User talk:Alexei Kouprianov

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Alexei Kouprianov is taking a short wikibreak and will be back on Wikipedia soon.

Welcome!

Hello, Alexei Kouprianov, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for joining our community. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. First thing: be bold! Editors are always happy to correct or revert mistakes and discuss changes with which they disagree. Here are some links you might find useful:

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All of this information can be daunting, but if you have a question and can't find the answer, you can always ask me on my talk page or go to Wikipedia:Where to ask a question. One last thing: please sign your name when leaving messages for others on article and user talk pages using (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. I hope you enjoy editing! --Sam Blanning (formerly Malthusian) ( T | C | A ) 10:18, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I'd be glad to join and stay. I'd be pleased if my contributions help to improve Wikipedia. Alexei Kouprianov 13:01, 18 March 2006 (UTC)Alexei Kouprianov

[edit] Introduction

Hello Alexei, I noticed your edits in family (biology) and order (biology). Allow me to introduce myself. I started editing here about half a year ago, mostly to try and combat misconceptions about plant names. In the world at large there is a lot of confusion about names for plants (official names as well as common names) and this leads to much unnecessary loss of time that would be better spent elsewhere. I noticed that wikipedia threatened to make this worse, although it had huge potential to be beneficial. My edits here are mostly in botanical nomenclature and plant taxonomy. When I started here there was a huge confusion, with botanical names treated as if they were animal names. I have been clearing up this confusion as best I could.

I quite welcome any factual addition. There are quite a few entries for botanists that can do with more facts. Also note the history of plant systematics that I started.

On a first impression I am not quite happy with the changes to "family" and "order", where it concerns layout. Many articles link there and their prime function is as a "quick check" of what the term basically means. I think I would feel happier to move the historical parts to one or more separate entries, and then to provide wikilinks to these new entries. I am not sure how many entries, it might be good to have separate entries for botany and zoology, and separate entries for family and order, making for up to four entries. This will depend on the contents.

Something the reverse applies to Hieronymus Tragus: if the entries for Hieronymus Bock and Hieronymus Tragus do not have a separate content there is no need to have to separate entries, one of these could be a redirect to the other ("#REDIRECT Hieronymus Bock" would do it).

I hope you enjoy your stay here! Brya 17:21, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Dear Brya, thank you for your message.

I fixed Hieronymus Tragus. My mistake.

As for the layout of the pages on order and family, I think I did no harm. Both pages begin with a clear and brief definition followed by a nearly pictorial representation of the position of the rank discussed within the hierarchy of taxonomic categories. It's up to the reader whether to scroll down to the "history of a concept" or not. Probably, it would be better simply try and delete the phrase "In older systems, it was used to indicate the rank of family" from the older version of the article. Instead I tried to replace this sentence with a more factually accurate one. It turned out to be longer than I expected. This led me to move the historical explanation to a separate section within the article, etc.

I am not sure if we really need to create this many entries for the history of categories. One of the possible suggestions is to combine histores of the basic taxonomic ranks into a special page dealing with the history of taxonomy or nomenclature. Actually, I was planning to write similar explanatory essays for phylum/division, class, and genus at least.

I do not think that it would be good to separate botany from zoology. Both principles and practice of taxonomy in both disciplines were essencially the same and periods of relative isolation were always followed by periods of interdisciplinary borrowings.

My rationale was to make small changes keeping Wikipedia at any stage of progress a working reference tool. In short, I was not up to revise all articles dealing with taxonomy and its history at once. On the other hand I could not stand the phrase of orders indicating the rank of family.

Alexei Kouprianov 18:32, 20 March 2006 (UTC)Alexei Kouprianov

[edit] History of plant systematics

Dear Brya,

visited your History of plant systematics. It is a somewhat shorter than I expected but I am fully aware of your fondness of brevity.

