Talk:Alfred Russel Wallace
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[edit] Make Wallace Line separate article
I think that the Wallace Line deserves a separate article. I propose to separate out the section in this article and make it the basis of a new article leaving a reference and link to the new article in this article. I will do this within the week unless anyone has strong objections. Oska 01:58, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC funky chickens .. why can I change his text ? :/ unsmart Separation now completed after no objections were raised. Oska 09:00, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Same fella as A.R. Wallace
[edit] Vaccination A Delusion
I removed the Publications section with this link, but now I'm unsure. (External link deleted to placate spam filter) This actually looks like it was written by Wallace. What to do? Awolf002 18:27, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
- I believe that it was an actual publication of his. The link was removed because it was part of the website whale.to, an RfC on which can be found on Talk:MMR vaccine. I'm reinserting the text without the link for now pending RfC. InvictaHOG 18:38, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I agree. However a full citation of the title/publication is needed, so no other "bold" editor removes it again. Let me add that. Awolf002 19:05, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
- I have the book, and about 10 photocopies of it as well, also this earlier work. (External link deleted to placate spam filter) I can send anyone a copy if they want one. As
to InvictaHOG deletion of not only link but book, the real reason is his allopathic suppression of works critical to allopathic vaccination, and the best reason he can come up with so far is ad hominem. He has taken it upon himself to remove all links to my website where I have numerous anti-vaccination books such as this one by Wallace. I have been adding pages such as [National Anti-Vaccination League], Archie Kalokerinos, and so on. john 10:31, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
- His texts are at http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/wallace/writings.htm which is a very suitable place for them and to link to. Midgley 00:37, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
Actually I am rather amazed that the current version of this article has no material at all not only on Wallace's opposition to mandatory small pox vaccination but also on his long running campaign in support of spiritualism or his belief in clairvoyance and phrenology. Nor is there anything about his radical political beliefs (which were closely tied with his anti-vaccination campaign). It is as if the article on Newton omitted his interest in alchemy or his biblical scholarship and heretical views on the Trinity. In fact it might be even odder since Newton kept his alchemical researches relatively quiet and his more unconventional religious views even quieter, where as Wallace went out of his way to engage in public debate on both vaccination and spiritualism. One thing I notice from studying the history of this article is that Vsmith removed an extensive anti-vaccination quote with the comment that it was not sourced and that it lacked context. There is nothing wrong with the quote. It is from the pamphlet 'Vaccination a Delusion: Its Penal Enforcement a Crime: Proved by the Official Evidence in the Reports of the Royal Comission' published by Wallace in 1898 and most of it is reproduced on page 434 of Slotten's recent Wallace biography, 'The Heretic in Darwin's Court'. Vsmith probably had a valid point about the lack of context for the quote. In general I think this article needs a lot of work and I think I will make a new year's resolution to make improving it my next Wikipedia project :) Rusty Cashman 09:54, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
postscript to my comment. The anti-spam filter is preventing me from saving my comment. I am going to delete all the external links on this page to see if I can get it to save. I will come back and try adding them back in one by one until I find the problem. Rusty Cashman 09:54, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Ok, I think I have completed most of the changes I am going to make to this article and I think I have addressed all the issues in this comment. In the end I did not restore the quote that Vsmith deleted. Instead I added a paragraph that discussed Wallace's role in the smallpox vaccination controversy. The deleted quote can be found in the source I cite. If someone else wants to add it back in so be it. At leaset it will have some context now, and I think the article as whole does more justice to Wallace who was both an important and complex figure. After I have made a few more changes I will ask the project biography folks to rerate the page. I don't think it is a start level article anymore. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rusty Cashman (talk • contribs) 09:06, 14 January 2007.
- Your revisions look good. The discussion of the smallpox controversy is far better than an unsourced, contextless quote. I've learned from your work, didn't know much about Wallace before, thanks - Vsmith 11:45, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Add external link
Please add a link to <http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/>, which is editing and publishing all of the correspondence of Charles Darwin. Alfred Russel Wallace was a significant correspondent of Darwin. Eadp 15:33, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] What did he do beside dying?
The opening text makes it sound like he is best known for dying in his sleep! Felsenst 06:19, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
- Insertion. One of the processes by which articles evolve. Needs some transposons too. I have moved that bit, hopefully where it belongs. cheers Shyamal 07:09, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Mock GAC review
I can't pass this article, as the nominator of this article has passed an article that I nominated, and that would Look Bad.
Lead is too dense - split it up into 3 or so paragraphs.
Also, later on in the article, the text can get too dense. Could conform to Template:Biography closer. Early life needs inline citations. In some places, the tone is off - "the riddle of the origin of species" for eg. - reads like a 19th C science experiment. (too romantic) Article should technically be written in British English. Could also do with a copyedit. (use of commas) Sometimes, sentences are too long "He had come to this belief because of a natural and life-long inclination in favor of radical ideas in politics, religion and science,[2] and because he had been profoundly influenced by Robert Chambers work Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, a work of popular science published in 1844 that advocated an evolutionary origin for the solar system, the earth, and living things. " One sentence, one idea. Direct quotes need inline citation. Needs more detail on his conversion to spiritualism.
The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and might not be applicable for the article in question.
