "parent article" and the phenomenon certainly should be mentioned there, which it presently is. --Hordaland (talk) 14:37, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

This page was merged as per the discussion at Talk:Biphasic and polyphasic sleep#Proposed merge with Segmented sleep in 2016. Pianostar9 (talk) 00:28, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Too much A. Roger Ekirch

There are 4 citations from A. Roger Ekirch, and I believe that they give this article a more well-sourced appearance than it should have.

Citations [2] and [4], especially, sound like his personal speculations, and could easily be culled from the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.105.128.92 (talk) 18:37, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

I have added an Unbalanced tag to the article. It does seem that everything here really emanates from the work of a single scholar. There is room for doubting the whole hypothesis. First, it's possibly significant that that segmented sleep had to be 'discovered' from the sources after it had been forgotten for generations - this sort of assertion rings alarm bells for critical historians. Secondly, there is the more mundane reality that nights are mostly cold and always dark. So before the Industrial Revolution, when supposedly there was this practice of people habitually going out and about in between sleeps, there was in fact every incentive to stay in bed, because, unless you wanted to waste your candles and coal, you couldn't get on with much else (apart from the obvious, of course!). Can someone find some criticism of Ekirch's hypothesis and thereby provide scholarly balance for the article? asnac (talk) 18:35, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

One of the things that is drawing people to this article right now is a recent article by the BBC:

• Hegarty, S. (22 February 2012). "The myth of the eight-hour sleep". BBC News.

But I agree, we need more sources, criticism, and the like. But given of what I've seen in primates, it wouldn't surprise me if Ekirch is on to something. – VisionHolder « talk » 18:43, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Along with this and the Beeb's take being "slashvertised" in support of the book: http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/02/23/161225/interrupted-sleep-might-be-the-best-kind and the article's current somewhat self-referential reliance mainly on one researcher make it hard to sort the truths from the truisms. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.65.250.24 (talk) 21:55, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I added refs to Jacobs and Foster, though just to the BBC interviews.

When I created the article, Ekirch was all I had to go on. We do need more balance among sources, so it will still be heavy on Ekirch. — kwami (talk) 00:42, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

The reason people needed to wake in middle of night might be BECAUSE the nights were cold. If fire was used to keep reasonable temperature, it might require some care like adding more wood in middle of night. Also, people might've been spending more time doing the "obvious" than you assume. -- Hkmaly (talk) 22:38, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

As the article is essentially based on a single source I've added words like 'theory' 'argued' etc. and changed the sub-heading too, so it's clear to readers that what Ekirch suggests is not necessarily so. I've done a bit of digging on Google and there seems to be little response from social historians to his theory - this may be because the book itself is so wide-ranging and therefore out of the purview of specialists, or because no one cares enough, or because it is considered to be too obviously wrong to be worth addressing. A pity as it's an interesting theory, right or wrong, that merits scholarly notice. I've found only one review, in the American Historical Review for December 2005, but as I don't have access to the full article I don't know whether it's a useful peer review or not. asnac (talk) 08:40, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

The Review you mentioned was by Bryan D. Palmer. His book "Cultures of Darkness: Night Travels in the Histories of Transgression" might be interesting as well. Susannah Ottaway wrote a text about Ekirchs book in 2007: http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/book-reviews/24638639/days-close-night-times-past. 62.157.44.118 (talk) 08:13, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Missing reference

Where is Erkich (2001)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.50.1.121 (talk) 17:12, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Indeed! I would also like the author of this theory to come forth and provide the missing references. I find this theory very interesting as it makes a lot of sense.

Mario Marceau (talk) 05:45, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Examples in early modern literature

These look a little too much like someone has searched Gutenberg for the phrase "first sleep" and assumed that all results are talking about the practice of segmented sleep - the Wadd and Philadelphia Record quotes read more as if they're using the term "second sleep" to mean "sleeping in" for a while longer after waking from a full night's sleep. --McGeddon (talk) 08:53, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

With no response after a couple of months, I've been WP:BOLD and cut this section. --McGeddon (talk) 11:05, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Some of those might be mentioned in the refs, in which case they can stay. I'm not going to bother looking myself, though. — kwami (talk) 19:57, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

"ancient, medieval, and modern world"

I think it would be of use to the article to have a couple of examples of the texts the theory's originator is drawing from. L.cash.m (talk) 07:36, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Refimprove tag

Shouldn't the "This article needs additional citations for verification. May 2014" template be removed now? --Hordaland (talk) 22:04, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Done. --Hordaland (talk) 22:09, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Moving new comment to bottom of page

Someone probably ought to note the extraordinarily obvious that infants and small children virtually require this bimodal sleep of their parents. More than, but not exclusive of, sunlight and circadian rhythms this probably inspires it. --Daniel kemper -- 12.157.110.195 (talk) 20:12, 4 March 2016 (UTC)