In my turn, I found myself not quite happy with this phrase: "The earliest system of plant classification probably was that by de Jussieu (inspired on the work of Adanson)"

I am afraid it is a bit misleading. Indeed, I never heard of any authors using the term "system" (when applied to the classification of animals, plants, or minerals) before Linnaeus (this is important, so if anyone ever heard of this, please do report to me).

The first authors who consistently used what Linnaeus called "systematic" arrangement (using systematic categories of class, order, genus and species, as opposed to "synoptic" arrangement by means of "endless" dichotomous division) were Rivinus (1690 et ff.) and Pitton de Tournefort (1694). The former arranged plants into orders, genera, and species, the latter into classes, sections, genera, and species. Neither of them used the word "system". To be honest, I do not know who was the first author after Linnaeus to use the term "system" either.

However, if you refer to systems (where plants are arranged using categories and not just dichotomous keys) which both are natural (reflect affinities) and universal (embrace all plants known hitherto), then the most probable candidates are Carolus Linnaeus (in his Classes plantarum (1738)) Albrecht von Haller and Adriaan van Royen (btw, the latter published a natural system nearly co-authored by Linnaeus). All af them clearly precede both A. L. de Jussieu and Michel Adanson.

You might also find useful the current version of Scientific classification (section Early systems / Early methodists) which deals nearly exclusively with botanists. I am planning to extend it and to rewrite the preceding section from Aristotle on. Then there will be a bit more of zoology and still more of botany.

Then, it is probably important to disentangle de Jussieu and his system of plant classification and link de Jussieu to Antoin Laurent de Jussieu, because, as you know, there was at least three of de Jussieus, and his classification to his classification.

Probably, I am tending to overcomplicate the issues, but as a biologist turned historian of biology I am too much aware of the degree of oversimplification biologists tend to exercise when dealing with the history of their science.

Let us hope that our modest efforts when joined will help bringing the taxonomic section of Wikipedia to the highest degree of perfection.

Alexei Kouprianov 19:27, 20 March 2006 (UTC)Alexei Kouprianov

Dear Alexei, you are raising lots of good points. I am not trying to achieve any particular result, except a good balance between readability and content. I do tend to prefer brief entries, as I find that I personally can easily oversee them and make sure there are no errors in them. This also helps in the maintenance, as anybody can edit (and introduce either extra facts or errors). There are a lot of misconceptions out there. Lots of readers want to have a few facts only, explained clearly. Basically I have nothing against a long entry, but this requires either a single knowledgable author who does periodic maintenance or preferably a group of knowledgable authors who decide upon a consensus.

As to the brevity of the entry History of plant systematics this is really because I have no real interest in the topic (I hope you will pardon this) and just wanted to be rid of this material from the list of systems of plant taxonomy. I just fleshed it out as much as I felt safe without putting any real effort in it. I don't really know what would be a good choice for a "first system". Initially I picked Adanson, but I eliminated him. It looked to me that de Candolle's views were safe as being a system, and he went back to Jussieu, so I more or less arbitrarily picked de Jussieu as being the first. You will note that I qualified this with a "probably". It is quite possible that Linnaeus was first (IIRC, Wettstein gives him credit as such), but any mention of Linnaeus immediately pushes the readers buttons and will be associated with the Systema Naturae; it is hard enough to get the reader to realize that he also wrote the Species Plantarum, nevermind what more beyond that. In getting this across care is needed not to confuse the reader with too much information in any single entry. You, Alexei, may have a perspective on the various works of Linnaeus and their relative importance to later developments, but this will not be true for very many other users, if any.

All the entries need lots more work, and especially hard facts. It is not all that important to me which is the "first system", and I would be happy with several candidates, side by side, with documentation of why each 'system' might claim to be a system. It is not really necessary that it was called a system at the time, it might be given that designation retroactively. Or the reverse, just the fact that it was called a "system" at the time does not mean that it qualifies as a system by the standards adopted for comparison. This of course is different from a historical overview of how usage of the term "system" was used over time.