- Please expand the lead to conform with guidelines at Wikipedia:Lead. The article should have an appropriate number of paragraphs as is shown on WP:LEAD, and should adequately summarize the article.[?]
- Per Wikipedia:Context and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates), months and days of the week generally should not be linked. Years, decades, and centuries can be linked if they provide context for the article.[?]
- There may be an applicable infobox for this article. For example, see Template:Infobox Biography, Template:Infobox School, or Template:Infobox City.[?] (Note that there might not be an applicable infobox; remember that these suggestions are not generated manually)
- If this article is about a person, please add
{{persondata|PLEASE SEE [[WP:PDATA]]!}}
along with the required parameters to the article - see Wikipedia:Persondata for more information.[?] - Per Wikipedia:Context and Wikipedia:Build the web, years with full dates should be linked; for example, link January 15, 2006.[?]
- Please reorder/rename the last few sections to follow guidelines at Wikipedia:Guide to layout.[?]
- Please make the spelling of English words consistent with either American or British spelling, depending upon the subject of the article. Examples include: honor (A) (British: honour), neighbor (A) (British: neighbour), defense (A) (British: defence), defence (B) (American: defense), organize (A) (British: organise), realize (A) (British: realise), criticize (A) (British: criticise), ization (A) (British: isation), travelled (B) (American: traveled).
- Watch for redundancies that make the article too wordy instead of being crisp and concise. (You may wish to try Tony1's redundancy exercises.)
- Vague terms of size often are unnecessary and redundant - “some”, “a variety/number/majority of”, “several”, “a few”, “many”, “any”, and “all”. For example, “
Allpigs are pink, so we thought ofa number ofways to turn them green.”
- Vague terms of size often are unnecessary and redundant - “some”, “a variety/number/majority of”, “several”, “a few”, “many”, “any”, and “all”. For example, “
- Please provide citations for all of the
{{fact}}
s.[?] - Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a.[?]
You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Thanks, Malkinann 23:13, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks very much for the valuable input, I will try and address these issues over the next few days. Though I must say I think the whole British/American English consistency thing is more trouble than it is worth :) I do appreciate your style comments and I will do my best to address them. Rusty Cashman 01:00, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
If you ever want to get it to FA, someone will get their knickers in a knot about it. If you want to be a cheeky bugger, you could ask for a translation? ;) It also needs more detail on his death. I've added an infobox that could use filling out.-Malkinann 03:09, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
With the addition of a paragraph on his conversion to spiritualism I believe all of the comments in this mock review have been addressed. Thanks again for the feeback Rusty Cashman 22:03, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] GA review
- It is reasonably well written.
- a (prose): b (MoS):
- It is factually accurate and verifiable.
- a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
- It is broad in its coverage.
- It follows the neutral point of view policy.
- It is stable.
- It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.
- a (tagged and captioned): b lack of images (does not in itself exclude GA): c (non-free images have fair use rationales):
- Overall:
- a Pass/Fail: [[Image:|15px]]
That's a pass, methinks. Orginisation is a little odd, putting the section on his marriage way out of chronological order, and leaving no place outside the introduction to mention his death, but on the whole, it actually does work well, teasing out all the different aspects of his life into coherent sections. For FA, I'd be inclined to add more on his legacy. Adam Cuerden talk 11:38, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for the review and the comments. I agree with you about the missing separate section on his death. I am working on some text for it now and when I have it ready I will restore the section. I will also see if there isn't a better place for the marriage section. Hopefully I can make the article structure a little more standard as I would like to persue A ratings in both history of science and biography.Rusty Cashman 00:29, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
- Congrats to all those editors who brought this article up to GA status. I haven't done much but I have been monitoring its progress. I've traveled through Maluku and have read both 'The Malay Archipelago' and also Tim Severrins book ('In search of Wallace'?) but my memory of both is a bit vague to have made contributions. One of the most fascinating characters of South East Asian history. Well done Merbabu 00:36, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] frog image
This is interesting...compare the frog from the Malay Archipelago image to the flying frog from Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur. That species is credited to Wallace, but it's interesting that it's actually based on that illustration as well--ragesoss 16:40, 4 March 2007 (UTC):
I agree. The two figures are extremely similar and it does look like one was derived from the other. It is probably not all that surprising however. Haeckel surely would have been familar with the Malay Archipelago and we all know scientific images tend to have long lives of their own. For example, Haeckel's notorious embryos. Rusty Cashman 03:32, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Featured Article?
Do you think that the article is ready to become a featured article? Tomer T 00:11, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
I would just like to add at this point (as a not-logged-in visitor; I will not directly identify myself except to say that I maintain the Web's main Alfred Russel Wallace site) that it seems to me most of this entry measures up reasonably well. However, it should be remembered that there is still not agreement on Wallace's intellectual evolution, and it is best that this be remembered in recording statements about such. For example, Spiritualism was certainly not a "religion" to Wallace and it is debatable even as to whether he was a theist: He simply believed that the "world of spirit" was a further extension of natural reality (also, I am unaware of any evidence suggesting he attended spiritualist religious services or had anything else to do with "religion"). It should also be noted that I think it is ridiculous to think that Wallace "turned to spiritualism" as a result of the breakoff of his first engagement: I supply four or five reasons why at writings at my site, and will confirm this understanding in an essay that will appear in a collection of writings I am editing for Oxford University Press, to appear around the end of 2008. Again, Wallace was not, absolutely, anti-sexual selection, but instead was against some aspects of the theory that Darwin accepted. On the basis of such, I have gone ahead and made a number of small changes in the text which--I hope--will make it more possible for people to ponder the greater picture without contributing to preconception.
