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Archives

2003–2005 Historical POV forks September 24, 2003–February 23, 2005 December 31, 2004–June 6, 2005 June 12–October 24, 2005 October 24–November 23, 2005 November 28–December 14, 2005 December 14, 2005–January 10, 2006 2006 January 2–February 6, 2006 February 6–March 23, 2006 March 3–April 5, 2006 March 31–May 4, 2006 April 20–July 7, 2006 June 24–August 25, 2006 June 27–August 26, 2006 August 18–October 2, 2006 October 1–November 16, 2006 November 6–27, 2006 November 26–December 20, 2006 December 11–23, 2006 December 19, 2006–January 6, 2007 December 20, 2006 December 26, 2006–January 6, 2007 2007 January 6–9, 2007 January 9–11, 2007 January 11–15, 2007 January 15–20, 2007 January 21–February 8, 2007 February 8–February 18, 2007 February 19–March 12, 2007 March 12–...

social and religious controversies

There needs to be a description about the atheist agenda to promote atheism by evolution materialism. Especially since dawkins has labeled teaching children religion is 'child abuse' like my edit that was just undone. its clearly that such a controversial topic is not only driven by passionate religious individuals as well as atheist naturalists. I think this is evidence since gravity is considered a theory and evolution is considered a fact. Wyatt 16:24, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Evolution as bushy, and intelligence as only one adaptation

I most recently came across this in Ben Bova's FAINT ECHOES, DISTANT STARS: THE SCIENCE AND POLITICS OF FINDING LIFE BEYOND EARTH, HarperCollins, 2004, p 247. We vaguely think of evolution as a ladder with intelligence at the top. And that's just not the case. Evolution is bushy and goes in all kinds of different directions. Other useful adaptations include sharp eyes, strong legs, a keen nose, increased wingspan, a hunting strategy of sitting and waiting and thus conserving energy, having lots of offstring, long tail feathers to attract mates, thick wooly coats for mammals in cold climates, and etc, etc.

Bova also cites Stephen Jay Gould, who takes this same general view. And here’s a website giving the transcript of a Nov. ’96 interview between Stephen and political consultant/commentator David Gergen . Now, Stephen doesn’t actually use the word ‘bushy’ here, which I have heard attributed to him in other contexts. But it’s a very, very good description of what he is talking about.

I agree with Mandaclair that the Huxley graphic is great for showing a previous view of evolution and it's kind of quaint in its own way, but it is definitely not the modern view! And if you look closely at the captions, they say "Gibbon, Orang, Chimpanzee, Gorilla, Man.” Yes, these five are the currently living species of great apes (six if you wish to count the bonobo chimp as a separate species). But we are cousins!

But this same idea, slightly more sophisticated, is still in wide currency. As a young boy (I'm now 44), I remember seeing a long line of about twenty hominids, as if the whole thing is so neat and orderly. It simply is not. In fact, if we list the usual cast: Ramapithecus, Sivapithecus, Oriopithecus, Australopithecus afarensis, Australopithecus africanus, Australopithecus robustus, Australopithecus boisei, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo sapien neaderthalis, all those cool cats! Well, most of these guys are our cousins, not our ancestors. (The immediate ancestor of us modern humans is Homo erectus, who is also the immediate ancestor of the neanderthals. So please note that we and the neanderthals are cousins.)

Another thing I might ask in the article is a longer, fuller explanations of L-amino acids in proteins. I take it this is the left-hand amino acids vs. the right-hand amino acids. This is a topic I find fascinating but don't know too much about. And as far as the writing style itself, sometimes a piece of wrting can include a technical description, and then a resaying of the same thing in briefer everyday language. I don't suggest this as anything mechanical and required, but rather as one more feathered arrow in your writer's quiver.

I think one of our main articles on a subject, like evolution, should be long (as long as it stays good!). One of the advantages of the Internet over a set of Encyclopedia Britannicas sitting on a shelf is that bandwidth is so much cheaper than printing! Yeah, I’ll kind of jump in the middle here. I think length in and of itself is not such a bad thing. FriendlyRiverOtter 00:52, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. If you see any possible improvements to the article, please make them! (If they're big changes, probably mention them on this page.) Gnixon 19:23, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Archival

This talk page tends to fill up quickly. Can we agree on a policy for archiving old discussions? I would suggest the following:

• Keep any discussion with a comment less than 2 weeks old. Regularly move older ones to the archives.

• For very long but ongoing discussions, use the hat/hab tags to hide older comments. Use the reason= parameter to explain. For example, {{hat|reason=Older comments hidden to save space. Feel free to continue the discussion below.}} produces

• When someone raises a controversial subject that is addressed in the FAQ, leave the original post, but immediately use hat/hab on the inevitable flamewar that follows. For example,

Evolution is unproven! It's a theory, not a fact! User:GenesisTellsAll

What do you guys think? Gnixon 16:31, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

An excellent suggestion Gnixon. The warning banners and FAQ do little to stop POV pushing and vandals, so addressing it in the Talk but hiding it seems reasonable. It is difficult enough to get consensus on the topic from evolution enthusiast without wasting time addressing side issues not related to the topic. I have to admit I was initially naive to the depths of concern over creationist and ID vandalisms-I thought the editors paranoid, but was I wrong. Fill spends quite a bit of time refuting such claims from creationist and ID proponents. I am shocked as some seems less than honest (not all I should amend)which does little for their cause. GetAgrippa 18:32, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Credit where due: the hat/hab archives were EdJohnston's idea. We could all try harder to keep our comments tightly focused and avoid starting off-topic discussions. Gnixon 02:16, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd propose regular archiving in a simple manner, not topic-by-topic, which is too labor-intensive to be done regularly by a human, and prone to error. It probably requires a bot to do topic-by-topic archiving without tons of work, and the available bots leave something to be desired. The hat/hab scheme for boxing up topics seems fine for questions answered in the FAQ. In general I'd suggest that this Talk page is too large when it gets over 120 kb and that the archiver should leave the most recent 80kb in place. EdJohnston 18:53, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh yeah. I didn't mean that each topic should be archived separately. I imagined someone glancing at the page and saying, "none of the topics above here have comments within the last two weeks, so they all get archived." As for keeping the page to 80-120 kB, I think it's better to decide a reasonable time since last comment and cut on that instead. (Of course, keeping the page small puts an upper limit on that time.) This page fills up so fast that cutting on size will often remove ongoing discussions. Editors shouldn't miss the chance to comment on recent topics just because they haven't logged onto Misplaced Pages in the last 3 or 4 days. Gnixon 02:16, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Topical archiving

