Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Biocosm

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was Not delete, but this article should either be reduced to a stub or merged to Anthropic principle. Deathphoenix ʕ 16:54, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Biocosm

This article is the original research of a law school graduate that has no notability in the fields it is attempting to syncretize. --ScienceApologist 09:48, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 10:22, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Merge into Anthropic principle per Tevildo's suggestion below. — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 23:40, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
• Comment. It is more accurate to say that the article reports on a non-notable theory. The reporter John D. Croft (no specific background in law) is apparently not the law school graduate James N. Gardner, a non-notable theorist with a non-notable theory. Personally I'd like to add my equally unfalsifiable theory that Wikipedia does not arise as the result of a combination of accidental edits, but that its emergence is hard-wired into the laws of biocosmics. There is also a little problem with verifiability. --Lambiam^Talk 10:34, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
• Comment 2. The article appears to give a rather wrong impression of the theory. Gardner has written a book on this: [1]. Quoting from the editorial reviews:
  • Amazon.com: Gardner is meticulous in outlining his ideas, explaining their falsifiability and scientific rigor, and offering deep chaos theory to support them. Did our universe create intelligent life in order to ensure its own reproduction? Gardner thinks so, though he knows his position will irk many cosmologists exhausted from battling pseudoscientists and creationists. His impressive list of scientific supporters includes Sir Martin Rees (Britain's Astronomer Royal), Michael Shermer (publisher of Skeptic magazine), and John Casti (Santa Fe Institute honcho). Biocosm synthesizes many disciplines and theories in its conclusions, offering much food for cosmological thought.
  • Publishers Weekly: Science writer and amateur cosmologist Gardner proposes a startling theory: that a pre-existing superintelligent race that inhabited a "mother universe" created this one and tweaked the physical laws in its baby universe to ensure the continuity of intelligent life and of the cosmos itself; this universe.

    This suggests at least that notability can be established. There is also a website http://www.biocosm.org/ . --Lambiam^Talk 10:46, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

    Comment: However, the book is published by a vanity press and there are no valid citations of it according to Google Scholar[2], Citeseer, etc. Highly doubt it meets WP:N (books). — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 11:06, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

    Also, amazon.com reviews can be written by anyone, including a shill for an unscrupulous author or a ignoramus. I would never cite an amazon review as evidence for anything, unless perhaps I also had independent evidence that the author of review knows his/her stuff.---CH 09:37, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

• Delete original research of a single source that does not have reliable sources. Cannot have articles on one persons theory without some signifant commentry from third parties. - Peripitus (Talk) 11:25, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, unsourced and fails WP:NOR. --Coredesat 11:26, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep (but reduce to a stub). Biocosm was selected as one of the ten best science books of 2003 by the editors of Amazon.com. Here is a published review by a scientist: [3]. I bet there's more, but I've gotta run. --Lambiam^Talk 12:30, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
• Some more results of using Google Scholar and Google plain:
  • Kosmoi lists Biocosm at the top of their list of The Very Best Science Books.[4]
  • Gardner was a keynote speaker at the ACC2003 conference, held at Stanford University.[5]
  • Not a review, but discussing Gardner's hypothesis critically: [6].
  • Gardner has several publications in scientific conferences and journals (one of which is referenced in our article Anthropic principle):
    1. James N. Gardner. Genes beget memes and memes beget genes: Modeling a new catalytic closure. Complexity, Volume 4, Issue 5, 1999. Pages 22-28
    2. James N. Gardner. The selfish biocosm. Complexity, Volume 5, Issue 3, 2000. Pages 34-45
    3. James N. Gardner. Assessing the robustness of the emergence of intelligence: testing the selfish biocosm hypothesis. Acta Astronautica 48:5-12, 2001, pp 951-955
    4. James N. Gardner. Artificial Exo-Society Modeling: a New Tool for SETI Research. IAF abstracts, 34th COSPAR Scientific Assembly, The Second World Space Congress, held 10-19 October, 2002 in Houston, TX, USA
    5. James N. Gardner. The physical constants as biosignature: an anthropic retrodiction of the Selfish Biocosm Hypothesis. International Journal of Astrobiology (2004), 3: 229-236 Cambridge University Press
    6. James N. Gardner. Coevolution of the cosmic past and future: The selfish biocosm as a closed timelike curve: A recipe for cosmic ontogeny and a blueprint for cosmic reproduction: Essays & Commentaries. Complexity, Volume 10, Issue 5 (May 2005), Pages: 14-21.
  • There used to be a reference to Gardner in our article Fecund universes, as well as a reference to Biocosm in Eschatology, but both have been deleted by nominator.[7][8]A  --Lambiam^Talk 16:49, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
• Merge to Anthropic principle, perhaps as a new section with appropriate references per Lambian above. Tevildo 22:22, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Don't be fooled by the man behind the curtain. Those references are amateurish as seen from the fact that they are basically uncited in the literature. There doesn't seem to be anyone in the field that actually uses the anthropic principle who refers to Gardner, so why do we in this fashion? --ScienceApologist 00:25, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

If we have an article on this theory, it doesn't mean we endorse it. The theory is not today's standard cosmological model; neither is the anthropic principle, but that should not stop us from reporting on it. I'm not sure what you mean by someone "actually using" the anthropic principle, or why we should put any trust in such a person. It's an interesting and thought-provoking idea, and with 12,000 Google hits for "biocosm gardner", and the selection as best science book by several sources, it should be notable enough for inclusion. --Lambiam^Talk 07:46, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I think we might want to just have an article on the book rather than on a separate idea then since the book is seemingly the notable thing and not the subject, per se. --ScienceApologist 08:19, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

That's fine with me if you agree that such an article should still describe the idea (in a better way than the present article). An article on the idea itself (against which I myself don't see a serious objection) should be named "Selfish Biocosm hypothesis" anyway. --Lambiam^Talk 11:08, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

• Comment I choose one paragraph at random and unfortunately it has a very serious error. The paragraph lists alleged criteria of John von Neumann for evolution, but in fact von Neumann was talking about self assembling/reproducing machines (in work which lead to the still rather inchoate theory of cellular automata). So if you don't delete, someone knowledgeable needs to do some careful fact checking and neutralization. ---CH 09:40, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

  Or, as I recommended, we reduce the article to a stub. --Lambiam^Talk 10:12, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.