- I can pretty easily guess who you are :) as can anyone who has done much research on this topic since it is almost impossible not to come accross (and end up citing) the web page you maintain. I am delighted to see you contributing to the article. I wrote the paragraph on his conversion to spiritualism and it perhaps suffered from my over dependence on a single source (the Slotten biography), which excellent as it is, inevitably has some biases, and the topic of religion and its relation to spirtuality is a difficult one, where it is difficult sometimes to even get agreement on the definition of terms. I am currently in the process of reviewing other sources in the hope of doing a better job of describing some of the controversy about Wallace's beliefs to which you refer. I may also have given the impression that his opposition to sexual selection was more absolute than it was. Although it seems clear to me that even if Wallace did not completely oppose the concept of sexual selection his disagreement with Darwin over its importance and wide spread applicability was a major one. Of course one of the things that makes Wallace such an interesting topic is his penchant for controversy which did not die with him by any means. I hope you will continue to contribute and provide feedback. Personally I think the article still needs a little more work before it is ready for a serious FA nomination.Rusty Cashman 23:35, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
I have just revised the section on his spiritual views, and I hope it now addresses these concerns in a better more balanced manner. I would be very pleased to learn what you think. I think the article is getting very close to being ready for another FA nomination. I have just a couple more things I want to fix first.Rusty Cashman 21:02, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
- Ok, I have completed all the edits I can think of and I am strongly considering putting it back up for FA again. If anyone has any concerns or comments about the article as it now stands I would appreciate your input. Rusty Cashman 19:06, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] FA Pre Review
Here is some feedback I copied from AnonEMouse's talk page. Please strike through any items that you address Rusty Cashman 06:50, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
sometimes called the "father of biogeography". - needs a specific citation calling him that.Parents, Wallace and Greenell were? Don't need a lot here, but a few words could make a difference: were they rich, poor, politicians, explorers, scientists... Was father a surveyor?Vale of Neath[3] - end with a period before the refto collect specimens in the Amazon Rainforest - mainly animal specimens, or both animals and plants?still no separate article for any of the books including "one of the most popular journals of scientific exploration of the 19th century" ? Oh, well. I won't insist on them.revolutionary connotations. [12] [13] (and other places) - no spaces before refs Wikipedia:Footnotes#Where_to_place_ref_tagsQuotations shouldn't be in italics, but in <blockquote> tags or any of the many templates - see Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Quotations_in_italics and Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Quotations. Didn't I say that last time?On the other hand, book titles, like Origin of Species should be in italics.hypnosis then known as mesmerism - comma after hypnosis - said last timelater investigations into spiritualism ; began investigating Spiritualism - pick one capitalizationséances - wikilink - said last timeand of human society.[43][44]. - drop last dotNovember 7, 1913; November 1, 1915 - link per WP:DATENov 1, 1915 - spell out and linkThe New York Times - link and italicizeRoyal Society, The Copley Medal, and the Order of Merit - wikilink, first mentionsIn recent years ... since the year 2000 - starts vague. Move "since the year 200" to the start of the sentence.£200 a year - wikilink to GBP per WP:$as a student from 1828-1836 - end with .end sections need to be combined - References, Further Reading and External links - all 3? Consider joining the all into one, definitely join the latter two - for example, ""Missing Link-Alfred Russel Wallace, Charles Darwin's neglected double" by Jonathan Rosen, The New Yorker, 12 February 2007" seems to be the exact same thing as "Feb 2007 article on Wallace in New Yorker magazine"!I'd also consider combining Selected Publications with something.Look over my last nitpicks and make (more) sure you got them all.
--AnonEMouse (squeak) 20:16, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Ok, I believe I have addressed all of these issues appropriately. The only one I did not accomodate completely was the comment about eliminating Selected publications as a section. I checked FA and GA calibre articles on other scientists and mathemeticians and many of them (for example Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin) have separate sections on the subjects writings. I think the section is valuable enough to keep, but I did rename it to be more consistent with some of those other articles, and I did add a little analysis. I also considerd the comment you made earlier (during the first FA nomination) about elminating the external links by importing all the texts into wikisource. However, while everything Wallace has written has been in the public domain since 1983, manny of the texts that the section links to have introductory comments or other notations by modern scientists or science historians that would still be under copyright. Under the circumstances I think external links for convienence are appropriate. Rusty Cashman 23:43, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Darwin's Moon Reference
I have deleted the following sentence from the section on the defense of Origin of Species. "Wallace was sometimes called "Darwin's Moon" for his defence of Darwin's theories." It had a citation needed tag on it, and I believe it was inappropriate in that section anyway. Placed where it was it implied that he was called that by his contemporaries as a result of his defence of Origin. As far as I can tell the first reference to Darwin's Moon was its use as the title for a 1966 biography of Wallace by A. Williams-Ellis. Unless someone has a reference to cite that says otherwise, I don't think it belongs in that section. Where it might belong is in the section on his death and aftermath, since it is part of a pattern that shows how Wallace was perceived after his death. I have found some good sources for such a section and I am working on the text for it. Rusty Cashman 03:39, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Papers
Shouldn't the titles of papers, as opposed to books, be in quotes rather than italicized?--ragesoss 04:54, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
- Ok, WP:MOS says you are right so I fixed it. Personally it makes more sense to me to Italicize the titles of scientific papers than it does the names of ships but when in doubt go with the MOS.Rusty Cashman 15:34, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Wallace's place in the history of evolution
There is a key paragraph that need to be elaborated upon, which was hidden in the spiritual views section:
- In many accounts of the history of evolution, Wallace is mentioned only in passing as simply being the "stimulus" to publication of Darwin's own theory.[1] In reality, Wallace developed his own distinct evolutionary views which diverged from Darwin's, and was considered by many (including Darwin) to be a leading thinker on evolution in his day, whose ideas could not be ignored. He is among the most cited naturalists in Darwin's Descent of Man, often in strong disagreement.