In short, almost all the entries can do with extra attention and facts. The important thing in my opinion is not too lump things together, but keep readability and degree of factualness as high as possible. Rhetoric and Points-of-View we can do without. Wikipedia is just beginning to address the historical aspects of botany (in fact this is an overstatement as most wikipedians are not aware of botany as a field separate of zoology or of the basic difference between nomenclature and taxonomy), so I suggest we be careful? Probably we have a long way to go yet ... Brya 21:22, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I overly rushed in writing the above. The background regarding "systems" is simpler. What happened is that I wanted to have a list of systems of plant taxonomy so as to help in tracking the history of various taxa (mostly families and orders but some of the higher taxa also). For pragmatic reasons this requires systems that use botanical names conforming to ICBN. By definition, these can be no earlier than 1753: the de Jussieu system looks to be the earliest?

This narrow pragmatic definition likely spilled over into the material I edited out of this "list" to become the "history". This should not hinder a discussion of the concept of system in a wider sense.

Taking a second look at your entries at family and order I find I am appreciative of the historical material added. Wikipedia probably also should have an entry "ordo naturalis". Best regards! Brya 13:38, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Magnol

Dear Alexei, I had been working on the Magnol article for about a week, when I noticed you added the translations of the french text to the english page. I felt really sorry for you when I copy-pasted my text over yours. I already had that text translated and incorporated in my project. I have tried to be very carefull not to let out any of the information you had added on the page. I thank you for your kind words.

I created stubs on a few botanist (Pietro Antanio Micheli, Petrus Houttuyn, Jan Commelin, Paul Hermann). Maybe you feel chalenged to extend these pages with some usefull information. Wikiklaas 14:15, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Dear Wikiklaas, do not worry, please, about pasting your nicely written and better grounded article over my brief translation. I did it just of pure curiosity. I was interested in Joseph Pitton de Tournefort and his contributions to systematic botany. Naturally, I came across Pierre Magnol and noticed that there is a huge disbalance between English stub and a short but rather detailed French page, which disbalance I tried to fix. If I come across some info on the botanists you menton, I'll certainly add someting. For now I can do hardly more than retell in a form of a short biography their entries (if there are any) in the Early Modern Scientists database at Galileo Project (a link to a sort of mirror site of which you've put on the page on Magnol).

Your cobtribution was really inspiring. Right now I'm hovering over Prodromus to decifer some details of Magnol's method. Shame for me, I didn't that before... Thanks again. Alexei Kouprianov 20:11, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Haha, you made a Russian version of the page now? Great! One of the advantages is that I won't be able to overwrite your text now because I'm not that good in Russian language. I just started to read the cyrillic alphabet. Go Alexei!! - Wikiklaas 01:17, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I am just translating your excellent essay, so there's basically no need to overwrite ;) I made very few changes, mostly stylistic, because the syntaxis is quite different and some idioms have no parallel in Russian.

Alas, Russian part of the Wiki falls far short both in terms of the number of articles and of their quality. If you only knew what I just eradicated from the entries for the history of Genetics and for the St. Petersburg State University... The first was a result of an unsettled battle between an arrogant Lysenkoist and a couple of more reasonable editors who, unfortunately, knew little either of genetics or of its history to help the cause. The second was a mix of an urban legend about the Peter the Great founding the University in 1724 (this version still holds on the English page, which I am planning to rewrite too) and the real story, spoiled with backward attempts to settle some rational agreement between the two (with a sad result, though: an author had to come to a most bizzare conclusion that the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences was formally closed between 1803 and 1819!) I am just trying to harmonise the Wikies... Alexei Kouprianov 07:17, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Family and order, part II

