Talk:Evolution/Archive 36

message: Related to my thoughts above, I would propose that the following makes a better outline:
*Observations.  The data on which the theory of evolution rests and notable consequences of evolution.  Discuss the fossil record in detail, including common descent, speciation, etc.  Discuss how organisms appear to fit into categories and have commonalities.  And so on.  I might start the section with a brief historical outline of pre-Darwin observations, Darwin's studies of finches, etc., Mendel's studies leading to genetics, then mention that they lead to evolution by natural selection via transmitting genetic information, then discuss all the various interesting aspects of evolution we've seen since then---without detailing the theory.  Distinguish immediately between observations and the theory explaining them.  Some material is available in "Evidence," but it needs to be refocused and greatly expanded.
*Theory.  Here, give a full-blown exposition of the theory of evolution.  Not the idea that evolution happens, but the explanation of how and why.  Maybe start with a brief outline of the synthesis of Darwin and Mendel.  Give MCJ's very nice argument that natural selection is a logical consequence of certain simple facts.  Say the same thing about genetic drift.  Detail the processes of variation and heredity.  Discuss all the notable aspects of genetics.  Discuss explanatory power along with examples of predictions and verifications.  First two sections of current article should go here.
*Research.  Discuss here the wide array of ongoing research in EB, mol bio, etc.  Sadly, there's not much material currently in the article, except for a bit from "Academic disciplines."
*Social impact.  Keep this section very brief, even though it's very important to our readers.  Again, I would start historically.  Discuss reception of Darwin's theory and its acceptance by science.  Discuss when and how controversial social ideas flowed from it.  Briefly discuss the conflict with religious origins beliefs, and the history of opposition to evolution's ideas, particularly regarding public education in the U.S.  Mention current status, keeping in mind regional distinctions.
I think the above outline would improve the article significantly, but I don't have the perspective to carry out such a reorganization.  We need an expert on the subject matter (late-stage bio grad student or a postdoc, perhaps?) who is capable of writing well and willing to write each section at its appropriate level.  If and when the article takes on some sort of reasonable overall structure, I'll be much more capable of improving it directly, and I'll be glad to do so.  Best, Gnixon 18:57, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposal

message: A request to see more information about "scientific controversies", a rebuttal, and a redirection to the FAQ.
I Noticed that there was not a section for scientific controversies. Even though it is taught in most schools that there is no opposition to this theory in the scientific community I found some articles even here on wikipedia about controversies surrounding evolution. I created this section to cover those topics and tried to develop a small paragraph addressing theses arguments from a neutral perspective.B89smith 18:31, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The fact that Evolution -- like any science -- is a field where hypotheses get tested and supported (or rejected) and concepts and ideas sometimes change, does not imply that there is scientific "controversy" as to whether Evolution is true (as we define anything to be "true").  There is no controversy among scientists that all life evolved from shared ancestry, via mechanisms of selection and population dynamics as outlined in part by Darwin, Wallace, Fisher, and the Modern Synthesis.  Like any science, controversy sometimes exists on smaller points, such as the actual structure of a phylogenetic tree, or whether or not sympatric speciation can occur in sexually reproducing organisms.  But those controversies do not mean that phylogenetics is under scrutiny, or speciation does not occur. Normal scientific debate about specific topics does not mean that the core structure and tenets of the science are under any debate whatsoever. TxMCJ 18:56, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

text: This issue is addressed in the /FAQ.  You may be interested in Objections to evolution.  Cheers, Gnixon 18:34, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

text: As everyone here will attest, I am very interested in the problem you are having inserting this material that is fully attributed to many Reliable Sources.  :))  Would you agree to the principle that the evolution page should contain only material that satisfies the standard of "Verifiability, not truth"?  --Rednblu 19:16, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You may want to propose revising the FAQ.  Gnixon 19:19, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Apparently, it is not safe to have this discussion in the public square.  Therefore, let us disappear while we yet can and reconvene in the safety of the Role of truth page.  --Rednblu 19:50, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scientific Controversies 