This article needs a more detailed treatment of the different historical accounts of Wallace's place. In particular, pp. 173-176 of Peter Bowler's Evolution: The History of an Idea (3rd edition) has a good discussion of how other historians have treated the issue, along with Bowler's own interpretation. A closely related issue that needs to be discussed with at least a full paragraph is the differences between Wallace's theory of natural selection and Darwin's. Bowler discusses this well, along with Mayr in Growth of Biological Thougt, pp. 494-498 (and Larson mentions it very briefly in his Evolution, p. 75).--ragesoss 19:45, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
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- You are right. I think part of this is that the spiritualism and application of the theory to man really needs to be broken into two separate parts. There are really 3 topics here. One is differences in how they saw the operation of natural selection (Darwin emphasized individual competition within the species more, where as Wallace more emphasized environmental pressure on populations), the 2nd is the power of selection Wallace was actually more of a hyper selectionest in many ways where as Darwin looked for additional mechanisms such as sexual selection and even inheritence of acquired characteristics to supplement natural selection, and the third is their differences on whether purely material causes could have driven the evolution of some aspects of the human mind. I think the article only makes the 3rd of those differences explicit (although there are allusions to the other 2). Let me consult my sources more and think about it a little, and I will attempt a solution. Rusty Cashman 20:34, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
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- I also just received a marked up hardcopy of a slightly older version of the article from a leading Wallace scholar with whom I have been having some correspondence. While I don't think all of his suggestions are appropriate he has some good ideas for improving parts of the article and some of them touch on these same areas.Rusty Cashman 01:54, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
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I think your concerns have been addressed pretty well, and I am finished with the edits inspired by the feedback from the outside expert.Rusty Cashman 07:49, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Citing sources
I've gone along with the current approach of using Wikipedia:Citation templates with Harvard style cites linked from the text, but note that using Template:Citation instead with Template:Harvard citation no brackets for the inline text links has the cunning effect of making the Harvard references under the Notes section into links down to the particular Reference. It would be a fair bit of work to change it now, and is optional according to Wikipedia:Citing sources, but just thought I'd mention it. .. dave souza, talk 20:58, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
- Also note, I've added a bit about reactions to Wallace's "On the Law Which has Regulated the Introduction of Species", let me know if it's too detailed. ..... dave souza, talk 20:51, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
- My take is that having the cites link to the sources is not essential in this article, because there are still only 15 cited sources. This means that searching the list for a source is not too onerous, as opposed to say the Darwin article where you have several times that many sources. I very much appreciated your additions to the article, especially the stuff on how Wallace's 1855 paper influenced Lyell. Some of the better historians of science (Larson, Bowler) are aware of how important biogeographical arguments, many of them based on Wallace's work, were in convincing naturalists of the reality of evolution, but most historical accounts ignore all of them except for a few of Darwin's observations in the Galapagos.Rusty Cashman 07:42, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks, the points come from recent biographers of Darwin who appear to appreciate Wallace's significance. It's true that the distribution of Darwin's Rhea, the Falkland Island Fox and his Galapagos mockingbirds seem to have been of more importance to him initially, but are now overshadowed by the tortoises and finches he didn't appreciate till after the voyage. Similarly, glad to see Vestiges being given due credit – there's a tendency to portray Darwin as shocking society with the startling new idea of evolution, when others had laid the groundwork and convinced many people that evolution occurred, while Darwin's initial significance was giving it scientific respectability, as Wyhe comments. I've taken the liberty of adding a bit more about the circumstances of the Linnean reading. ... dave souza, talk 21:32, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
- My take is that having the cites link to the sources is not essential in this article, because there are still only 15 cited sources. This means that searching the list for a source is not too onerous, as opposed to say the Darwin article where you have several times that many sources. I very much appreciated your additions to the article, especially the stuff on how Wallace's 1855 paper influenced Lyell. Some of the better historians of science (Larson, Bowler) are aware of how important biogeographical arguments, many of them based on Wallace's work, were in convincing naturalists of the reality of evolution, but most historical accounts ignore all of them except for a few of Darwin's observations in the Galapagos.Rusty Cashman 07:42, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Spelling
What spelling conventions should this article use with -ize/-ise and -ization/-isation? Apparently, both are acceptable in British English, but the article currently uses some of each, which is probably not what we want. My feeling is to go with the z's, since that will lead to less needless misguided copyediting and reversion over time.--ragesoss 16:37, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
