Talk:Patrick Matthew

message: I have removed the section marked in red, which is not neutral. Notice that the sense of the passage is unaffected: Notwithstanding Darwin's insistence on ignorance of Matthew's work, it has been suggested that he may have encountered it, or a description of it, or in some other way have been influenced by it. Ronald W. Clark, a biographer of Darwin, suggested that even if Darwin had at some point encountered Matthew's work (of which there is no evidence whatsoever), it is possible that it simply did not register, but crept into his subconscious, only later serving as a forgotten basis of his ideas, which would not have been intellectual dishonesty.  --Wetman 10:40, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I've adjusted this further, by giving the exact words from Clark and making it clear that Clark had no basis for suggesting indirectly that C.D. had read the book. Macdonald-ross (talk) 17:16, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clark's biography of C.D. 

message: Writing to Darwin, Matthew stated his belief in "a sentiment of beauty pervading Nature [that] affords evidence of intellect and benevolence in the scheme of Nature." He further maintained, "This principle of beauty is clearly from design and cannot be accounted for by natural selection." 
The section above has been in the article a long time without source, and so has now been moved here. Since it's claimed to be from correspondence with Darwin, I expected to find it in DarwinOnline, but the search shows no trace of it, and searching the web and google books was similarly unsuccessful. The only source seems to be this page, obviously it can be restored to the article if a suitable source is found. .. dave souza, talk 22:27, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I suspect it is a quote mined bit of text, or completely fabricated.--Filll (talk) 22:33, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I was wondering, but then found a similar summary of a letter in the Darwin Correspondence Project so I've paraphrased that. The above may be an exact quote, but that's not available online yet. .. dave souza, talk 23:00, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Natural theology

message: The main passage from which quotes are taken is Note B, the second section of the book. I am slightly troubled by the choice in the article which leaves out the two passages (from Note F, p384-6) chosen by Darlington (Darwin's place in history p90-91) to illustrate Matthew's ideas. I may stick the whole appendix into wikiquote: it's far too long to put in the present article. Macdonald-ross (talk) 18:00, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quotation from Arboriculture 

message: "Darwin here, as well as later commentators, erred by attributing Matthew's discussions solely to the Appendix, as the main text of the work also presents in sufficiently recognizable detail "this natural process of selection among plants" (see pages 307 to 308)." is original research, without a secondary source. There may well be a case to be presented, but it should be noted that even Matthew didn't cite pages 307 to 308 in his letter published by the Gardeners' Chronicle. I've therefore removed that paragraph.
I've also removed anachronistic references to eugenics, and rephrased some of that paragraph with the aim of clarification, and have reorganised the paragraphs a bit to made it clear that the passages we quote were published in the Gardeners' Chronicle letter. The quote added from OtOOS includes a response by Matthew: this was highlighted by Stephen Jay Gould on pp. 345–346 of The Flamingo's Smile, according to page 49 of Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea if we want a secondary source noting that passage. Don't know it there's an online source for Matthew's complete letter. . . dave souza, talk 18:21, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Original research

message: I removed content from the life section about his children that seems insignificant. I tried to keep the gist of it, and left relevant content that reflects on Matthews character and work e.g encouraging his sons to go to NZ and planting american trees in scotland. I moved the ref. to Dempster up to the paragraph preceding this latter event because a cite has been requested for that  - unless its in Dempster? +|||||||||||||||||||||||||+ (talk) 04:38, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Is the account of his children's movements correct ? The British Newspaper Archive has PM publishing and advertising an emigration guide (covering US, the Cape, Oz & NZ) and promoting (in association with some of his Chartist friends (he seems to have been a delegate to the National Convention))  a 'Scottish New Zealand Land Company' in 1839  ie a good 10 years before the California gold-rush Rjccumbria (talk) 02:30, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

text: Come to that, was his farm really prospering ? The Edinburgh Gazette in 1848 carried an announcement of a meeting of the creditors of ' Patrick Matthew of Gourdiehill, corn merchant ' and his children don't seem to include a Patrick... Rjccumbria (talk) 02:42, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

text: After a lot of fossicking in census records (OR I know): in 1851 Patrick is still Landowner & farmer at Gourdie hill, his son Robert is a Corn Agent (a Merchant in 1861), from 1871 onwards Robert is farming Gourdie hill , which in 1881 is declared to be a farm of 50 acres; in 1881 Robert's son is a Civil Engineer.  It sounds as though P did come a cropper in corn trading and the family had to draw in its horns. Rjccumbria (talk) 15:32, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Children 