I must have missed when it happened, but this new archiving methodology isn't very useful. I remember there used to be, at the top of the discussion page, a great reference source that had archives of discussions by topic. For example, the "Evolution is only a theory" topic, which happens over and over again, had it's own link. One could go and read it, maybe realize "oh someone's said that, and it's been set aside." Now I can't find all that stuff. Anyways, all IMHO. Orangemarlin 18:16, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Archiving by topic is really useful, but also tons of work to maintain. I suspect people switched to the simpler scheme out of laziness. Keep in mind that this talk page generates about an article's length of comments every couple weeks. See also the discussion about an "Evolution Debates" archive and its deletion as a POV fork. Gnixon 18:52, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Too bad. It was nice to refer people to old arguments. If they didn't read them, we could beat them up mercilessly. It made my days so much happier. Orangemarlin 17:33, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

It would be useful if someone created such a table at the top of the page with links to discussions in the archives. Gnixon 17:33, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

With User:EdJohnston's help, I think I've found the pages OM refers to. They're linked to in the 2005 archives. Gnixon 04:04, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Bot archiving

To save us effort, I've set up User:MiszaBot to automatically archive conversations older than 2 weeks. Hopefully, I got all the settings right. If it causes problems, please let me know and I'll clean things up. If anyone doesn't like this idea, please say so. Or, if you like the bot but not the settings, certainly feel free to change them yourself---it's pretty easy. Cheers, Gnixon 16:17, 3 April 2007 (UTC).

Theistic Evolution

Controversy (2)

Observation

Where are the examples of new species observed to come into existence? I've heard claims about medicines being invented by evolution and things, but I don't know of any where that evolution has actually been observed? This is different than seeing a chain of similar animals, because those animals are actually distant from each other even if they followed a similar path. All I've seen is beaks getting longer or shorter, but no real macro changes or new features. It would be nice to have some statements about it, but I may have just overlooked them. Wyatt 21:28, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Suggestions from TxMCJ

A number of discussions with a researcher and university lecturer in evolutionary biology

Definition

Proposed definition of evolution for lead. General support. Concern about "biological" qualifier. Brief discussion of strategy for addressing creationist reactions.

Recommendations

A number of recommendations for the article. Few responses. Proposal of "Misconceptions" section discussed in later subsection.

Cooks in the pot

More students using Misplaced Pages as authoritative source. Experts may be discouraged from contributing by "too many cooks in the pot."

Natural selection

Proposed definition of natural selection. Criticism of adaptationist tone in article. Importance of superfecundity.

Common misconceptions

Continued from Recommendations. Suggestion for section on common misconceptions about evolution. Some support. Concern that such a section would devolve into anti-creationist POV, as did a similar section before.

Changes implemented

Changes to intro by Mandaclair. Support for them from GetAgrippa.

Struggle to survive

Debate over "struggle for survival" phrase as too Victorian, Marxist, anthropomorphic. Defended as accurate description, used by Darwin. Resolution via "roundabout verbage."

Variation and Heredity

Call to cut Variation and Heredity sections. Some support for only summarizing variation and heredity within another section. Is adaptationist perspective a POV issue? How is evolution taught these days? Few comments.

Selection and Adaptation

Edits by Mandaclair to Selection and Adaptation section. Brief debate over ecological selection.

A note on the system of boxes just above (used for Mandaclair's comments and the responses): User:Gnixon is the one who wrote the summaries and created the system of boxes. (It would be more clear if he would add his own signed comment to announce the refactoring). In fact, it does save space on the Talk page, and I like the system, but perhaps not everyone does. Please respond here either for or against this type of refactoring. I think there is a consensus that it should be done for questions answered in the FAQ, but there is not yet a consensus for doing it more generally. There is a sub-question as to whether some further action should be taken on Mandaclair's suggestions. Respond here on that issue as well, if you have an opinion. EdJohnston 16:53, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

For' (obviously). You're right, Ed. I should have said something about it. I certainly hope the archiving and subject headings haven't stifled discussion, but it was getting so long and covering so many topics that I couldn't follow things anymore. Gnixon 20:55, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

For so long as its employed sparingly to avoid confusing new/casual readers. But it is so obviously useful for high traffic talk pages such as this; I hope to utilize it elsewhere. - RoyBoy 23:14, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Lead

Recent changes to the lead seem to have been well-received, but I think they've also exacerbated an existing problem: the lead is far too long and detailed.

WP:LEAD recommends that the lead be concise and accessible, and suggests that it should be between one and four paragraphs long. The current lead is 7 paragraphs long, and I think one could easily argue that its neither concise nor accessible to the average reader. What's more, from glancing at the table of contents, the lead hardly seems to be an "overview" of the article. (Granted, the article's contents are not well organized.) Some articles about major scientific fields have addressed the issue by including only the definition in the lead, then following with an "Introduction" section. I'm not sure that's the best solution, but we have to do something. Any ideas? I'll try to make a content-neutral revision sometime soon unless someone beats me to it. Gnixon 18:39, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

A survey about the lead took place here. Thanks, Ed, for mentioning it. Gnixon 18:58, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Reviewers during January's FAR stressed that this article needed work on being accessible to its readers, especially in the intro. See FAR section below. Gnixon 19:39, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Organization

A glance at the table of contents is enough to prove that this article has become very poorly organized. I'd like to undertake a major reorganization, one that is content-neutral but better sorts things under headings and subheadings. I think a similar change at Physics worked out well (compare before and after ). I'd appreciate some input regarding what the table of contents should look like and what goes where. Thanks! Gnixon 18:39, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I would need to review User:Silence's previous plan, and the feedback questionnaire that he created for the lead, to get some ideas. (It's all in this Talk page or the archives). He also made a list of issues he thought would need to be fixed to get back the FA status. I can try to dig up all the diffs pointing to that stuff later. EdJohnston 16:57, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

The lead survey is here. Gnixon 18:53, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

The featured article review, including Silence's extensive comments, is here. Gnixon 18:56, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

FAR

The featured article review in January resulted in delisting, but also produced a number of well-received recommendations from User:Silence and others. Not all of them have been carried out. I've copied Silence's list of recommendations in the hidden archive below. Please comment either within the archive or below it. Gnixon 19:28, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

The references have been corrected, broken links removed, internal links were formatted according to WP:CITET, and outside references have been shortened. Other activities to make this an FA are required. Orangemarlin 19:31, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

For technical items where it's absolutely clear they've been resolved, I suggest striking through the items. Gnixon 19:53, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Gnixon, thanks for digging up this useful info. I struck out Silence's action item about external links, since they were reduced to nine back on 9 February. If I see more things I can fix I'll edit the boxed copy of his list you provided above. EdJohnston 20:09, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I also struck out some items that were completed. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Orangemarlin (talk • contribs) 20:12, 3 April 2007 (UTC).