- I don't have strong opinion one way or another, but I have noticed that a number of editors here tend to believe that ise is correct for articles that use British spelling. Whatever is decided here are a couple of things that should NOT change. A while ago an editor caught me having subconsciously translated a couple of words in one of the quotations from English into American when I typed them in from the book I was using(example favorable rather than favourable). That has been corrected, but it turns out Wallace really did spell "generalization" that way, apparently the convention was not yet established in the first half of the 19th century. On the other hand the title of the book Land Nationalisation should stay that way since that was the title the book was published under (the Wallace Scholar I have been corresponding with caught that one). Other than quotations and book/paper titles I could really care less. Rusty Cashman 17:21, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
- This is all very odd, in that while my (mac OS system) spellchecker wants to change "generalization" to "generalisation" and Chambers Dictionary gives "generalisation" as first choice with -z- as an option, my newer Concise Oxford gives "generalization.. (also -isation)" . There are a number of -ize spellings in the article, but they don't seem too jarring and may well be the preferred British spelling in some instances. Probably not worth worrying about, obviously quotations must follow the original and other instances can be reexamined on merit if need be. .. dave souza, talk 21:12, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Factual Dispute
I got an email from an outside expert who has just taken a look at a recent version of the article. He said the following:
- In the third paragraph of "Exploration..." you mis-cite Raby to support the wrong statement that Wallace began to correspond with Darwin during the 1852-4 London period (that correspondence only began after he was in the Far East).
That is a fairly important fact to get right. I don't have the Raby source in front of me. I will look at this in the sources I do have, but I would apprecieate if the editor who did the original edit (I think it might be rageoss) would check the source as well. In the meanwhile I will stick a disputed tag on it.Rusty Cashman 22:16, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
- Not the same source, but reference [35] Wallace, Letters and reminiscences 1916. p. 105 is headed "The Complete Extant Correspondence" between Wallace and Darwin, and opens with "The first eight letters", the first being dated 1 May 1857 (see ext. link in article). Desmond & Moore p. 454 say that Wallace had been in touch before then, and was now collecting skins of domestic fowl for Darwin – "The carriage is costing me a fortune!" . .... dave souza, talk 23:15, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
- I've amended the sentence, so that is says "made connections with" rather than "began corresponding with", which is vague enough (through possible indirect connections) to encompass all the possibilities. Raby seems to imply that they started corresponding, but it's vague; it appears that all that is known for sure is that they had met once by the time he left for the Malay Archipelago. According to Janet Browne, "The two men had met briefly once, although it is not clear exactly when—either before Wallace set off on a collecting expedition to the Malay Archipelago in 1948, or before he made a similar expedition to the Malay Archipelago in 1954." (Voyaging, p. 537). The first preserved letter in the Darwin Correspondence project is this, from May 1, 1857.--ragesoss 23:33, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
- PS: it would probably be good to switch the correspondence footnotes from The life and letters of Charles Darwin to the Darwin Correspondence Project entries; they have nice footnotes, and a decent interface for exploring more of the Darwin-Wallace correspondence.--ragesoss 23:42, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
- My sources concur, Wallace and Darwin met in between his South American and Indonesian expiditions but there seems to be no evidence of correspondence at that time.Rusty Cashman 05:37, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks for finding these references, agree that citations from the Darwin Correspondence project will be good but I'm struggling to get the hang of their search function. Eventually found the way to this letter to W. B. Tegetmeier referred to in footnote 2 of the May 1 letter: footnote 4 is informative – paraphrased by me, "Alfred Russel Wallace had left England to collect in the Malay Archipelago in 1854, and his name was included in CD's list of individuals to ask for specimens (see Correspondence vol. 5, CD memorandum, [December 1855])...... From [Celebes], in a letter dated 21 August 1856... he told his agent Samuel Stevens that his latest shipment of specimens included items for CD........." .... dave souza, talk 07:54, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
- PS: it would probably be good to switch the correspondence footnotes from The life and letters of Charles Darwin to the Darwin Correspondence Project entries; they have nice footnotes, and a decent interface for exploring more of the Darwin-Wallace correspondence.--ragesoss 23:42, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Copyedit
It's really a matter of taste, but to me constructions such as "where one evening he would meet the entomologist" seem rather irritating, so in this example I've changed it to "where one evening he met the entomologist". Have also changed a couple of Americanisms, Fall > autumn, railroad > railway. .... dave souza, talk 14:48, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
- Done, hope that's acceptable. .. dave souza, talk 08:41, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Date format?