message: This chap's views on Bouch's Tay Bridge seem to be somewhat selectively reported here.  He was generally agin it and hence came up with no end of reasons why the bridge would fail.  The Tay Bridge, Its History and Construction by Albert Groethe (Dundee 1878)  has the following 
MR PATRICK MATHEWS PREDICTIONS. 
... During the six years the scheme of Mr Bouch had been under discussion the Seer of Gourdie Hill had been so absorbed in his incantations to the powers of Nature that he failed to comprehend the change which public opinion had undergone regarding it, or to mark the progress which had been made towards its realisation. But when the resolution to proceed caught his eye the fairy curtain which obscured the face of his magic mirror is drawn up like the mist from the brow of a mountain, and he beheld the Bridge completed. It is a high, slender, rainbow-like structure, having a barrier of strong palisades on either side to protect it from the fury of the waves and the destroying breath proceeding from the "storm throat" of the Tay. The piers of the Bridge and its protecting palisades have the effect of increasing the velocity of the currents, and these in their turn are scooping out deep channels which threaten to destroy the foundations, while the mud and sand disturbed in the process are forming enormous banks, which will eventually obstruct the entrance to the Harbour, and perhaps endanger the fairway at the mouth of the river itself. But there is still another danger. He sees a ship which has slipped its anchors during a storm. It is drifting up the river, manned by a drunken crew, who, regardless of the consequences, allow it to run against a pier, and, strange to say, the ship is uninjured by the shock, while the Bridge is toppled over like a child's house of cards. Yet a little while and a train filled with happy people is swiftly proceeding along the tortuous structure. Its weight and velocity acts with such a centrifugal force upon the curve that the workmanship is unable to bear the strain, and he sees the Bridge open up, and the train, with its human freight, precipitated into the river a hundred feet below. An islet is now seen in the firth where no islet existed before, and its component parts are loose stones, fragments of iron and of wood, together with mangled human bodies, and the eels are gliding out and in between the interstices of the horrible scene. The Bridge itself is a wreck, and never more will be used as a medium of communication between the counties of Fife and Forfar. And yet once more. A giant, restless in his sleep, is seen struggling under the district of Comrie. At every turn the monster makes the earth is shaken as if subjected to an attack of palsy, and the radius within which these shakings and tremblings are felt includes the Carse of Gowrie and — Dundee ! A shake which scarcely moves the tallest and most slender chimney in the smoke-begrimed town has ample power to throw the rainbow bridge into the Tay, and all the powers which man can exercise can hardly set it up again. Thus the Seer predicted the fate of the great undertaking in a series of eight letters written to the Dundee Advertiser, beginning, on the 7th of December 1869 and ending on the 11th of March 1870. Through whatever medium the Bridge might be viewed, Mr Mathew saw nothing but disaster, and it is a question had he lived to witness the heavy ballast trains which have daily crossed the Tay by its iron roadway whether he would not have found some other agent as a substitute for that centrifugal force which has so treacherously failed to aid him in the fulfilment of his predictions.
Whilst Grothe doubtless ended up regretting some of that mockery, from the dates given, those predictions were made when contracts had yet to be let, and the bridge piers were to be brick; perhaps some elucidation could be given of which castings the Seer was predicting to be defective.Rjccumbria (talk) 20:37, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Seer of Gourdiehill - did he foresee the use of cast iron piers ? 

message: I have edited the last two sentences of the section on “Later opinions” to clarify the earlier claims for the discovery of natural selection.  The key point about Matthew is that, like Darwin and Wallace, he saw natural selection as a mechanism for macroevolution, as opposed to within-species microevolution.  William Charles Wells and Edward Blyth both proposed versions of natural selection as a within-species force only.  The earliest proponent of this limited version of natural selection currently known is James Hutton, so I have added his name here.
Mikeweale (talk) 20:39, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Recent edits by  got Sutton's "Big Data" claims wildly out of proportion, I've put them in the "later opinions" section after removing duplicate and dubious sources. Have any historians other than James Moore discussed these claims? . . dave souza, talk 17:18, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Prior claims to discovery of principle of natural selection 