AOL, I'd like to strike out the infant issue. I agree with the idea of not over explaining concepts in article, but I would emphasize that a "phenotype" is not common knowledge. - RoyBoy 23:42, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Fine to strike it out if it's no longer a problem, but the complaint was justified: "e.g., what makes you different from your neighbor" is far too casual language for an encyclopedia. Gnixon 19:19, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Language

After making extensive changes to help resolve items on his list, as well as making improvements to several related articles, Silence left this comment:

Unfortunately, I lack the biological expertise to fix some of this article's largest problems: the opaqueness of some of the more technical sections, lacking even an attempt to provide readers with context in many cases, rnders large portions of this article essentially useless as a general reference tool. What we need is some more work on clarifying concepts by people who are both very familiar with the processes and mechanisms involved, and able to explain them in sufficiently clear, engaging language. We need a Dawkins! :( -Silence 06:25, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

He also voted "remove" for similar reasons:

Remove unless dramatic improvements ensue. I can only do so much; the incredibly confusing mess of various parts of the "processes" and "mechanisms" sections will require a substantial rewrite by knowledgeable folk in order to be of any use to readers; there's nothing wrong with using complex concepts and important technical terms, but the article's frequent failure to keep its readership in mind and coherently explain these things, as well as poor writing quality in a number of paragraphs and inconsistency in references, makes the current article unfit to be an FA. Hopefully, if efforts aren't rallied beforehand, they will become more focused as a result of the demanding pressures of the FAC and peer-review process. -Silence 06:25, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Other reviewers also stressed the need to explain concepts in accessible language, especially in the Intro. Gnixon 19:37, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

You and I, given that we have strong disagreement on many issues pertaining to these articles, cannot be the only two who are involved. I would "hold your horses" until other editors weigh in with their opinions. You have a tendency to go "ready, fire, fire, fire, aim." Slow down. Orangemarlin 19:58, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Whereas your tendency is "revert, revert, then maybe read."  ;-) Just trying to be bold until there seem to be objections. I haven't yet changed anything about the article. I think the area where we disagree is pretty well-defined, so we can probably cooperate on other things. It's a shame that there haven't been many editors around here lately. Gnixon 20:27, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

By the way, what happened to the lead? It is way too long. I think it grew by creeping. Orangemarlin 19:59, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, indeed. See my comments above. Gnixon 20:27, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I have said over and over that this article needs to be accessible. Unfortunately, that seems to be a very difficult thing to achieve.--Filll 20:04, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

We're trying. Come back and help, this article needs you too. Orangemarlin 20:11, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Semantics

I'm not seriously proposing a move, but can anyone see how many of the problems we have here would be solved by changing the article name to "Evolutionary biology"? Many of the tensions on this page are due to confusion over whether we're writing about

1. Evolutionary biology, a field of study like Physics.
2. Theory of Evolution, as in, the Modern Synthesis, a theory like the Theory of General Relativity
3. Evolutionary processes, as in the observable aspects
4. Evolution by natural selection, meaning the concept of it, as in Darwin's revolutionary idea that changed science and society, like Adam Smith's Invisible Hand.

How did the English language come up so short here? How do other encyclopedias handle the problem? Gnixon 20:49, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Let's keep the name Evolution. The idea of changing the name comes up promptly every six weeks, and is always rejected. The name has been this way since 2001. EdJohnston 14:05, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Hey, I said I wasn't proposing a move!  :-) On the other hand, I think it's worth discussing which definition we're writing about, or which parts of the article address each meaning. I also think we have almost enough material to make a separate "Theory of Evolution" article, and I wish we had enough to make "Evolutionary biology" (as in the branch distinguished from molecular bio). Gnixon 14:50, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

LUCA again

FYI, apropos our debate of a week or two ago, I today read a bit by Doolittle (and Eric Bapteste) about the Tree of Life, in PNAS, Feb 13 2007, titled "Pattern Pluralism and the Tree of Life hypothesis". He uses some strong language which I have no doubt will end up in some creationist quote mine (cf. his first sentence, "The meaning, role in biology, and support in evidence of the universal ‘‘Tree of Life’’ (TOL) are currently in dispute." Good read. Graft 22:37, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks Graft. I remember at one point in the past evolutionary webs was emphasized more than trees, but apparently it is a little of both. I agree this will end up in creationist quote mines. Doolittle admits that tree patterns suffice for most of life and that he is referring predominately to prokaryotes because of HGT and fusion events. He gets rather philosophical also (which I tend to agree with some of his sentiments but don't agree with reaction of stifling the whole pursuit). I do think that Doolittle is fatalistic about it as others disagree:

Kurland CG, Canback B, Berg OG. Horizontal gene transfer: a critical view. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2003 Aug 19;100(17):9658-62. Epub 2003 Aug 5. Review. PMID: 12902542

Lake JA, Rivera MC. Deriving the genomic tree of life in the presence of horizontal gene transfer: conditioned reconstruction. Mol Biol Evol. 2004 Apr;21(4):681-90. Epub 2004 Jan 22. PMID: 14739244

Ge F, Wang LS, Kim J. The cobweb of life revealed by genome-scale estimates of horizontal gene transfer. PLoS Biol. 2005 Oct;3(10):e316. Epub 2005 Aug 30. PMID: 16122348

Kurland CG. What tangled web: barriers to rampant horizontal gene transfer. Bioessays. 2005 Jul;27(7):741-7. PMID: 15954096 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE

I think Doolittle is correct to throw a red flag of reasonable doubt, but it should be a cautionary tale to proceed with caution rather than render it mute. In the end, the article will be used by creationist quote mines that another Darwinist scientist disproves evolution theory is feasible. GetAgrippa 14:08, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like stuff that would fit very nicely into a "current research" section. (Also, I wouldn't sweat the creationist angle too much. It's always easy to distinguish between arguing the details and arguing the big picture.) Gnixon 14:22, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Doolittle's last paragraph deals with the issue of Creationists:

Holding onto this ladder of pattern is an unnecessary hindrance in the understanding of process (which is prior to pattern) both ontologically and in our more down-to-earth conceptualization of how evolution has occurred. And it should not be an essential element in our struggle against those who doubt the validity of evolutionary theory, who can take comfort from this challenge to the TOL only by a willful misunderstanding of its import. The patterns of similarity and difference seen among living things are historical in origin, the product of evolutionary mechanisms that, although various and complex, are not beyond comprehension and can sometimes be reconstructed.

But I do think his point should be well-taken, that one shouldn't assume a rooted, branching tree extending back to the beginning of life when we have no way of showing that this must be the case for the deepest parts of the Tree of Life. I haven't read the above HGT review yet, but what do you think of Doolittle's central point - that the assumption that there's something to be identified beyond all that HGT is unfounded to begin with? Graft 16:55, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Adam has made some good edits regarding LUCA and HGT. Gnixon 12:38, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Suggested Edit

As a biologist, I have issue with the use of word 'design' in the following sentence in the 'Academic Disciplines' section: The capability of evolution through selection to produce designs optimized for a particular environment has greatly interested mathematicians, scientists and engineers. Could 'design' be replaced with 'biological processes and networks' or something similar? Evolution doesn't generate function through 'design' but with whatever paradigm works.

