Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Isaac Newton

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[edit] Isaac Newton

Stumbled across this article, and was astonished that no effort has been made to nominate it as an FA. Very well-referenced, meaty, interesting, (Did you know he invented the cat flap?) and encyclopedic. Borisblue 17:59, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

• Object, I can see that the article is a summary of three longer biography articles, but I think more could be done to improve the flow of the text, in some parts it is a compilation of short paragraphs begining in year Newton did x. --nixie 03:41, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

  OK, I've fixed that God-awful paragraph. Thanks for pointing that out, can't believe I didn't see it. Is the prose OK now? Borisblue 12:11, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

  Please also spin the legacy and fictional appearances sections into prose, see Charles Darwin for a decent example.--nixie 00:51, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

  Thy will be done. Borisblue 01:16, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

  Thanks for addressing the things I pointed out on the FAC nomination, I haven't changed my vote to support because I'm waiting to see if other people have problems with the content. I don't know enough about him to make such judgements, but comapred to an article like Charles Darwin it seems kind of thin, for example as far as I can tell there is reatively little summray of the biographcial detail that currently resides in The writing of Principia Mathematica, and what is mentioned is mixed in with scientific research - which doesn't make much sense now the article has been split into biography, research etc. With this split there is also now a 30 year gap in the biographical information. Shouldn't there also be a summary section for his occult views in addition to that on his religious views?--nixie 00:12, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

• Object. The image Image:Stamp germany sir issac newton.jpg is claimed as "fair use", but since the stamp isn't the subject of the article, a fair use claim is doubtful. --Carnildo 22:05, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

  replaced with an image from commons. Borisblue 22:47, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

• Support —thames 00:43, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
• Comment — This article has quite a few red links in it. All of these should at least be created as stubs. I believe that a featured article should spawn a whole series of related articles around it. I'm sure the contributors to this article can go through it and work on those red links. Also, I find the layout a bit ragged. I'm not sure why that is, but it'd be worth taking a look at the layout of the material again. --Gareth Hughes 13:30, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

I've dealt with all the red links, I've also rearranged the sections so that the biographical stuff is all in one place. Hope that helps. Borisblue 14:31, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

• Support --Gareth Hughes 15:00, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
• Comment anterior to a vote: the "Religious" section is...strange. It opens with Newton the passionate believer in an interventionist God and then spends half its time spinning the story of the clockmaker God that Newton somehow helped to create. Newton had exposure to one of the Cambridge Platonists in the early biography section (More), but here he is a fundamentalist. His familial background in the Puritan and dissenter community is barely mentioned (and possibly correctly, too, for, though Newton was of such a family, he wasn't much of a Puritan). The worry over his anti-Trinitarian views is ... strange. He doesn't really have to have been very orthodox, when everything else about his religious life wasn't. A man who can combine the Platonists with (alleged) Rosicrucianism with (alleged) hermeticism and (avowed) alchemy and who sees in the created universe God's plan, but not Spinozan or Liebnitzian hylozoism is probably not going to be orthodox anywhere. I do not mean to fault the authors too severely, because this is a vexatious part of his life, but the section is kind of choppy and betrays the wiki-history of distinct points of view layering on top of each other without a single thesis (right or wrong) being presented. It might almost be better to have very, very little than to try to dance through the minefield of a full discussion. Geogre 20:45, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

  I'm afraid all this is waaay over my head :( I'll contact thames, he is an expert on this, and contributed substantially to this section. Then I'll see what I can do. Thanks for the comment Borisblue 20:51, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

  Geogre, you're right that it has been melded together from different contributors. At first it talks about his personal religious views, and then it goes into the effects his scientific discoveries had on certain religious factions. These religious factions held views that Newton almost certainly would not have ascribed to. I've put a subheader between Newton's religious views, and his effect on religious views to better clarify. As far as the Platonism and Rosicrucianism, I would love it if you could add some of your knowledge to round out that section of the article, as I haven't done any research in those areas. —thames 23:23, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