It's been my practice to use day/month/year on British or Commonwealth articles, with month/day, year, on U.S. articles. This article mostly uses the U.S. format, obviously we should standardise. The Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) seems a bit vaguer on this than it used to be, Calendar date indicates the above preference, though it's not imperative unless dealing with months given as numbers as in today's date of 26.5.07. Comments? ...... dave souza, talk 19:53, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
- I don't mean to be dense, but isn't the purpose of linking the dates to allow the reader's date preference to take care of this so that the article writers don't have to fight over it? Rusty Cashman 22:42, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
- Some readers, such as myself, prefer to let the dates show in the format best suited to the context: it's like spelling. Many readers are anons or haven't got to the stage of setting preferences, and ideally we should aim at that general public. .. dave souza, talk 23:05, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
- Since it's unclear how necessary the more usual UK usage is, I've followed the precedent of the original author and standardized on the month/day, year, format. A couple of instances needed the comma after the year. .. dave souza, talk 08:41, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
- Some readers, such as myself, prefer to let the dates show in the format best suited to the context: it's like spelling. Many readers are anons or haven't got to the stage of setting preferences, and ideally we should aim at that general public. .. dave souza, talk 23:05, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Visit to America
This article: Moore, James (2006), "Evolution and Wonder - Understanding Charles Darwin", Speaking of Faith (Radio Program), American Public Media, <http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/darwin/transcript.shtml> Retrieved on 2007-05-26 has a nice story about Wallace travelling through the U.S. for a lecture tour in 1886–1887, when his explanations of Darwinism were welcomed without any problems. Worth including? .. dave souza, talk 23:05, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
- Interesting stuff, but probably more relevent to the evolution-creation controversy than to an article on Wallace since it says more about the change in public perception of evolution in America than it does about him. It might be worth adding a sentence or 2 to the end of biography section about the trip to America however. It lasted several months and it was important in a couple of different ways. Ironically Wallace did encounter resistence to his ideas during this period, which is what motivated him to write the book Darwinism. However, it wasn't from religious people who rejected evolution, the resistence came from scientists who accepted evolution, but rejected the idea that natural selection was its most important cause. This is covered in the article.Rusty Cashman 02:45, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
- I added a paragraph that included a few sentences on the American tour. It kind of nicely finished out section of the biography before his death.
[edit] A small but interesting suggestion
The article currently reads that Wallace got his idea of natural selection while he was in bed with a fever. Well not only did he have a fever, but he was bedridden by a case of malaria. The malaria was causing him to lose sleep, so while he was being kept awake, the idea of natural selection came into his head. Thus, in the middle of the night, Wallace wrote his essay "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type" in only a few hours so that it could be sent to Darwin on a ship leaving the island later that very morning, all while enduring a case of malaria.
This information is taken from a course taught by a prominent biology and philosophy professor at The University of Texas. BareAss 22:19, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
- I agree that several sources, including the one I cite (Slotten's biography), say that Wallace's illness was malaria. This is not surprising since Wallace said that in his autobiography. The question is whether that fact is significant enough to mention in an encyclopedia article as opposed to say a 400 page biography. Wallace is such an interesting figure that you have to be real disciplined not to turn the encyclopedia article into a 400 page biography. Another problem with relating the story as you tell it is that some historians/biographers have suggested that Wallace may have romanticized the account he wrote in his autobiography a little, not to mention the possibility that he may have misremembered some details close to half a century after the fact. The article already mentions that modern historians are pretty sure he got which island he was on at the time wrong in that account, if we bring in more details from there we will have to mention more qualifications as well. This seems like a lot of work/space for information that is of marginal relevence to the article... I don't feel strongly on the topic, I just want to push back a little. Rusty Cashman 04:08, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
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- Yes, it is rather trivial and not all that vital to the entry. I just know that I'm all-the-more astonished that he wrote this extremely well-written essay in the middle of the night while ill with malaria. This is a wonderful entry, quite worthy of that star up in the corner. BareAss 13:37, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Congratulations
For the excellent article, and special thanks to User:Rusty Cashman. But why doesn't the featured "star" appear on the article page ? Shyamal 05:38, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
- The talk page is updated to reflect featured status automatically by a bot, but the honor of adding the FA star ({{featured article}}) to the article is left to its editors.--ragesoss 06:02, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
- Done and thanks to all the editors and reviewers who have helped improve this article.Rusty Cashman 06:08, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Rhacophorus nigropalmatus
I added a link to a tiny stub on the Rhacophorus nigropalmatus. I also changed the link at frog to one at flying frog, I thought this seemed right. Sorry about the stub. I read some of the article, it is deserving of the star - recently awarded I notice. Congrats to the editors. Sorry about not checking in here with my suggested change. ☻ Fred|☝ discussion|✍ contributions
- No need to apologize. I don't believe FA is supposed to stand for "frozen article". Especially when it comes to small but obviously beneficial improvements such as links to new articles. Stable yes, but not frozen.Rusty Cashman 19:23, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Removal of Arnold Brackman's book from further reading