Thanks! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.181.191.134 (talk) 06:18, 5 April 2007 (UTC).

Done. Thanks for the notice. By the way, you can create an account and edit this article.--Ķĩřβȳ♥♥♥ŤįɱéØ 06:24, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Fisherian runaway

I've done a cleanup on Fisherian runaway and trimmed it somewhat. Can someone do a sanity check and make sure I haven't removed anything important? Also, it would be good if someone could add some references to it. (I'm posting here because Fisherian runaway is pretty low traffic.) Regards, Ben Aveling 08:27, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

BNME:Monkeys

bnme:this is myvirgn attmpt at a internet talk site. I can't type and I have to soetimes hit the keys twice to get em to work. If I a using someones post, please let me k(twice)now. With these thumbs I save monkeys. There had to be some miracle.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bnmeee (talk • contribs) 08:52, 7 April 2007 (UTC).

The lead

...My god, what happened to it? It's not a summary of evolution any more, it's back to using undefined jargon (genetic drift is *NOT* a term you can just drop into the lead without comment, and is generally completely inappropriate.

Thank you, Adam, for continuing to fight the good fight on behalf of accessibility. Yes, the current lead is a mess. I'd be in favor of restoring the old one (the last one you pasted) wholesale and then working from there.

A question: what did the lead look like when this article qualified as an FA?--EveRickert 00:08, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, bloody hell, now it's nearly gone entirely. For what it's worth, this was the lead when it was an FA. It's not perfect, but arguably better than what's there now, or was there before:

Evolution is a change in the genetic makeup of a population within a species. Since the emergence of modern genetics in the 1940s, evolution has been defined more specifically as a change in the frequency of alleles from one generation to the next. The word "evolution" is often used as a shorthand for the modern theory of evolution of species based upon Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, which states that all modern species are the products of an extensive process that began over three billion years ago with simple single-celled organisms, and Gregor Mendel's theory of genetics. As the theory of evolution by natural selection and genetics has become universally accepted in the scientific community, it has replaced other explanations including creationism and Lamarckism. Skeptics, often creationists, sometimes deride evolution as "just a theory" in an attempt to characterize it as an arbitrary choice and degrade its claims to truth. Such criticism overlooks the scientifically-accepted use of the word "theory" to mean a falsifiable and well-supported hypothesis.

--EveRickert 20:53, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Honestly, the lead section when this article was an FA was quite lacking. It's better than what was there before, but why settle for the lesser of two evils when we can have a good? There's no reason we can't have a lead section that very briefly goes over the most essential aspects for someone who has absolutely no understanding of evolution, and then have the rest of the article go into things in more detail; although I agree that functionality is more important than blind adherence to arbitrary standards or conventions, there is a very important practical (and thus functional) reason for an article's lead section to be as short as reasonably possible: accessibility.

Evolution is a complex topic, so none of us should be surprised to see some extremely important topics covered too little, or not at all, in the lead section; that is not only tolerable, but preferable, because it means that the lead section isn't bloated. The other main concern, then, is that the lead section be reader-friendly and, in particular, informative. This involves a difficult balancing act, but there's no reason we can't reach that point of equilibrium again; we've come very close in the past.

For example, we may want to mention and link to "gene" at the start of the first paragraph, if only to account for the many uses of the word "genetic" that are simply unavoidable in the lead section to an Evolution article; however, we might not, on the other hand, need to mention DNA quite yet, and saving that for slightly later in the article will also spare us the difficulty of having to waste valuable lead space on footnotes (in the context of evolution, at least) like RNA. -Silence 21:11, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Spin-off

I think it would be really great if someone created a "Theory of evolution" article using the information already in this article. The idea would be to discuss the ins and outs of the modern synthesis and current research in greater detail without bogging down the Evolution article. For example, the lead we currently have, which is far too detailed for the average reader of this article, would work very nicely in "Theory of evolution." It would also be a great place to discuss issues like horizontal gene transfer, population bottlenecking, etc., which frankly aren't too interesting to the average reader. There's more than enough material here to make a good start on what could be a very interesting new addition to Misplaced Pages. Just like "Misunderstandings" spawned its own article, I think the time has come for "Theory of evolution" or "Evolutionary theory." Gnixon 13:03, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Spin-off section 2

Back to the issue. What do people think of creating a more technical "Theory of Evolution"? (I'm a little disappointed that discussion on this article seems to have died down over the last couple weeks. Maybe it's the level of drama? I hope we can return to active, productive discussion---please let me know if I can somehow improve my role in it.) Gnixon 01:39, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't support having a separate 'Theory of Evolution' article. If the lead is having problems we should fix the lead, not just split off another article. The lead of Evolution was too technical around January 1, it got better till about March 1, and recently it became too technical again. I'd also support moving more technical material to subarticles, e.g. stuff about specific genetic mechanisms. Here are some topics that, while intriguing, might not need to be covered in our main article on evolution:

1. DNA methylation
2. Gene flow
3. Epigenetics
4. Non-DNA forms of heritable variation
5. Transposons
6. Hill-Robertson effect
7. Muller's ratchet

Others may have their own suggestions for what's not needed in the main article. EdJohnston 01:57, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Agree with the idea of moving things like that to main articles. (For the record, I wasn't proposing the other article only in order to move stuff from here. I really think it would be helpful to have a more technical article in one place, even if this one didn't change.) Gnixon 02:00, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I think it is a great idea to move the topical material listed above to articles on those topics, however I don't like the idea of having multiple tiers of articles on the same topics. Two is plenty, possibly too many, we should not have three. My two cents... --TeaDrinker 02:04, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I think we need Gene flow, and a brief mention of epigenetics. The others, well, the last two might be useful in explaining other things, but not more than a sentence each. Adam Cuerden 02:53, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that anything that is an important component of the theory of evolution ought to be mentioned here, with a link. But I see no reason why we canot have three tiers of articles: at the top, an article on evolution as fact and as theory that provides a general overview; then an article on the theory of evolution that goes into details about models for evolution, how they have changed, points of contention (comparable articles at this "level" would be evidence for evolution as well as articles on the evolution of actual species e.g. human evolution); then linked articles on natural selection, genetic drift, and other, more technical or contentions elements at play in current models/theorizing of evolution. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:38, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

A suggestion: since it seems you really want the article to be about the modern synthesis, why not call it "Modern Synthesis" and have "Theory of Evolution" redirect there? Hey look, there is already a modern synthesis article. Maybe instead of creating a new article, you could work on this one?--EveRickert 00:04, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

That's a reasonable suggestion, but Modern Synthesis, at least in its current incarnation, seems to be specifically about the historical merging of Darwin and Mendel. I was thinking of something more general that, as Slrubenstein described above, would discuss various models and aspects of the modern theory. Gnixon 21:55, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

More comments from TxMCJ

New lead

New lead: overly reductionist? In general I often applaud serious, bold attempts at massive streamlining, but I wonder if the lead edit by Silence isn't a bit extreme? Plus -- throwing the word theory out front so soon, in such a short lead, could cause all kinds of problems to arise due to the popular misundestanding of the word "theory".