With the Prodromus of de Candolle and the Genera Plantarum of Bentham & Hooker in hand I updated the entries of family (biology) and order (biology) to actual practice. I also added an entry ordo naturalis. Best regards, Brya 14:19, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Wonderful. I'm sorry, I was distracted for a while with my teaching and office obligations, so I did not respond to your previous proposal. I see you've fixed this all on your own and now, I guess, the entries for family, order, and ordo naturalis seem good enough to leave them for a while. I'll probably write a sort of the "history of a concept" for genus, which is more challenging. Probably, I'll post the first version on the "history" at the Talk:Genus for discussion. Alexei Kouprianov 19:40, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. I am glad to hear my alterations meet with your satisfaction. These entries probably can do with some fine tuning further down the road, but I will leave them as they are for the moment. Please feel free to add a history of genus in the entry itself, but I would appreciate it if you can leave me a brief note when you have done so. Brya 07:16, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

BTW in the entry on family I noted your spelling "presis" in the sentence "Pierre André Latreille in his Présis des caractères génériques des insectes, disposés ..." and was wondering if this should not be "precis" (it is so written in the entry on Latreille)? Brya 07:24, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A new template for the pre-Linnaean botanists proposed – comments

I like the idea of a template (even though I don't imagine it will be applied many times), but the wording is somewhat confusing, since it adds upon the existing one. Perhaps something more like this:

As {{{2}}} is a pre-Linnean botanist (his botanical works were published before May 1, 1753), his names of plants today have no official status and the abbreviation of his name ({{{1}}}) will seldom be used.

Also, are there any female botanists who would fit in this list? If so, you might want to change the pronouns to "his/her".--Curtis Clark 00:05, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

For my thoughts see template talk: pre-Linnaean botanist. Brya 08:39, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know, all the female botanists who established some botanical names are post-Linnaean. There are no plant names attributed to Maria Sibylla Merian (and I think she did not coin any new names anyway). Furter comments are at template talk: pre-Linnaean botanist Alexei Kouprianov 16:57, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stubs

I noticed that the article on Buxbaum has attracted several stub tags. Stub tags are somewhat controversial, and a commonly held view is that one per article is plenty. Personally I would tend to use them only for very incomplete articles. I rather like the characterization at wikipedia:Stub:

Another way to define a stub is an article so incomplete that an editor who knows little or nothing about the topic could improve its content after a superficial Internet search or a few minutes in a reference library. An article that can be improved by only a rather knowledgeable editor, or after significant research, may not be a stub.

It looks to me that the article on Buxbaum is good enough to stand on its own, and has outgrown the stub-stage. The fact that it could benefit by expansion does not mean it still is a stub. Brya 09:16, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, probably, I misunderstood the recent trend. There was one stub sign bio-stub which was replaced by User:Jaxl with two stubes for physicians and Germans. I simply extended that logic to include botanists because Buxbaum was as much a physician and German as he was botanist. Would that be appropriate to delete all stubs now? I still have to clarify some issues because all accounts of his biography from Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie to various Russian sources are controversial. They disagree about the key biographical dates and some other things. As I am now working on a paper partly dealing with him, I'll probably add something in the future. Alexei Kouprianov 10:08, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

None of these things is really fixed. There are discussions about the number of categories (per article) and of the usefulness of years as well. However, what you point about discrepancies in the literature clearly shows that an editor really needs to have quite a high level of competence to add something here. This shows that the article has proceeded beyond the "stub" stage. It is more useful to put the article in a category than to add a stub tag, anyway (and there is such a thing as too many categories, also).

Anyway, there is no 100% agreement in Wikipedia about anything. There are plenty of users who are running round attaching stub-tags to every article that looks short to them. Or are categorising everything that looks German to them in a German category. There is a danger of drowning any article in paraphernalia. I am just drawing the matter to your attention: you should be making your own judgments. Brya 12:20, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

OK,then. I guess, I'll better take your message as an act of encouragement and remove all stub marks, because nothing could be done to improve the situation by googling alone. Alexei Kouprianov 13:01, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pavord