message: I like TxMCJ's and Slrubenstein's content suggestions (both see the weakness in the current History section and the opportunity to relay history, evolutionary thought, and theory for example). That should be the first priority-what to put in the article. How to fit it into some Wiki format may be an issue, but I would hope the goal is to produce a superior article on the subject. Face it, most encyclopedia's bite. It would seem an excellent opportunity to build a better encyclopedia article-informative, up-to-date, and not watered down drivel. I think many readers are looking for something more than your average encyclopedia article. I think one of the reasons that this subject generates so much controversy is naivety of the subject-fundamentalist, general public, and many scientists (even educated people who believe and support evolution are ignorant of the facts, and most scientist's education become restricted to an expertise). Rather than talk about social controversy lets help make it disappear with an article that is "Gee-whiz that does make sense, seems obvious, and those arguments are difficult to deny". Just a suggestion. GetAgrippa 14:00, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not opposed to those content suggestions.  I'm just suggesting we consider first reorganizing what we already have in a more reasonable way.  Gnixon 14:32, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think Slrubenstein's way is wonderfully reasonable. TxMCJ 16:33, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Be aware, though, that too much "fluff" at the top of the article - geeneral discussions of evidence, and so on, and you end up with a vicious cycle in which the lead has to get more and more detailed to give the background needed. Also, I have to ask whether the history and evidence is really the most important discussion in the article. I'm inclined to think that mosrt readers wouldn't really care much about the history, and might not be able to understand the evidence until after basic processes asnd mechanisms are explained. Adam Cuerden talk 01:03, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Going in the right direction 

message: Thinking again about issues of organization and problems of language (e.g., theory/fact), what about these as the two sections with most of the meat?
*Observations and inferences
:*(overview)
:*Homology
:*Fossil record
:*Genetics
:*Speciation and extinction
:*History of life
*Mechanisms
:*(overview)
:*Variation and mutation
:*Heredity
:*Natural selection
:*Genetic drift
:*Gene flow
Subtopics were chosen from the current TOC (mostly).  Additional sections might include "Research" and/or "Social impact."  My hope is that this layout would clarify the difference between the "facts" of evolution and the inferences that immediately follow (e.g., speciation, common descent), versus the scientific "theory" that explains them.  Putting things like speciation/extinction and history of life in the first section avoids associating them with "theory."  I likely left out some subtopics, and subtopics may not be optimally ordered---just trying to get the broad ideas.  I suggest untitled "overviews" beginning each main section so that subsections can be detailed without confusing the general reader.
These are just suggestions---nothing I'm tied to.  If they won't work, I'll take no offense if someone improves upon them; if they're not acceptable for some reason, fine.  Just my two cents.  Gnixon 05:18, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What's the difference between an inference and a theory? Aren't theories inferential? In what sense are variation, mutation, and heredity not "observations" or "inferences", while genetics and the history of life are? Also, doesn't it make sense to present facts and their respective explanations in the same sections, so that many readers don't only learn about the puzzling phenomena and then stop reading the article before they get to any of the actual meat—that is, how and why those phenomena occur? -Silence 08:46, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I would say an inference is something that follows directly from the observations/evidence without significant theoretical structure.  Thus the "fact" that all galaxies are moving away from us can be inferred directly from their redshifts, and one can also therefor infer that space is expanding.  However, the theory of big bang cosmology isn't mere inference---it has a logical structure that explains how and why space is expanding (among many other things).  Gnixon 13:03, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Likewise, evolution as change over time of populations and even the history of life are simply observations or direct inferences, but the processes of variation/heredity along with the mechanisms of natural selection/genetic drift form the structure of a scientific theory explaining in detail how and why things evolve.  (Thus variation/mutation/heredity can be observed, but the fact that through natural selection and genetic drift they result in evolution constitutes the theory.)  Gnixon 13:03, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

text: My point is exactly that the subtopics under that first section are a big part of the meat, and I think its useful to understand the facts about what happens via evolution before worrying about why evolution happens.  Gnixon 13:03, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Regarding readability, I think overviews beginning each section should provide all the material someone would want on a first reading, and I think readers would naturally skip through details and go to the next overview if the article was reasonably structured.  Gnixon 13:03, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Thanks for your questions.  Hope this clarifies what I meant.  By the way, "Evidence and inferences" seems like it would work just about as well.  Best, Gnixon 12:58, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Just a thought.... 