I'm tempted to revert, but I won't "own" this article... I think many of the bold deletions Silence made might be able to really simplify the lead, but the currently posted solution might be a bit overboard... we'd also need to make sure that all of that material gets re-integrated SOMEWHERE in the article, if not in the lead. It may be detailed information, but it's not trivial information. Also: I will differ on the claim that non-organisms are non-biological. DNA is not an organism, but it is biological. As is a virus. TxMCJ 18:29, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that the new rewritten lead of Silence is an immense improvement. I could not believe how horribly the lead had deteriorated over the last few months. I think there is no problem with jamming technical material into the body of the article, but since the lead is probably all that over 90% of the readers will ever read, it better be well written. The lead should be short and succinct and interesting. It should not be overly technical but should give a rough idea about the subject matter. If there is material that you feel ABSOLUTELY must be included, put it in the body, not in the lead. Leave the current lead alone.--Filll 21:16, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

To avoid confusion, it should be noted that Mandaclair was responding to my initial edit (which just trimmed some of the trivia out of the lead section to make it easier to see what was crucial before expanding upon that), whereas Filll is responding to my (provisional) rewrite. I don't agree with Filll that we should "leave the current lead alone"—there are a lot of improvements to be made to it, and immediately after any major change we should expect plenty of discussion and revision. However, I agree with your point that most important topics in evolution shouldn't even be alluded to in the lead section, simply because there are so many dozens of them that it would overburden our readers, plus most of them are too technical to meaningfully explain in only a few words. Objective "importance" is not the only criterion for coverage in the lead section, nor even the most important one; practical value to completely uninformed readers is. -Silence 21:30, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for a much needed and very well done edit. Agree material lost should be covered somewhere in the article. Of course this version of the lead is open to improvement, but next time we find the lead spiraling out of control, I suggest returning to this very good one. Glad to see you back here, S. Gnixon 21:36, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Impact

The rewrite is indeed excellent and really accomplished a lot in one stroke. However, historic/current resistance to evolution should be tacked on near the end; perhaps after the 1st sentence in the 3rd paragraph. Without it, there is absolutely no sense evolution was a revolutionary paradigm shift... which reminds me, that paradigm shift also needs mentioned and wikilinked (what did evolution displace). - RoyBoy 21:34, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Mentioning controversy in the lead may or may not be a good idea in principle, but I'm worried that it will just become a big target for warring with creationists. The last sentence has nice wording about how important evolution is to biology, and the Controversy section displays prominently in the TOC. If we mention controversy in the lead, let's be very careful about it. Gnixon 21:40, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

You are talking to the guy who did the Abortion lead; not to boast or anything, but that beats Evolution hands down in the controversy category. :"D RoyBoy 21:56, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Haha, duly noted, but there's a lot more of substance about evolution that doesn't pertain to controversy and competes with it for space in the lead. That's to say, abortion is a relatively simple thing to describe, but its controversy is highly notable. Evolution has a somewhat smaller degree of controversy, and evolution itself is much broader and more complex. Gnixon 22:13, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

True :'D, but the quality science smackdown by Silence makes me not too concerned with that anymore. The science could bloat again if it wanted to, but if controversy/social aspects are kept in a paragraph on their own, so it can be compartmentalized successfully. Just as we did for abortion, people have been killed and clinics bombed, but we kept the second paragraph down to one sentence and well placed wikilinks. - RoyBoy 22:20, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't see the need for such a tack-on, RoyBoy, as this is a biological article, rather than a sociological or historical one. The top priority of this article is to explain to our readers the scientific understanding of biological evolution; whether or not it constituted a "paradigm shift" (itself a somewhat controversial idea within philosophy of science; it would probably be opening an unnecessary can of worms for Misplaced Pages to endorse a specific perspective on it here!) is at best an afterthought, and arguably barely merits inclusion in the article body (perhaps in the "Social effect" and/or "History" section), much less in the lead. Remember that at the end of the lead section we haven't even begun explaining many of the basics of what is actually physically happening in evolution; compared to that, evaluations of its social significance are, at least for the purposes of a biology article like this, of peripheral importance.

I also doubt that one sentence could properly convey the idea without misrepresenting the scope and significance of the controversy—especially since this would be the only sentence in the lead section not dealing directly or indirectly with the science of evolution. Describing "resistance" in such a context would imply that there is significant scientific resistance to evolutionary theory, which couldn't be further from the truth. Furthermore, I would like to keep the third paragraph as short as possible, and expand the "History" section instead where possible, because that section is currently woefully diminished. -Silence 21:43, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Top priority does not denote only priority, for an article, and especially for the lead. I hate to be the spoiled sport, but I must remind everyone here this is not a biology article. Okay? This is an article on the subject of evolution. This includes biology and controversy. No mention of controversy is a glaring oversight. See the Encarta beginning for a guildeline. Evolution displaced dominant historic views; if that isn't lead material, I don't know what is. The focus should, is and always has been on the biology. Great! That does not give us license to push other stuff to the bottom of the article. - RoyBoy 21:54, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

This is an article about biological evolution. (There are other articles for other types of evolution.) Thus, it is a biology article. Controversy is relevant here only insofar as it is relevant to understanding biological evolution. No mention of controversy in the lead section is infinitely less of an oversight than no mention of dozens of other, more important topics for understanding biological evolution, like the fossil record and DNA. Yet these, too, are mentioned nowhere in the lead. For an article as immensely complex and broad as this one, we simply need to stop trying to squeeze every single "important" topic into the lead section, or it'll grow unmanageably large once again; if something is "important" we should work first on improving its coverage in the article body, and only afterwards, if there is wide agreement, insert it into the lead. If anything even the current lead is a little longer than would be ideal.

Every major scientific discovery in history has "displaced dominant historic views", in one way or another. Without proper context and details, this is too vacuously vague to be very useful to readers in the "bite-sized" format that a lead section demands.

The introduction to the Encarta evolution article is twice as long as the lead section of evolution. Since that means that at least half of the information in that introduction wouldn't fit here without us beginning to re-bloat the newly-trimmed section, pointing to the inclusion of something there wouldn't be sufficient grounds for inclusion even if Encarta was the pinnacle of encyclopedic achievement.