Dear Alexei, I would appreciate your evaluation of The naming of names by Anna Pavord. I bought a copy but read only the first few pages and last few pages. I noticed a pleasant style of writing, but the Epilogue was discouraging. Linnaeus appeared to be a little mishandled and the rendition of current botany was no better than butchery. I never had the leisure to read the book itself, and could not judge the content anyway. What do you think? Is it worth reading? Brya 05:54, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Dear Brya, thank you for turning my attention to this interesting publication. Quite unfortunately, I do not have a slightest clue about it. I tried to look into it at amazon but they do not offer search inside feature, and I am pretty sure that this book will not ever come into any of the Russian libraries. Understandably, unless it somehow comes into my possession, I won't be able to say anything reasonable. I asked some friends of mine to take a look inside (I assume that the libraries in the other parts of the World are better equipped) because the title looks really tempting for me.

Well, sometimes even the best historical works are not without blemish. Biologists, in their turn, pay back in writing whiggish histories. It is really hard not to miss something and, probably, the only remedy could be a more rigid and more multy-disciplinary peer-review. Alexei Kouprianov 15:38, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. That is a pity, I would really have liked your opinion. It is a beautiful looking book, but that does not mean its contents are up to standards. It is also fairly new so it is not being offered second hand yet (I have a spare copy of The Tulip but it will be some years before the new book is available cheap). Pavord is not a historian but a journalist, so peer review does not come into it. Brya 17:27, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RfD

I've not actually used RfD myself, but I'd suggest closing the AfD (or asking it to be closed) and starting an RfD based on the criteria at WP:RfD. It would also be worth checking if the redirects meet the criteria for speedy deletion at WP:CSD - as it's not a logical redirect, it might. —Wh o uk (talk) 17:16, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I have closed the AfD debates - feel free to put them on RfD as noted above. Cheers. —Wh o uk (talk) 17:28, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

And I've now put them both on RfD. —Wh o uk (talk) 17:37, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. I was still thinking whether they can go for a speedy deletion,incluning gradually to RfD. :) Alexei Kouprianov 17:45, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Portal:Russia

Hello, Alexei. I saw your name in Demidov article and decided to let you know about Portal:Russia/New article announcements and Portal:Russia/Russia-related Wikipedia notice board, two notice-boards where Russia-related articles are discussed. Happy edits, Ghirla ^-трёп- 14:10, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Hello, Andrey. Admire your contribution to EnWiki. Thank you for the invitation. I added these items to my watchlist and Russian Gems as well. I mostly work on Russian Wiki because I feel it needs more attention, and my edits in the English Wiki are mostly confined to my area of expertise, which is rather narrow (biology/natural history, history of biology/natural history). However, I would be happy to help on the Russian matters too when occasion arises. Alexei Kouprianov 07:43, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hi

Just a note to say "hi". I am glad to see you dropping in from time to time. Occasionally, I browse interwiki links and end up in the Russian wikipedia, but of course I can not read much there (although it is more than in Korean, Japanase, etc). I am still trying to get a grip on the interconnections between the different wikipedias, it is interesting to see who copies what from whom. Keep up the good work. Brya 21:52, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Brya! It was so nice of you to visit mypage. I am working now mostly on the Russian wikipedia, because it seems that I am for now THE ONE to have a degree in biology. There is a lot of work in the Russian domain. I have written about 50 articles already, mostly on cell biology and we're still far from the end. Can you imagine that I had to begin with things like mitosis and meyosis? Homology (biology)? Not to say that I was responsible for the primers for most taxonomical cathegories (except for species and subspecies). It feels like an Adam. I still hope that after some basic work I'll go back to the English wiki. My most significant contribution since we parted is, probably, an entry on the Ecdysozoa controversy. The rest is mostly about interwikies. Take care Alexei Kouprianov 22:10, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Alexei! I can well imagine that there is a lot more work to be done on the Russian Wikipedia than on the English one. It is also a scary responsibility, as there must be many people all over Russia who have no better source of information than their internet access, with wikipedia turning up high among the Google results. This means having what amounts to a monopoly on providing information on at least some topics. It is some consolation that it is easier to do it right ab initio, rather than trying to correct misinformation that is already out there.

