Talk:On the Origin of Species/Archive 1

message: (Sorry I forgot to register; my ID is François-Dominique on the French Wikipedia. I am not that sure of the quality of my English, so I would be grateful to any native english speaker to correct it if needed, and copy that part in the main topic, if she of he feels it wothwhile; this point is already described ad such in the French wikipedia, if anybody wants to take a look)
Though a common thought is that Lamarck believed in the inheritance of acquired characteristics while Darwin did not, the careful reading of the book's first edition shows that the reality is not exactly that simple. Darwin writes :
"It may be doubted whether any one would have thought of training a dog to point, bad not some one dog naturally shown a tendency in this line; and this is known occasionally to happen, as I once saw in a pure terrier. When the first tendency was once displayed, methodical selection and the inherited effects of compulsory training in each successive generation would soon complete the work" (the emphasis is ours, not Darwin's).
This belief in "the inherited effects (...) of compulsory training" appears like a slight error today (probably due to the youth of the theory) compared to the insight of the rest of the book. However, this shows that the popular characterization of Lamarck's and Darwin's positions at that time is not that exact, a fact that was honestly signalled by Stephen Jay Gould.
:I think what you wrote was too long, and pardon me, but I am suspicious of your motivation.  I believe that there is a statue somewhere to Lamarck crediting him with the "theory of evolution"; and the French were notoriously slow in taking up Darwinism and rejecting Lamarckism, even up to the 1960s, and I don't want this to be a bit of patriotism that has gone awry and made it POV.  (I'll try that in French for a bit of practice):
Je crois que votre contribution est trop long, et (pardon, mais) je suis soupçonneux de votre motivation est patriotisme pour Lamarck. Dunc_Harris|☺ 13:11, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I can understand that, but there is probably no need to, for the three following reasons : 1) As A.S.Neill once said "As long as my work is useful, my motivations do not matter" (or, as Deng Xiaping stated it : "It doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice." 2) Nobody believes in Lamarck's theory today, not only in France, but in the whole Europe as fas as I know, so nobody would defend Lamarck. But defending historical precision as far as epistemology is concerned is quite another story ;o) 3) As incredible as it might perhaps seem in some American states, there is no such thing as contestation of Darwin's theory here in Europe (except by some marginal muslim immigrants), so in fact we do not have any raison d'Etat taboo about him and can criticize him freely without any fear to be identified as a Bible belt fan. In fact, as fact as catholics are concerned, the Vatican itself has admitted quite a time ago that natural evolution was "more than an hypothesis", hence the quotes. But of course, I understand the fact that Darwin was European may be seen as a case of European chauvinism ;o) Cheers ! François-Dominique 20:50, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  A slight error of Darwin in the book (at least the first edition) 

message: "immediately sold out its initial print run" -- that would imply that it sold out the day it was published. is that so? Kingturtle 17:29, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: "The entire first edition of The Origin of Species was sold out on its publication day, 24 November 1859. A second edition was ready by January 1860, and the book went through a total of six editions during Darwin's lifetime." - intro to Leakey's abridged and illustrated Origin of Species. The article needs more about the editions, esp. changes between 1 and 6, which I'm a bit tied up to do just yet...dave souza 07:02, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: According to the biography by Clark, "Legend maintains that all 1,250 copies were sold on the day of publication; in fact, they were all taken up by booksellers, an indication of the controversy the book was to arouse, but not quite the same thing."--Johnstone 02:38, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Supported by Desmond & Moore, who note the !st edition was "oversubscribed". Impressive re-editing of the whole article, many thanks..dave souza 19:04, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for independently confirming the statement, and for the compliment.--Johnstone 01:02, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  immediately? 

message: In the last line of the second box after the article, there is a list of Darwin's eponyms; there are a couple missing, minor but very significant: 1. the farthest west, one of the smallest and the most isolated island on the Galapagos Archipelago is Darwin. 2. the biological research station at the Galapagos National Park is Darwin Research Station. The box cannot be edited from the page, how is it done? Lcgarcia 07:00, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: A small addition

message: I have removed the following:
:"It is important to remember that Darwin's version of natural selection was different from that presented by Wallace, in that Darwin held that natural selection was continuously operating whereas Wallace argued that selection only occurred when the environment changed."
This statement appears to be wrong.  In Wallace's 1858 essay, he states that evolution is "...produced by the action of principles constantly at work in nature."
Also removed:
:"As an interesting aside, Darwin could be regarded as the first organism in four billion years of life on earth to realise how he had come to exist."
Besides being unencyclopedic and POV, this is also wrong on its own terms: Patrick Matthew has a better claim to the title.--Johnstone 02:25, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Removed statements about Wallace and "first organism"