The fact that this article's focus is on biology not only gives us "license" to push other stuff to the bottom of the article (and to other areas of the article body, many of which desperately need just that kind of "pushing" in order to flesh out missing information!); it gives us the duty to do so. -Silence 22:18, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

False comparison, DNA is implicitly referred to in the lead multiple times, and fossils are simply mineralized relics of DNA variation. Heh, yeah that's a stretched connection... but the point is both are central evidence for evolution. Controversy is a different sub-topic entirely; having nothing to do with biology, but everything to do with evolution... especially historically, the history (of the controversy and evolution's historic context) are under serviced in the lead.

I get the distinct impression that now that the lead is "in shape", nothing can be added? Another way to see it, is that you've created room for other notable aspects of evolution to be mentioned.

Don't obfuscate the issue with re-bloat. Encarta is a clear example that an encyclopedic article and lead is not exclusive to its main subject. Ever. Encarta is long and I have no intention of replicating the topics/coverage it has.

The disambig notice at the top clarifies what concept of "Evolution" this article is covering. It's function is to keep people from placing concepts from Stellar evolution here. It provides absolutely no editorial mandate to focus exclusively on the biological aspect of that concept. I'll understand if I need to repeat this several times since this has obviously been an assumption carried forward by the dominant/active editors here, but that disambig notice does not change the fact this article needs cover all aspects of biological Evolution. That includes controversy (religion), history, politics and if notable enough, sociology. I'm not debating this with you, I'm trying to, with as light a touch as possible to a valuable contributor, to say... incorrect. Disambiguation is just that, disambiguation; it does not set (or force) tone on an article. - RoyBoy 22:52, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

"Implicit" references to DNA and fossils are obviously useless to readers who don't know anything about DNA or fossils! (And Misplaced Pages articles ought to assume as little as possible about what article-readers know.) If the controversy has nothing to do with biology, then it also has nothing to do with evolution (i.e., biological evolution); what you meant to say is that it's not a biological topic, but it still obviously has to do with biology, in the sense that it has to do with (the social effect of) a major scientific theory in biology. That is why it merits mentioning in this article at all; if it was irrelevant to biology (and thus to biological evolution), it wouldn't have even a single word devoted to it anywhere on the page.

Evolution itself has no "historical context" in the sense you mean; what you mean to say is that the theory of evolution has a certain historical context, but remember that this article is about the biological process of evolution, not just about the scientific theory explaining that process (although obviously the theory must be significantly explained in order to convey the modern scientific understanding of evolution to our readers); the correct article for the theory (which, unlike the process, does have a historical context and a social effect in the sense you mean) is modern evolutionary synthesis.

Things can certainly be added to the lead; it's "in shape" in the sense that it's not in terrible condition now, but it's certainly far from ideal, and I'm not averse to major, systematic changes being implemented if they're improvements. However, most things that can be added to the lead shouldn't be added, for the simple reason that the lead would be unmanageably large if we let most relevant and important topics in evolution be covered in the lead; only those that are crucial for a very basic understanding of biological evolution should be mentioned at all, and even those only briefly. For this reason, the evolution lead section isn't 100% "closed" to new input; it just needs to be kept on an extremely tight leash, and all proposed additions must be subjected to intensive scrutiny and wariness, in order to avoid the section becoming bloated yet again (as has happened dozens and dozens of times in the past).

It doesn't provide a mandate to focus exclusively on strict biology, but it does provide a mandate to focus primarily on it. (I find it strange that you would suggest that I want the article to "exclusively" discuss strict biology; if that were so, I'd be arguing against keeping the section on "Social effects" around, not just arguing against adding a sentence about social effects to the lead section.) In my view, the level of primary importance of this area over others, combined with space limitations in the already overburdened lead section, combined with the difficulty of concisely and clearly explaining the nature of the controversy without conferring undue weight to minority views, warrants saving mentioning of a "social controversy" until later in the article. In your view, the importance of the social controversy overrides these three concerns; that's perfectly fine, and a valid opinion. I'm open to hearing suggestions on how add-on sentence you are proposing would look. But understand that there is a long-standing consensus, and a lot of editorial history in this article, opposing the inclusion of even a brief mention in the lead section of the topic you wish to add. For this reason, we should be doubly cautious in weighing the options, and not rush to assume that such an inclusion would be more helpful to our readers in this case than an exclusion, considering the (not exclusive, but exceedingly primary) focus of the article as a whole. Further discussion is needed first; I recommend devising at least one version of the proposed sentence and open a new thread (since this one has been scrolled up a bit) for discussing it at the bottom of this Talk page. Then we can get a better idea of consensus, act accordingly, and move on to more productive matters. -Silence 02:50, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

"Silence" must be latin for "wisdom." Hmmmmmmm.... Gnixon 04:36, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

But aren't you underestimating the notability of the impact of biological science on society? For analogy, is it reasonable for the Physics lead to mention the impact of say, nuclear weapons and semiconductors? Gnixon 22:22, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

This article isn't analogous to physics because it discusses a biological process, rather than a field or discipline of science; the proper analogy would be between physics and evolutionary biology. The social impact of a certain area of science is of more relevance to the article on the study of a phenomenon (e.g., evolutionary biology) or the explanation of that phenomenon (e.g., modern evolutionary synthesis) than on the phenomenon itself (e.g., evolution). This is not to say that the social impact of such study isn't important enough to mention in this article, merely that it's not quite important enough for the lead section, if only because there's always so much vastly more important information that we're currently leaving out for the sake of brevity and comprehensibility. -Silence 22:28, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Information that should be left out. - RoyBoy 22:52, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

That's what I get for picking a poor analogy. It's the idea of evolution that has impact, not the products of the field (physics). Maybe a better analogy would be Marxism or Adam Smith's take on economics. Meh. I agree with your comment below that these things should be addressed in the body before updating the intro. Gnixon 22:44, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

An analogy I would refer to is Age of the Earth, which I helped out on. While almost entirely science oriented there still needs to be mention of notable dissenting views. Now here is the kicker, those views have sub-articles, young earth creationism and such... but they do still merit a mention in the parent article. As they are indeed a part, a small part, but nonetheless a part of the subject matter for the article. - RoyBoy 23:16, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

