Talk:Charles Darwin/Archive 3

message: I removed this text from the main article:
The theory of evolution was also applied to the human world (economics, politics, etc.). The most famous of these doctrines is Social Darwinism.
on the grounds that social Darwinism is considered to be unrelated (and possibly contradictory to) the ideas of Charles Darwin.  See 
Mayr in his The Growth of Biological Thought, for example: so-called social Darwinism...During the 1880s and 90s when social Darwinism was confused with real Darwinism
110 years later we would hope Wikipedia is still not confusing the two.  Darwinism and social Darwinism might be mentioned in a section (or article) on how Darwin's ideas have been perverted, alongside, say, Darwin and racism.
user:TimShell - 10 Aug 2004
*I'm only in partial agreement here.  social Darwinism simply refers to the of the Darwinian algorithm to social situations, be they used to explain economics, politics, sociology, memes, (perfectly legitimate) or racism and eugenics (pseudoscience).  The whole sections relating to this are a bit of a mess, unfortunately, and could do with sorting out. Dunc_Harris|☺ 20:21, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I rewrote and qualified. SD has been totally discredited by all academics, save for a few white supremacists (e.g. Jared Taylor) and their various asian and african counterparts. Also, I'm now reading Darwin's journal of the voyage of the Beagle. While it is clear that he considers himself superior to most of the men and women he meets on his travel, he doesn't seem to consider himself as morally superior, that is he gives less civilized men the same right to live as they choose and he explicitly condemns slavery. Indeed, relating the story of an enslaved black woman who threw herself down a cliff rather than be recaptured by her enslaver, he notes she was called "obstinate" and comments that if she had been a Roman matron, the same behaviour would have made is call her heroic. Darwin would have repudiated SD if it had been formulated in his lifetime, and those who formulated SD usurped Darwin's name when they did so. Vincent 05:58, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I never said that Darwin believed in "SD". Your edits are fine, though. Brutannica 19:15, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  I didn't think you did, but if SD is mentioned I think the point ought to be made that Darwin didn't believe in it. Never mind his theory, the man himself is easy to misunderstand, e.g.  chapter 6 of the Origins of Species dealing with difficulties on the theory is often used by Creationists to support their ludicrous idea that "even Darwin wasn't comfortable with evolution"! Cheers Vincent 05:28, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: I think most of the article is fine, but the section on Social Darwinism simply does not belong here.  It is utterly anachronistic. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 17:22, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It is one of the primary questions about Darwin asked not only by historians but also brought up by critics as well -- was Darwin a "Social Darwinist", do his theories about life have implications for society, etc. etc. It is one of the primary ways in which Darwinism as a notion has entered into mainstream culture and analysis. I'm happy with saying it can be cut down or edited up or have a lot of it shunted off to another article, but I think it is nonsensical to dismiss it simply on the grounds that it involves looking backwards on Darwin and asking questions about things which would later come -- the point of the section is to contextualize Darwin within these questions so as to head off vulgar anachronism. --Fastfission 22:15, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Social Darwinism 

message: I've heard that Charles Darwin did not want to publish his ideas because he felt it would hurt his wife, whom he loved.  She was not an evolutionist.
That could be part of the answer. At least, so much can be read in Darwin's original autobiography, which was first published in 1887, esp. in footnotes in the chapter about the development of his own religious convictions. Another reason (also clear from his ab) might be his frequent illnesses, and his zealous drive to publish as much as possible about other biological/zoological fields of research. He was always frustrated he could not do more.Fact is he produced an enormous amount of work!.
A third reason Darwin waited 19 years was that he simply was afraid of being 'prejudiced' (word quoted literally). His theory needed more time to ripen, so to speak. Anyway, maybe this is of some help. Anyone with more knowledge about it,please go ahead.
Imho the first sentence "Contrary ..." should only appear later. One who does not know anything about Darwin reading this page should have a short introduction as first paragraph, not a negation of something assumed to "be publicly known". (Yes, I am picky ;).
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Framework is now in place for a good article, but a lot more work needs to be done. I'm going to get to this on and off over the next few weeks (hopefully), but anyonelse should feel free to wade in - however make sure your "facts" come from works in the history of biology, not from popular works as these often make sweeping generalizations about Darwin. John Lynch
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Assertion that "However, toward the end of his life, Darwin abandoned his own theory, since he was unable to postulate a mechanism by which characteristics could be passed from one generation to the next. " moved here.  Is there any cause to believe this 'abandonment'?
Also, is it really Down House in Downe, or is it Downe House in Downe?
Someone else
:Yes and No.  The sixth ed of Origin becomes almost Lamarckian in that Darwin believed in an inheritance mechanism.  The key component missing from Darwin's work is inheritance mechansism; see Mendelian genetics.  Someone Ronald Fisher perhaps (?) later showed that such a mechanism couldn't result in evolution, as the blending would lead in a few generations to each organism of a species being identical. Not to be confused with the Lady Hope nonsense.
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I have the Darwin family tree done in PowerPoint. Please post on my talk page to request changes or email me to get a copy of the PowerPoint.Cutler 21:16, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other 