At the moment I am doing more interwikis than really is fun. Presumably this too will pass. Take care! Brya 17:32, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] reverts

No proble. :) I have a thick skin. ;) - UtherSRG (talk) 13:25, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re:Image of C.F.Wolff

I found the picture in Speert H. Obstetric and Gynecologic Milestones, The Macmillan Co, New York, 1958. Speert had obtained it by "Courtesy of the USSR Ministry of Health". I had no idea that pictures of him are so rare. Ekem 18:50, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Then, this is not him. I can not imagine that all my Russian felow-historians and me missed the publication of an unknown portrait (I used to work in the Institute for the History of Science and Technology, where I received my Ph. D., so I am pretty sure about that). I'll replace the image with the silhouette as soon as I get back home. Probably, we can leave the portrait, indicating that it is highly dubious. Alexei Kouprianov 18:57, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Project Linné 2007

Hello,
Thanks for your message. I will be happy if a similar project on en:
I translate, in frech, your article about Buxbaum : fr:Johann Christian Buxbaum... In the french wiki (here), you can find more of 2200 articles about naturalists, zoologists and other botanists... Which was the subject of your thesis? I worked, for my own thesis, on the link between the place of the invertebrates in the society and the environmental protection. I worked, too, a long time on the spiders. Best regards. --Valérie75 16:28, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Dear Valerie, I took a look at fr:Johann Christian Buxbaum. Thank you for translating his short bio. There are few points I'd like to mention.

1. The name of the ambassador was Alexander Rumyantsev (Ivanovich is a patronymic, while Alexander was his first and Rumyantsev, his last name).
2. Medical Collegium was not a medical school. Collegia were the higher administrative bodies in Petrine Russia (later, in the 1804, replaced by ministries). So, it was sort of a ministry of health. The name Collegium reflected the collegial approach to the decision-making. The members of collegia were supposed to judge on the matters within their jurisdictions (commerce, medicine, admiralty, etc., all in all 12 Collegia devoted to different segments of governance) and to come to some sort of consensus before taking any measures.

My thesis title was rather vaguely formulated (a tribute to the Russian academic tradition). It deals basically with the transformations of the method of taxonomy in the late 17th and in the first half of the 18th century. Imagine an amalgam of Atran's "Cognitive foundations of Natural History", Stafleau's "Linnaeus and the Linnaeans", and Koerner's "Linnaeus: Nature and Nation", and you'll get a pretty accurate idea of the end product. As I understand now, I could benefit from the narrowing of the topic, but the theme once chosen is not really easy to change.

My work in biology was about Lepidoptera: Incurvarioidea (comparative anatomy and taxonomy), M.Sc., 1992.Alexei Kouprianov 17:07, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for these precise details. Does the English name, Medical Collegium' ', reflect the Russian name of this institution? I would like to know that to envisage the French name.--Valérie75 08:03, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Temporarily risng from the wikibreak and falling back again: (1) the Russian spelling transliterated would look like "Meditsinskaia kollegiia" (Медицинская коллегия), (2) it would be good to consult some standard text in French about the Petrine administrative reforms (unfortunately, I do not have any at hand: our university library is very much biased towards English and German). Probably, there is a widely accepted translation. Thank you again for commemeorating the St Petersburg botanist. Let's hope that we'll stay in touch after I come back from my wikibreak (I depart for Uppsala to take part in a summer school in the history of science). Take care, Alexei Kouprianov 12:35, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Caterpillar

I reverted my own changes. Usually when I look up an animal on wikipedia, I see a taxobox, and I added one even though I am not an expert on the subject, sorry if I made a mistake. --Dom thedude 0 0 1 22:33, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. You are perfectly right, the taxoboxes are really useful for the articles dealing with taxa of living beings. However, for some historical reasons, the term caterpillar never was regarded as a name of a taxon. The taxon is Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) while caterpillar is a vernacular name for a peculiar kind of larvae that occurrs only in Lepidoptera. I do not know, what to do with taxoboxes in such a case but I would rather avoid them. Alexei Kouprianov 21:45, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] History of biology collaboration

The current History of Science Collaboration of the Month is Louis Pasteur.