We don't have to say it was a paradigm shift, but we must provide historic context for evolution; and wikilink to the dominant scientific theory prior to Darwin. If memory serves, it Gradualism or something like that... Huxley comes to mind; it was based on slow changes of terrain being analogous to biological changes. I can't really remember. - RoyBoy 22:07, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I think you make a good point that this topic deserves to be broader than just the science, but it will be challenging to discuss the social impact without bloating the lead or giving undue weight to objections to evolution. Do you have specific suggestions? Gnixon 22:01, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Not this second, but it should be short, a sentence or two; although it think it could grow to a small paragraph with historic, Darwin's time, and modern sentences providing a clear understanding resistance has been notable, historic and is ongoing in certain places. - RoyBoy 22:07, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Such an addition might be a superb one for the exceedingly short section "History of modern evolutionary thought"; I recommend adding it there first. If something isn't even important enough for the article body, it's certainly not important enough for the lead section. Also, gradualism (proposed in 1795 by Hutton) is part of the essential basis of evolution (and of modern geology and evolutionary biology), not the "dominant scientific theory prior to Darwin"; perhaps you're thinking of Lamarckism. Regardless, none of this is remotely significant enough for the lead section. -Silence 22:23, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree it at least makes sense to start by including these things in the body before the lead. Gnixon 22:44, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

It's not notable for a biology article, but this isn't just biology article. Again look at Abortion, we have sub-articles wikilinked in the lead; which is still very tightly written. - RoyBoy 22:59, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Evolution is indeed "just a biology article". Abortion is not, but the fact that abortion isn't a biology article hardly shows that Misplaced Pages has no biology articles! Evolution is, quite simply, one of Misplaced Pages's biology articles; where it touches on non-biological topics, it does so only because of their relevance to evolutionary biology. For confirmation, just look at the "Abortion" infobox at the top of Abortion: none of these daughter articles are biology topics! They're all social, legal, and at best medicinal. In contrast, just about all of the daughter articles linked in Evolution's infobox at the top of the article are biological. That shows the relative importance of the social controversy to these two topics, and explains why the importance of mentioning the controversy in Abortion's lead section doesn't necessarily establish the importance of mentioning a completely different controversy in Evolution's lead section. If you want the article on evolution's social effect, go to Social effect of evolutionary theory; that's where this sort of information most belongs, not here. -Silence 00:04, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I disagree that Evolution is "just a biology article" in the sense you mean---it's much more important than that, and very notable for reasons other than its scientific significance. A brief, well-placed reference to Social effect of evolutionary theory in the lead could resolve a lot of these issues. Gnixon 04:41, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Every sub-topic in the Evolution infobox should ideally be touched on in the lead of the parent article. That won't happen for relatively obscure topics like phylogenetics for example, however, controversy over evolution is hardly obscure! The notability of said daughter articles is what's pertinent; not a thematic breakdown of sub-articles which obviously reflects the nature of the respective topics. To put another way, resistance to evolutionary biology didn't happen? Someone volunteers, "yes many people disagreed with it passionately, as it contradicted their beliefs up until that point, but over time it has increasingly been accepted." Then I say, "how would I know that from reading the lead in evolution?" Misplaced Pages is not a science textbook, it aspires to be an encyclopedia. That lead simply does not meet that criteria, based on my practiced judgment of notability and understanding that topics are larger and more complicated than their scientific discipline. Leads are summarized reflections of that. - RoyBoy 03:29, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Information does indeed belong in appropriate sub-articles, but to not mention and point to those notable sub-topics/articles ignores the encyclopedic goal of Misplaced Pages. - RoyBoy 03:27, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't like quoting policy, but I hope it will help in this instance. From the lead in WP:LEAD: "The lead should be capable of standing alone as a concise overview of the article, establishing context, explaining why the subject is interesting or notable, and briefly describing its notable controversies, if there are any." Emphasis on overview, meaning cover each sub-topic; and notable controversy. - RoyBoy 03:35, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with these sentiments. It would be an interesting challenge to try and incorporate notable objections to evolution in the lead without giving undue weight. (But I certainly think it's possible.) Gnixon 04:30, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Off the cuff, while I'm eating lunch at work, the most notable aspect is that evolution contradicts literal religious interpretations; and has therefore been accused/labeled as atheistic by said groups; not much else beyond that needs to be said about current objections, although if intelligent design is deemed notable enough I can be slid in as the modern evolution to the movement. Then there would be another sentence about past objections and the initial controversy/criticism Darwin faced, and maybe mention a key evolution champion of that time. So all that would be 2-3 sentences, then another sentence for whatever I'm forgetting. Sociology misuse? - RoyBoy 17:03, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

And of course, all this still is framed by introduction/conclusion sentences to provide historic/modern context for evolution; telling readers what it displaced and how dominant useful it is (which is already in the lead); but it can be expanded beyond "central organizing principle of modern biology" and wikilink to other disciplines/applications it has used for, in order to emphasize its broad scientific usefulness and acceptance. - RoyBoy 19:16, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

The words paradigm shift sometimes get thrown around too casually. For starts, let me say that any claims about a "paradigm shift" need to come from reliable, verifiable sources, not our own views. Let's see what the major sources have to say before deciding anything. However, my own view - and yes, I know this can't go into the article but believe me I have been exploring this issue for a long time is this: first, to whatever extent "evolution" is used throughout Western culture, metaphorically or in some other rhetorical way, to describe and explain all sorts of phenomena, people usually use the word to mean "progress." In this sense, neither Darwin nor the founders of the Modern Synthesis accomplished any paradigm shift; on the contrary, their attention to change and the ways change can be good fits into a paradigm that established itself with the Enlightenment. See the classic books by JB Bury and by R. Nesbitt. Second, to whatever extent people throughout Western Culture explicitly appeal to Darwin and Mendel to explain all sorts of phenomena, they are usually really using Darwin and Mendel to authorize a sort of biological reductionism that Darwin and Mendel probably would not have supported and that certainly does not have the full support of evolutionary scientists (see works by Gould and Lewontin - you do not have to agree with their specific claims about specific biological debates to acknowledge their credentials as evolutionary scientists). I do believe that "progress" and "biological reductionism" are indeed powerful ideas in our culture, and I acknowledge that many uneducated people identify both with the theory of evolution, but in fact I think they are separate, have a separate existence, and need to be addressed separately. If someone can provide good secondary sources that provide another view, let's by all means examine them. But my reading of intellectual and cultural history suggests that at best the theory of evolution fits in with other dominant thoughts and ways of thinking - but not that they in any way caused these thoughts and ways of thinking to exist or become dominant. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:55, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Common descent

Are we ever going to have a war about this? The lead now states common descent quite baldly as tracing down to a single ancestor. Are we resolved to ignore confusion on this subject, or should we somehow amend the sentence to clarify? Will I ever shut up about this? Graft 22:33, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