message: Sorry lower case 'dave' Souza. You may be a Scot, or live in Scotland, but you are hardly Scottish!
Upholding the issue of 'Taking Out' my addition of a VERIFIABLE FACT is totally reprehensible. I was merely drawing attention to the fact that Patrick Matthew's prior coining of the phrase Natural Selection was in 1831which is 28 years before Charles Darwin and doing so in a quite reasonable way. Your DISLIKE of this and editing out really disqualifies you as an editor of Encyclopaedic information. Wikipedia is NOT a right-wing newspaper and nor is it sold on street corners, so STOP editing the pages as if it were one. If you do not want Wikipedia to be rejected globally as a source of verified data then STOP your incessant editing OUT of nouns and adjectives and even verbs thus altering the meaning of other people's carefully thought out scripts and making their intentions seem wrongful. Leave people's additions as they are and discuss with them PREVIOUS to EDITING OUT to find out where they got their information from so that you can independently verify the same if you want to of course. If you don't want to because you already know that you are wrong, then LEAVE editing to others who have a balanced view. Wikipedia will lose its place in the global setting, and already has as any University papers DO NOT ACCEPT wikipedia references now. All down to you and the likes of you. Well done, lower case 'dave'.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by SuueDee (talk • contribs) 08:30, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: See Wikipedia:No personal attacks and comply with talk page guidelines: focus on content, not on other editors. If you think Patrick Matthew coined the phrase Natural Selection please provide a reference and quotation. If you think this belongs in the article, what reliable third party source discusses its significance? . . dave souza, talk 08:57, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  3RR and Darwinist Preventionism 

message: I have removed a section of very close paraphrase based on a blog, https://historiesofecology.blogspot.co.uk (The blog appears to be so much a personal statement that I have not actually linked it) . Even if it were rewritten from scratch, the blog is not a RS.
I think the rest of the article is wildly excessive detail, but that's another matter.   DGG ( talk ) 00:58, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: copyvio

message: Since no citation has shown up, I've removed this sentence:
The nearest I've found is in , but the source of this point is cut off on google books; it seems to be an addition to the older online version. If someone has full access to the 2021 book, please review this and show where it was sourced. . .dave souza, talk 11:23, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Matthew even had calling cards...

message: This article does not follow WP:Neutral point of view, especially in the sections on Matthew's legacy in evolutionary science. I removed some of the worst sentences, but I'm positive there are some that I missed. Examples include:
"Misconceived claims are made on behalf of Victorian evolutionists, with all the tedious inevitability that was predicted by Stephen Jay Gould in his piece on Natural Selection as a Creative Force,"
"The equally inevitable rebuttal of these claims tends to require an inordinately disproportionate investment of effort (see Earp 2016 for an explanation), sometimes only concluding after years of counterarguments (e.g., Roy Davies' The Darwin Conspiracy: Origins of a Scientific Crime). Unfortunately, the media coverage that accompanies these revisionist campaigns is the version most likely to be seen and remembered by the public, not the peer-reviewed paper appearing in the scientific literature a year later. The damage is therefore multifarious and insidious, from time lost to the individual, to misinforming the public en masse. Contrary to the stated intention, the unfortunate outcome of the latest claims made in Matthew's name might very well do more damage than good."
"Combining these facts, Robert Chambers had probably not read or received the message about natural selection in Matthew's book, but has surely not promulgated it in the Vestiges, and probably neither in conversations." Pac-Man PHD (talk) 13:17, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article is not from a neutral point of view 

message: Wikipedia and editors of the Patrick Matthew page are embarrassingly shown to have seriously and deliberately misled their readership (in archived and current content). The information about this is published in a chapter on Patrick Matthew in a new Springer book on Ethics. The work of one of the authors of the chapter is seriously misrepresented by named Wikipedia editing individuals in the book chapter. Is any Wikipedia editor interested in correcting the serious lies and other falsehoods? Get the facts. 
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-43292-7_14 2A02:C7C:56B2:CB00:1964:F1A8:8ED4:598D (talk) 10:26, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Misinformation on Patrick Matthew on Wikipedia 