message: I have about twenty articles that need expanding on this family; I've done most of the geneaology, I just need biographies now.  Please see talk:Darwin–Wedgwood family/to_do for a list of tasks.  These are below:
Cheers, Dunc_Harris|☺ 14:08, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Strange thing to post in a Discussion page... Brutannica 02:07, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Darwin -- Wedgwood family]]

message: What's happened to the infobox? The new version is disgusting!  I'm going to hunt out its nest and use my flamethrower on nuke setting.  Noisy | Talk 18:04, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: You certainly have strong opinions.... Brutannica 04:21, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  That idiotic title always appearing on my watchlist was getting to me. No need to shout, you know. Vincent 00:16, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Aargh

message: ? Dunc_Harris|☺ 18:22, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where the 1854 picture go? 

message: Adraeus 09:36, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Darwin's Worms 

message: I have protected the page from editing until issues with the article are resolved on the discussion page. -- AllyUnion (talk) 08:11, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: A "protected" tag on the top of the page would be nice.  --Crucible Guardian 02:51, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The page is unprotected, probably has been for a long time.  Guettarda 03:03, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Protection 

message: Can we do this? 
Tabletop 05:37, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's already in the "Legacy" section. --Fastfission 07:08, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It is also in the Darwin Template at the very bottom of the page. There are also other places named Darwin around the world (including a volcano, seamount, cave, canyon, glacier, reef, lake, waterfall, mountain and island), but I don't know how many are named after Charles Darwin (see Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names 33 matches, Alexandria Digital Library Gazetteer Server Client 81 matches). In the US, there is a Darwin, California, Darwin Township, Illinois and Darwin, Minnesota  . In Canada, there are three different lakes named Darwin   BlankVerse 08:34, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mention city of Darwin, Australia, named for Darwin 

message: User:Grunt posted the following to Talk:Charles Darwin/Lincoln:
:There is now a Charles Darwin/Lincoln dispute case before the Arbitration Committee to investigate the behaviour of the disputants here. If you were not contacted via talk page, you may still wish to add evidence toWikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Charles Darwin/Lincoln dispute/Evidence to support your case. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 03:36, 2005 Jan 25 (UTC)
Summary of resolution: For being disruptive User:Vfp15 is prohibited from editing the articles on Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln for a year. ArbCom made no statement as to whether the trivia could be included or not, of course, but only ruled on the methods of editing. See the page above for the full decision. --Fastfission 21:10, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arbitration 

message: The Darwin template is currently listed as a Template for deletion (see Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:Darwin). Personally, I am undecided about this template. Perhaps there should be two separate ones—a Darwin geneology template and a separate Darwin template without the genealogy. Still, it bugs me that there wasn't any notification of the proposed deletion on the Charles Darwin talk page. I think that there should be some policy that when a template is listed for deletion that the talk page for the article(s) most affected by the deletion should receive a notification. BlankVerse 12:10, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template for Deletion? 

message: Currently, Darwin links to a page about the Australian city. I think perhaps it would be more useful if the city was at Darwin, Northern Territory (or whatever the longer, standard version would be), and the link to "Darwin" proper linked either to Charles Darwin or to the Darwin disambig page. There are enough things named Darwin -- almost all derivative of Charles -- for it not to be obvious what people are looking for when they type in "Darwin". I'm not sure the Australian city is likely to be the top of their list. Thoughts on this? --Fastfission 13:33, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure.  The Darwin page does currently link to Darwin (disambiguation) so people will be able to find other uses from there.  I'd have no objections to making "Darwin" the dab page, and moving the dity to "D, N T" though, if others think it's best.  Joe D (t) 14:29, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Page name

message: This is a pig's breakfast. 138.130.202.148 5 July 2005 11:33 (UTC)
:The version you were looking at had been vandalized. Try it again. David | Talk 5 July 2005 11:42 (UTC)
New point: the TOCright looks uglier than having the contents in the usual place on my browser: reconsider? --dave souza 9 July 2005 16:24 (UTC) (now sorted - thanks!) --dave souza 08:36, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Format

