Talk:History of biology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article was previously the History of Science Collaboration of the Month. See how it changed: diff.

	This article is part of the History of Science WikiProject, an attempt to improve and organize the history of science content on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. You can also help with the History of Science Collaboration of the Month.
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale.
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the importance scale.

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)

Contents 1 New content heeds home 2 Stub? 3 Intro para 4 This article's needs 5 Central dogma

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)