message: In the first paragraph this article states:
He published the basic concept of natural selection as a mechanism in evolutionary adaptation and speciation in 1831 (i.e. resulting from positive natural selection, in contrast to its already, widely known, negative role in removal of individuals in the Struggle for Survival), but did not further develop or publicize his ideas
It is wrong to say he did not publicize his ideas as he or his publishers on his behalf placed adverts in a number of publications. For example a more than half page advert was placed in the Encyclopedia Britannica which includes the following:
In embracing the philosophy of plants, the interesting subject of species and variety is considered,– the principle of the natural location of vegetables is distinctly shown,– the principle also which in the untouched wild “keeps unsteady nature to her law,” inducing conformity in species, and preventing deterioration of breed, is explained,– and the causes of the variation and deterioration of cultivated forest trees is pointed out. [Highlighting added by me]
In view of this I think it is misleading to say he did not "further publicize his ideas" and I would suggest removing that clause from the first paragraph. Gourdiehill (talk) 21:50, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Matthews did publicize his ideas on natural selection 

message: I think the following sentence could be clarified:
He published the basic concept of natural selection as a mechanism in evolutionary adaptation and speciation in 1831 (i.e. resulting from positive natural selection, in contrast to its already, widely known, negative role in removal of individuals in the Struggle for Survival), but did not further develop or publicize his ideas
I think it would be better to substitute "directional selection" for "positive natural selection" because the former term is used in Wikipedia's page on Natural Selection and there is an article on "Directional Selection".
For me the phrase "already, widely known, negative role in removal of individuals in the Struggle for Survival" is problematic. I do not know what is meant by "negative role" here and feel it could be clarified by sticking to concepts for which Wikipedia has articles. If I had to guess I would say negative role is referring to Stabilizing Selection but if so then I think it is wrong to say it was already widely known. Also it needs to be said that Matthew describes it in his book.
I would be grateful on some clarification on my confusion over the above.
I would suggest that the sentence be changed to the following:
He published the basic concept of natural selection as a mechanism in evolutionary adaptation and speciation (Directional Selection) and species constancy or stasis (Stabilizing Selection) in 1831 but did not publicly develop his ideas further until after Darwin and Wallace published their theories in 1859. Gourdiehill (talk) 22:59, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clarify statement on selection 

message: Previously I posted on this talk page a post titled "Clarify statement on selection" in which I questioned the characterization in this article of Mathew's ideas on what I think are stabilizing selection. I got no response so went ahead and made changes to the article which I think are an improvement.
On reading the article recently I noticed that there is another subsection (Bilogical Concepts) which quotes from a website which no longer exists at the given URL. An extract from the quote reads "Matthew's theory of evolution is a chimera pairing the old doctrine that natural selection (usually) keeps the species fixed ...". As far as I can determine the idea of natural selection keeping species fixed is what is today called stabilizing selection. In Naval Timber and Arboriculture, Matthew clearly describes how natural selection is responsible for curtailing variation and when it is relaxed through domestication more variation is observed. I am not aware that this was an "old doctrine" in 1831 when Matthew published it. I would be very grateful if someone could point to the literature prior to 1831 where stabilizing selection is described.
It is important to note that Darwin, in the first two sentences of The Origin of Species, also attempts an explanation of why more variety is observed under domestication than in nature. He states that: "I think we are driven to conclude that this greater variability is simply due to our domestic productions having been raised under conditions of life not so uniform as, and somewhat different from, those to which the parent-species have been exposed under nature". This explanation is nothing to do with natural selection. Later in chapter 1 he states that "the remarkable effect which confinement or cultivation has on the functions of the reproductive system; this system appearing to be far more susceptible than any other part of the organisation, to the action of any change in the conditions of life." Domestication would be a major "change in the conditions of life".
It is noteworthy that despite Darwin reading Matthew's book after he published The Origin (if not before) he still failed to incorporate Matthew's explanation of greater variability under domestication which is a formulation of what we currently call stabilizing selection in any of the subsequent editions of The Origin. As Darwin fails to comprehend stabilizing selection I find it surprising to see it referred to as an "old doctrine". This misconception which incidentally Matthew explicitly anticipates and rejects resurfaces in many places in The Origin both directly but also indirectly in Darwin resorting to disuse (in the Lamarkian sense) as an alternative to natural selection frequently. Such cases as moles losing their sight or flightless birds and insects are difficult to explain by natural selection if you don't realize that sighted mammals and flying birds and insects are continually acted on by natural selection to stop them from losing these faculties. Ultimately Darwin's misunderstanding of this issue leads him on to develop his pangenes theory which is a mechanism for Lamarkism.
I would be very grateful for any thoughts on this issue as I think it is very important. If I am not persuaded otherwise I will probably remove the section quoted above from the article. Gourdiehill (talk) 00:02, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Darwin, Matthews and Stabilizing Selection