A 1980 book by Arnold Brackman called A Delicate Arrangement: The Strange Case of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace was added to the further reading section. I have deleted it because I don't consider it a reliable source. The central claim of Brackman's work (and a 1984 work by John Langdon Brooks) is that Darwin stole a significant part of the theory of natural selection (particularly some ideas about it leading to the divergence of allied species from one another) from the essay he received from Wallace in 1858. Recent Wallace biographers including (Slotten 2004 pp. 157-162) and (Shermer 2002 pp. 128-150) have analyzed Brackman and Brooks' claims in detail and refuted them. Even historians, such as Charles H. Smith (see [1]) and Quammen who take a slightly more critical view of the process that lead to the publication of Darwin and Wallace's ideas are dismissive of Brackman and Brooks' claimss.Rusty Cashman (talk) 07:52, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
- You don't consider it a relaible source? First, it's not used as a source and as you said yourself, it's only been added to further reading section for the interest of the readers who need to decide themselves. Your opinion as to reliability does not make it any more valid than my opinion as to the book's general interest. While I do not argue as to the reliability, it's up to the readers themselves to determine - and that's why it's in the further reading section. And listen to the podcast found here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9316654. The podcast is with a noted Darwin scholar who personally notes the book and provides an enlightening discussion. Historians often disagree. That doesn't mean that you get to white wash the article to your liking. Having biographers refute the claims and having Smith and Quammne being "slightly more critical" and dismissive of Brackman's claims doesn't mean that Brackman's views and research is not valid or interesting for the readers to see and then make their own conclusions. I think people who would read the books suggested in "Further reading" section are serious enough to make up their own mind. They don't need your help. Brackman was an investigative reporter and does not manage a very convincing case, but that doesn't mean that his work is not interesting or noted enough for people who are interested to read it. Instead of deleating books without discussion, how about adding more books to the further reading section and a brief text explaining authoritative nature of each book (not source, just further reading book) --RossF18 (talk) 18:31, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
- I did not want to delete it without further discussion. That is why I opened this dicussion section on the talk page. If a consensus is reached that I am wrong my deletion can be reversed. There are several interesting points here. The first is that there is always a judgement call that has to be made between what are dissenting views among experts, which should be accurately represented and summarized per WP:NPOV and fringe views that should be excluded per WP:Undue. Historians (like scientists) do disagree on some points, but they also sometimes reach conclusions and ideas that were at one time subjects of legitimate academic debate can become fringe over time. I am not aware (and of course I could be wrong here and would welcome correction if someone has alternate sources) of any reasonably reliable source who has defended these particular claims in the past 10 years or so and it seems to me that they are now treated as fringe ideas that are completely ignored in recent mainstream accounts of the History of evolutionary thought by historians like Bowler and Larson along with the vast majority of Darwin scholars. The 2nd interesting point is whether or not WP:Undue should be applied the same way to a further reading section as to the rest of the content of an article. Personally, I am uncomfortable with pointing to a source that pushes fringe ideas, since in some sense "further reading" is often taken to mean "recommended reading". Rusty Cashman (talk) 21:57, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
- You say that you "did not want to delete it without further discussion" and "that is why [you] opened this dicussion section on the talk page." But you did delete it without further discussion. The proper way to have done this is to open the discussion and then delete it if the consensus is reached. Deleting it first will force us to search through dozens of edits to find it again if the decision is made to keep it. I would also put forth that Brackman's view is not a fringe view. It may be on a loosing side of the argument of late, but that doesn't really make something a fringe view. If you listen to the pod cast I suggested, you'll hear that while this Brackman's view might not have been defended in the past 10 years, his book is being read by both the general public and scholars seeking to disprove him. Closing your eyes to someone who is wrong is not a way to persuade people they are wrong, so scholars are still taking note of Brackman's views, if just to disprove him and laypersons are reading him. I do not think having a book in further reading is in any way recommending or advocating Brackman's view. And even if you take that section to mean as recommended reading, than all the books in the list are recommended, even the multiple books that disagree with Brackman. To think that people will just pick out Brackman's book in particular and not read other recommended books is a stretch. I think people have as much to learn from disproven views as proven views since you have to understand what the allegation is before you can understand the argument against it. If the book was truly a fringe view, I do not think so many authors would take it upon themselves, more than 20 years later, to try to disprove Brackman's views. So, as far as the book being fringe, I disagree. If you feel the need to break up the categories into recommended books and further readings, that will take care of any suggestions that the two categories are the same thing. There is nothing wrong with having a lesser view being included in the further reading section. No one is pushing or advocating a source just by its inclusion because its not cited anywhere in the article. However, just because a book is advocating an unpopular and unjustified view, it doesn't mean that the book is not important enough not to be included. It's better to include it and point out how it's wrong, than to stick your head in the sand, not include it, and than have people point out, "well, what about that one Brackman book." Having it included and weaknesses pointed out will make for a better article. There many views that have become fringe over time, but just ignoring books on the subject doesn't make the view go way - that's the beauty of books. You can't just "burn" books and expect or hope that views to be forgotten. If a view is wrong, it's better to say why it's wrong than to ignore it. --RossF18 (talk) 23:30, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