message: What evidence is there for Darwin being vegetarian? From Desmond and Moore, he was still not in 1866 when a doctor had him "half starved to death" on a diet of scanty amounts of "toast & meat", and they make no mention of vegetarianism earlier or in any of the subsequent "abominable" diets Darwin was put on. In terms of the ethics, he was still lobbying in favour of vivisection towards the end of his life, so a conversion for that reason seems improbable..--dave souza 08:36, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed the cateogry until someone can provide decent citation that that was the case, though as a vegetarian myself I an vouch for it being good for you, the environment and the animals. Dunc|☺ 13:21, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I find it pretty unlikely and I've never seen a reference to it. Even Google only turns up nay one page which just puts his name in a list of "Famous Vegetarians" without any justification. I've also seen a few of his quotes (saying there will little difference between humans and animals) on vegetarian pages, but that doesn't mean he himself was a vegetarian (and he certainly wasn't trying to make a dietary point!). --Fastfission 14:05, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Vegetarian?

message: The additional medical info from the Scientific American review is interesting, but I've tried to keep this article as small as possible and put more detail into the linked biographical articles (i.e. Reaction to Darwin's theory and the others listed uner "See also"). I'd suggest that some at least of this info gets moved into these articles....dave souza 20:03, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There is an entire article on the illness; the mentioning of it here should simply say that it was persistent throughout his life, seemed to pop up in times of stress, and its ultimate origin is unknown. Anything beyond that should be in the sub article. I marked that article as needing cleanup because it is currently a mess of text towards the end, though most of it seems quite good and decently cited. --Fastfission 21:46, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

text: So far everything he's (I'm assuming it is a he, for no particular reason) cited seems legit to me, so I'm all for letting him have his run and then editing it down a bit and formatting it according to MOS. The name is certainly a cause for a raised eyebrow but he doesn't seem to be doing anything malicious, so I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. The formatting problems and excessive attribution of titles (i.e. every history professor becomes a "Dr.") are just him not being familiar with our normal ways of doing things and are primarily cosmetic. --Fastfission 00:43, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Medical symptoms 

message: I'm removing from the Beagle section Lastly, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, during the last ten years of his life, when Darwin focused on botanical research and "no longer speculated about evolution, he experienced the best health since his years at Cambridge.". The statement is misleading both in terms of his health and his work. 
After Cambridge he spent almost five strenuous years on the Beagle expedition, and though he was ill a couple of times that hardly seems unreasonable. In contrast, his last ten years were spent in semi-convalescence, with his wife watching that he did not work himself to death and making him take holiday breaks. During the period, summarised in Darwin from Insectiverous plants to Worms, Darwin was unwell again by March 1873, and that August a heated discussion with Hooker ended with Darwin lying in bed with his memory gone and "a severe shock continually passing through my brain". Emma feared an epileptic fit, but the doctor put him on a diet, then in November John Fiske wrote "I am afraid I shall never see him again, for his health is very bad". In March 1878 the strain of experiments on plants brought back Darwin's old sickness of attacks of dizziness. In June 1881 a doctor diagnosed that his heart condition was "precarious" and he wrote to Hooker that "Illness is downright misery to me... I cannot forget my discomfort for an hour [and] must look forward to Down graveyard as the sweetest place on earth."  In February 1882 he was "miserable to a strange degree" with a cough, on 7 March he had a seizure and he fell and died at 4 p.m. on Wednesday 19 April 1882. 
While "speculated" is a weasel word since he had long been convinced about evolution, Darwin spent the last decade of his life fully engaged in the controversy with Mivart and others, and his work on plants (and worms) was evolutionary biology, showing function in what others claimed was a miraculous proof of divine intervention. In November 1873 Darwin worked on a new edition of the Descent of Man, and in July 1875 a new edition of The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication where he continued to look for proof of inheritance of acquired characteristics, so saying he no longer speculated about evolution looks plain wrong. Britannica seems to have gone downhill since it left Edinburgh....dave souza 20:54, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with the above. I wonder if Britannica really says that about him, honestly, it seems so ridiculous on the face of it. It also sounds like a not-very veiled attempt by Creationists to imply he was being published for his "heretical" work or something along those laughable lines. It would be also hard to pin down any period after the Beagle voyage when whatever Darwin wasn't speculating about evolution -- his personal notes and correspondence make it pretty clear he saw it in everything he did (or tried to see it, anyway). --Fastfission 20:57, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Best health?