message: Since there have been 7 different outlines mentioned so far (3 from me, sorry), I've put each of them on a separate subpage so we can see their tables of contents.
*Gnixon's broad outline
*TxMCJ's textbook/course-based
*Britannica
*Slrubenstein
*Gnixon's two main sections
*Silence
*Gnixon's lengthy one
I tried to make them represent the original intents, but they may need to be improved.  Gnixon 20:50, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've (evolution is fake) e greatly; it now includes a paragraph-by-paragraph breakdown of every topic to be covered even within s (evolution is fake)(This, of course, will need to be heavily revised, but it should (monkey man darwin) ea of the topical layout envisioned.) -Silence 21:43, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Outlines 

message: Silence recently moved some sections around (with some rewriting):  Basic processes cut; History of thought, Heredity, Variation moved to top.  I then combined Heredity/Variation into Genetics and put Evidence before Genetics/Mechanisms, but Speciation and extinction after them, before Common descent.  Gnixon 21:23, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The only reason I didn't include "genetics" in any of my layouts is because it simply seems too vague to me. What aspect of evolution isn't, on one level or another, "genetics"? For example, why is gene flow "genetics", while genetic drift is not "genetics"? Dividing the article between genetic and non-genetic topics seems misleading to me; plus I suspect that more laypeople will be able to quickly grasp the scope of "heredity" or "variation" than "genetics". -Silence 21:41, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: True, genetics spans most of evolution.  Perhaps "Heredity" would be a better title for combining those sections, but the totality of that section is essentially about the nature of genetic information and how it is transmitted (and that description doesn't apply directly to the other sections).  I think the other sections can be reasonably separated from "Genetics."  (Genetic drift being the only problematic sub-section I notice.)  Gnixon 21:49, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Genetic drift isn't the only problematic section; natural selection is one of the most important concepts in population genetics. I don't see a lot of value for our readers in bothering to point out that topics X, Y, and Z are all "essentially about the nature of genetic information and how it is transmitted"; that's a suitably vague oversectioning as to not convey any useful information about the relationship between the subsections. -Silence 22:01, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Heredity, then? (As opposed to mechanisms influencing what gets inherited.)  Gnixon 22:04, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Changes 

message: It seems like the current TOC is unbalanced according to the significance of its sections.  Does Variation need so many sections when Mechanisms is so sparse?  If, as the intro to variation says, evolution consists of two processes, variations and mechanisms, shouldn't Mechanisms have roughly equal coverage?  Can we condense Variation?  Gnixon 23:03, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: "Balance", as you mean it, is completely unimportant. The fact that evolution consists of variations and mechanisms doesn't imply that the two are equally important, and even if it did, two equally important things rarely merit the same coverage, because coverage is not based on a "merit system" ("the better the topic is, the more it's covered"), but rather on how much information is needed to coherently explain the topic. For example, the only reason "natural selection" is longer than "genetic drift" is because giving a basic-level explanation of the former takes longer than the latter, not because either one is necessarily more important. However, I do plan to condense "Variation"; it happens to have more now because it had more before any of the reorganizations to article layout were made. Balance between number of sections is 100% irrelevant, but the raw length can certainly be made a bit more balanced if we cut most of the information out of "hybridization" and "horizontal gene transfer", and some of it out of "mutation", which is exactly what I'd planned to do. -Silence 23:39, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Surely having lots of subsections suggests the section is long.  I didn't mean to get in the way of you trimming Variation---more power to you.  I started on hybridization by cutting some extraneous details about mules and wheat.  Gnixon 23:53, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Silence: I couldn't agree more.  Some vague criterion of "balance between sections" is totally irrelevant and has nothing to do with the information and goals of the article. TxMCJ 00:24, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed. Gnixon is correct, though, that sometimes an excess of subsections can imply excess focus or bloat in a certain area. We should just be careful not to assume that all imbalance is bad; sometimes certain topics simply deserve more attention than others. Balance is only relevant when it implies that a certain section has received too little or too much attention relative to the information content needed to explain it and relative to its importance for the topic in question. -Silence 00:33, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, sorry for the misunderstanding.  Gnixon 00:46, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Balance

message: Suggest adding a subsection on Phylogeny to Common descent between Speciation/extinction and History of life.  Gnixon 23:13, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Phylogeny