- I did not want to delete it without further discussion. That is why I opened this dicussion section on the talk page. If a consensus is reached that I am wrong my deletion can be reversed. There are several interesting points here. The first is that there is always a judgement call that has to be made between what are dissenting views among experts, which should be accurately represented and summarized per WP:NPOV and fringe views that should be excluded per WP:Undue. Historians (like scientists) do disagree on some points, but they also sometimes reach conclusions and ideas that were at one time subjects of legitimate academic debate can become fringe over time. I am not aware (and of course I could be wrong here and would welcome correction if someone has alternate sources) of any reasonably reliable source who has defended these particular claims in the past 10 years or so and it seems to me that they are now treated as fringe ideas that are completely ignored in recent mainstream accounts of the History of evolutionary thought by historians like Bowler and Larson along with the vast majority of Darwin scholars. The 2nd interesting point is whether or not WP:Undue should be applied the same way to a further reading section as to the rest of the content of an article. Personally, I am uncomfortable with pointing to a source that pushes fringe ideas, since in some sense "further reading" is often taken to mean "recommended reading". Rusty Cashman (talk) 21:57, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
This is an FA class article. It is somewhat customary to not make disputed changes to an FA article without first getting a consensus for the change on the talk page, which is why I felt justified in reverting you original edit. However, I am not going to revert your reversion of my reversion (say that 3 times fast) right this second because I don't want an edit war, and I want to get home where I can listen to the source you cited. Browne is a perfectly respectable source and if she has something new to say on this topic I want to hear it before I do anything in haste. I have also asked one of the most frequent editors of the Charles Darwin article to weigh in on this issue because I suspect he is familiar with it (and has read sources I have not) and because I suspect you and I are never going to reach a consensus without third party input. I do believe it is important to screen out fringe/marginal ideas from science and history articles. Otherwise every science article would be cluttered up with the ideas of young earth creationists, flat earthers, or the folks that think Einstein got it wrong, and every history article would end up referencing multiple conspiracy theories. Having said all that I understand that editors can disagree in good faith over what is a fringe idea, and that is what talk pages are for.Rusty Cashman (talk) 00:03, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
- Ok I have listened to the source you provided. I don't think it supports your case very much. Browne only discussed Brackman's book in response to questions from a caller to an NPR radio show who mentioned it. She in no way endorses Brackman's ideas and takes pains to restate the conventional view of what happened and states that this is the consensus view of modern scholars. I also did a little more research on my own. Earlier I said that Larson and Bowler completely ignore Brackman and Brooks. This is true of (Larson 2004) but (Bowler 2003 page 173) does mention Brackman and Brooks briefly just to say that their argument "rests on a bizarre manipulation of the evidence". So I am afraid I am more convinced when I started that the current historical consensus is that Brackman's book represents a fringe idea that should be excluded based on WP:Undue unless you can produce some evidence that a reasonably recent reliable source takes it seriously. Rusty Cashman (talk) 09:14, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
<edit conflict!> As Ross says, it may be better to say why a fringe theory is wrong than to ignore it, and as Rusty says, including a book as Further reading is effective endorsement of the book as a worthwhile read. For the latter reason I'll remove the book from that list, but suggest that the issue could be covered by a brief paragraph in the Legacy and historical perception section. Shermer notes that various authors have attempted to construct a conspiracy around the events,[2] and taking Rusty's point that we shouldn't clutter history articles with every conspiracy theory we can use that as a reference for the claims as a whole. The author Arnold Brackman (or Arnold C. Brackman) has also written of Japanese war crimes, but doesn't have an article – if he's notable enough as a historian, a biographical article should be created giving information about his books. As for his claims, he doesn't seem to have understood that the joint publication was of Wallace's paper along with papers Darwin had written and shown to others before he could possibly have read Wallace's work. On the Origin of Species published a year later would be expected to take account of Wallaces input, and give it full credit which I understand it does. There are numerous conspiracy claims about Darwin which are aimed at diminishing his work, or alleging that he copied it from others, and we shouldn't give undue weight to one particular claim. However, it seems to me that a brief mention of the claims in principle could be appropriate. .. dave souza, talk 09:18, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
- Agreed. --RossF18 (talk) 14:04, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
- Agreed. -- Shermer does expend a whole chapter on the topic and it is obvious from this incident as well as the NPR call Browne responded to that people are still stumbling across thesed books even though they are out of print so a brief mention would be appropriate. I will add one later today.Rusty Cashman (talk) 16:16, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
- I added a couple of sentences with 3 references (2 of them web references) that cover the issue in more depth. As for Brackman, I think he might well be worth an article. Not only the book on the Japanese war crime trial but his book on the last emperor of China seems to have been noteworthy.Rusty Cashman (talk) 02:33, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks, that looks good to me. .. dave souza, talk 09:23, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
- Yep, looks great. Thanks. --RossF18 (talk) 16:14, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
- I added a couple of sentences with 3 references (2 of them web references) that cover the issue in more depth. As for Brackman, I think he might well be worth an article. Not only the book on the Japanese war crime trial but his book on the last emperor of China seems to have been noteworthy.Rusty Cashman (talk) 02:33, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
- Agreed. -- Shermer does expend a whole chapter on the topic and it is obvious from this incident as well as the NPR call Browne responded to that people are still stumbling across thesed books even though they are out of print so a brief mention would be appropriate. I will add one later today.Rusty Cashman (talk) 16:16, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
Well it looks like we may be revisiting this issue sooner than I would have thought. A Wallace scholar who has been kind enough to correspond with me from time to time just dropped me a line to warn me that there will be a new book published later this month called The Darwin Conspiracy by Roy Davies that might be looking at these issues again. If so we will probably have to address them again in some way here, depending on what the book says and what the reaction to it is.Rusty Cashman (talk) 18:05, 14 May 2008 (UTC)