  I'll see if I can. The problem with the Rosicrucians is that they were Rosicrucians, and they did a good job of keeping whatever it is that they were on about secret. The allegation of Rosicrucianism is about the only thing that's bankable (every member of the RS at first got accused of it, and practically all significant royalists did; it was presumed to be intensely related to alchemy, so that only made the claims stronger, when everyone knew that IN was performing alchemy). With the Platonists, I think it would be fascinating to find any Cudworth or Whichcote views in his thinking (other than just a belief in reason as man's toolkit for approaching God) (Whichcote was a Puritan, and yet he was one of the leaders of the Cambridge Platonists). I've always stayed clear of Newton, myself, because the complexity of his life requires a person deep in as many areas as he was, and I'm not one of them. I can add a bit to how Newton was viewed and used by the public. He became a lussus naturae in the Restoration world while he was still middle aged, and people were pointing at him quite a bit. I'll review the edits before voting, thanks. Geogre 01:28, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

  Any stuff that you feel is too in depth to belong in this article could go to Isaac Newton's religious views as well. Borisblue 01:36, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

  I'm seriously Geogre: those were some sweet edits. —thames 04:52, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

  Thanks a lot. If I felt even close to competent to the task, I'd try to help out the subarticle. It's a pleasure to help. Geogre 14:11, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

• Support: Thanks for the compliment. There is always more to be said, and Newton deserves quite a few words, but, for a short, encyclopedia biography written in summary style, this is a very good article that covers what needs to be covered. Happy to support. Geogre 14:11, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
• Support - I'll lend my nomination to this now. Looks much better than it did a few days ago! KingTT 21:47, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
• Support - This article seems very interesting and well written. Dan M 22:17, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
• Support - Well-written with a nice layout and appropriate linking for more depth. InvictaHOG 02:36, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
• Support - Great well written article. --WS 15:16, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
• Object, but it's within reach. An hour or two of intensive editing will get it up to standard. Here are some examples of what is required, from the top of the article.
  • 'he is widely regarded as the most influential scientist in history'—remove the hype, please. Others might say 'Einstein'.
  • 'also'—I counted four in the lead, all of them redundant. Every sentence in the article is 'in addition' to the previous statement. Please go through the whole article and remove 'also' unless it adds useful meaning (I'm sure it won't in most cases).
  • 'ellipticAL'?
  • Use of past tense for scientific truths is unusual; why not 'He was the first to realise that the spectrum of colours observed when white light passeS through a prism IS inherent in the white light and (add: IS) not added by ...'. Fix elsewhere, too.
  • The last para in the lead is one long list, and your attempts at various wordings are laboured ('finally', 'voiced a theory'). The semicolons are awkward. What about bulleting the items? 'He is responsible for other breakthroughs, such as: (bullets).
  • 'The following is a brief biography of Newton's early life.' Relocate above the 'Early life' subtitle as 'This is a summary of Newton's life.', and remove the first sentence currently under each subtitle. Isn't there a standard formatting

Main article: Isaac Newton's early life and achievements

?

• • 'Newton was premature'—you mean the birth, do you?
  • 'could have fit inside a quart mug'—grammar; and a reference citation would help for such a specific statement.

This topic deserves FA status—please improve it. Tony 06:59, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

• Thanks for the feedback! I'm not sure it's wise to remove "the hype". Isaac Newton IS widely regarded as the most influential scientist in history; every list of influential scientists on amazon puts him first- at very least, no one would consider Einstein more influential(Newton #1 here and #2 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0806513500/ref=pd_sim_b_1/002-6096938-5806455?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance here], behind the Prophet Muhammad). The assertion on the Einstein featured article that he is regarded the most influential scientist in the 20th century is more contentious than the claim that Newton is the most influential in history. Anyway, fixed the lead, citations and funny wording you metioned. Will deal with the tenses later. Borisblue 04:34, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

• Conditional support. Nice, but please merge the tiny paragraphs for a better look. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 05:32, 19 October 2005 (UTC)