Thought you might be interested.--ragesoss 17:42, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pitton de Tournefort

Please see the talk page for Joseph Pitton de Tournefort; feel free to re-add material. DS 23:39, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Alexdr101

Thanks for the notice about Alexdr101 (talk · contribs). I'll keep an eye on him/her. And thanks for the revert :) A ecis ^{Dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984.} 16:15, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Ecdysozoa problem

Hi, there is an upcoming paper in Cladistics journal (doi:10.1111/j.1096-0031.2006.00132.x) that shows that, and why, the analyses recovering a monophyletic Ecdysozoa (as traditionally defined, including nematodes and excluding annelids) must be viewed with extreme caution. They managed to recover an arthropod + chordate clade to the exclusion of nematodes, which is obviously very much in error. But their method of analysis was sound. So, they concluded, soundness of methodology is not sufficient to yield valid results in this case. Then they discussed reasons as to why, as regards evolutionary genetics, erroneous results might emerge. They do not advance an alternative scenario, instead concluding that the present analyses are simply insufficient to do so. Dysmorodrepanis 14:05, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the notice. I may only ask what means sound methodology in this case. However, the results are interesting. Sometimes the progress in molecular research makes me think of old-fashioned morphology as of something not entirely useless. Nematodes are a real puzzle, though. I hope, I'll live to see the end of story and to write a history of this controversy one day. Alexei Kouprianov 11:43, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject History of Science newsletter : Issue I - March 2007

The inaugural March 2007 issue of the WikiProject History of Science newsletter has been published. You're receiving this because you are a participant in the History of Science WikiProject. You may read the newsletter or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Yours in discourse--ragesoss 04:08, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] history of biology

Alexei, I'd love to have your thoughts on history of biology overall. I've done all I think I can without some serious critiques and suggestions from other knowledgeable people. It's on peer review and WP:GAC.--ragesoss 06:30, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject History of Science newsletter : Issue II - May 2007

The May 2007 issue of the WikiProject History of Science newsletter has been published. You're receiving this because you are a participant in the History of Science WikiProject. You may read the newsletter or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Yours in discourse--ragesoss 06:19, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Buchs (onomastics)

Hello, this is a message from an automated bot. A tag has been placed on Buchs (onomastics), by Shoeofdeath (talk · contribs), another Wikipedia user, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. The tag claims that it should be speedily deleted because Buchs (onomastics) fits the criteria for speedy deletion for the following reason:

Housekeeping - cleanup per WP:SU

To contest the tagging and request that administrators wait before possibly deleting Buchs (onomastics), please affix the template {{hangon}} to the page, and put a note on its talk page. If the article has already been deleted, see the advice and instructions at WP:WMD. Feel free to contact the bot operator if you have any questions about this or any problems with this bot, bearing in mind that this bot is only informing you of the nomination for speedy deletion; it does not perform any nominations or deletions itself. --Android Mouse Bot 2 06:58, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject History of Science newsletter : Issue III - September 2007

The September 2007 issue of the WikiProject History of Science newsletter has been published. You're receiving this because you are a participant in the History of Science WikiProject. You may read the newsletter or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Yours in discourse--ragesoss 00:55, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject History of Science newsletter : Issue IV - May 2008

A new May 2008 issue of the WikiProject History of Science newsletter is hot off the virtual presses. Please feel free to make corrections or add news about any project-related content you've been working on. You're receiving this because you are a participant in the History of Science WikiProject. You may read the newsletter or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Yours in discourse--ragesoss (talk) 23:26, 2 May 2008 (UTC)