If your problem is with the fact that we say "common ancestor" rather than "common ancestor or ancestral gene pool" (which will just confuse most readers, since we haven't yet said what a gene pool is), dictionary.com attests to the fact that a "common ancestor", in this context, need not be a singular, specific individual organism; it defines a "common ancestor" as "the most recent ancestral form or species from which two different species evolved". The universal common ancestor can thus be a grouping of organisms, at least as far as I can tell. That's the very reason that terms like last universal ancestor are so often used. -Silence 22:45, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Quoi? Non, as far as I've read. Maybe a population or species, as is certainly the case with "common ancestors" for sexually reproducing creatures, but certainly not a grouping of disparate organisms that are genetically distinct. Common descent should mean a single root to the tree of life. Graft 23:52, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, this isn't Baraminology. There is a single root, as far as can be told: it's just obscured horrendously by extreme HGT at an early phase of divergence. Unless you're claiming that the same genetic code could independently evolve repeatedly... Adam Cuerden 07:02, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, no, I'm not claiming that, and really I don't know the field incredibly well. But see the Doolittle & Bapteste paper I linked to above; the position you cite above is one of three that Doolittle highlights, and it's certainly under attack. Eugene Koonin gave a talk on my floor a month or two ago on his theories of origins, and he definitely does NOT claim a single organism at the root. (I won't be able to do his scenarios justice, but you can probably look 'em up.) Graft 17:14, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

To be clear, I'm of course not claiming that there's multiple roots for, say, mammals, or animals, or probably even eukaryotes. But going beyond that it's not clear... Graft 17:15, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

This is a really fascinating topic to me... my most current understanding of "origins" is that, due to the (mainly) universal genetic code and the strict use of L-amino acids, that all life on earth *now* is likely to be descended from one ancestral lineage. However, the RNA world hypothesis and other early-earth ideas definitely allow for other (i.e. multiple) origins of life on Earth at that time... but I'm fairly sure that all *extant* lineages of life are believed to be traceable to an ancestral form, largely based on phylogenetic evidence. Do you know Carl Woese's paper on the Darwinian Threshold? I will try to find a link to it... I always have my students read that paper, near the end of my course. TxMCJ 04:33, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

• I'm hesitant to re-insert "common ancestor or ancestral gene pool" simply because it seems needlessly complicated and lengthy for the lead section. How about if we changed "All known species are descended from a single ancestor" to "All known species are descended from a single ancestral gene pool"? That would keep it relatively short, but make the statement accurate to all noteworthy scientific views on the matter (since presumably the "single-individual universal ancestor" view would also need there to be a single gene pool). Then we can discuss the matter in more detail later down the page, if anywhere. -Silence 23:28, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Moment of silence

More on Drift

P.s. GetAgrippa, I like and support all of your suggestions (especially about phylogenetics, but *that* would require a whole new section teaching readers how to interpret trees...) but consider: if there is this much confusion and debate and disagreement and argument between authors of this article, then how on *blesséd Earth* can anyone here expect that a concise, general-public, "no-biology-background-required" article on Evolution is even possible? -- Nevermind the ability of *this* group of editors to produce it? Point being: before anyone else tries to make a future argument for keeping this article "short and sweet and non-technical and non-jargony", have another look at the pages and pages and pages of talk that's gone on about the content. Then ask yourself: how much of it do you understand, personally? Evolution is NOT a one-dimensional subject, nor an intuitive one, and any attempt to distill it to an easily digestible morsel in plain English will utterly, utterly fail. The article needs to be rich and robust, and there is a way to achieve this without writing "War and Peace" (as someone recently put it..." TxMCJ 19:53, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I was the idiot who made the War and Peace comparison (poor argument and word choice). I guess I am biased and I like the idea of a rich and robust article. My tendency would be to saturate the article with information and dazzle the reader with nice illustrations as examples. Evolution touches on every subject of biology so why not get touchy. I always thought the Simple Evolution article addressed the issue of an accessible short and sweet version. Perhaps it is time to restart with a new game plan. Just get a consensus of what to put in it and how to organize it (this may qualify as a "miracle"). I have always been more concerned what is in the article (or left out) rather than how to say it. It seems without a good foundation and some plans this article will never develop. Perhaps a comittee of evolutionary biologists (graduate students in field also) can have a meeting of the minds and bring method to the madness. I would agree that those trained in the field are better equipped for such a task, although I think scientist and biologist in general can help build the article with the Master plan. I can't imagine that a group of evolutionary biologist could not agree on a Master plan (of course the devil is in the details). It is an idea anyways. GetAgrippa 21:09, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

GREAT idea, GetAgrippa. So let's start out by taking a roll call of the evolutionary biologists editing this page.

"Here". TxMCJ 22:01, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Master plan

Restrict editing even more?

Also: this is probably a concept from chipmunk fantasy-world, but being that the core of Evolutionary science does not change at a *fraction* of the rate that this article changes: does Misplaced Pages allow for successive "editions" posted at intervals, rather than constant editing? I strongly feel that we do the article (and anyone on the internet interested in Evolution) a great disservice by re-molding it all the time. It gives the sense of disorganization, and of uncertainty. It also gives the incorrect impression that evolutionary biologists can't get their story straight, which is something that gibbering creationists love to believe. I really think that for an article like this -- especially something of such high scientific AND social import (as Janis Joplin might say) -- a much better strategy would be to allow editing and the release of a new edition every three MONTHS or so (instead of every three minutes). Core concepts are not going to change over three months (or three years, or thirty years), but... I doubt that Misplaced Pages allows for that sort of thing. People would be at a loss, of what to do with all their spare time!  ;-) But could we make an argument perhaps, that because of extensive vandalism here, that we disable editing of this article for periods of 3 months at a time (after reaching our... ahem... "consensus" article?) I know other heavily vandalized articles can have disabled editing, so this is just an idear... My point is not only about vandalism, but it's more about this: as an educator, I would be very very happy if a quality article about evolution was posted here and STAYED HERE FOR A WHILE WITHOUT GETTING REARRANGED ALL THE TIME. As you know, this article is Google's first hit for the word "Evolution", so it's really important (*REALLY* important) for there to be quality work here -- and I'll say it again -- written mainly by people in the field, and not hobbyists or people with casual interest. Quality work, in my opinion, is not constantly hemming and hawwing and changing itself around. The facts and theory of Evolution hardly change that much to justify the amount of editing that goes on around here, and if the folks here really view themselves stewards of this information, there ought to be a push to recruit the best authors you can, get the thing written, and then STOP CHANGING IT so often. Thanks for listening, TxMCJ 20:14, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

This isn't a concept from a fantasy-world, just a non-Wiki world. Text has no sanctity here. There's almost always a better way to say something. Parts of the text that are satisfactory don't tend to change. There's a lot of text here, and we certainly shouldn't be reluctant to let people make incremental improvements as they see fit. I'd think this would appeal to an evolutionary biologist :) Graft | talk 20:17, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Modern evolutionary biologists recognize that evolution is rarely a process of constant gradual change, and usually more characterized as a tempo of punc. Eq. : Long periods of stasis, interrupted by short bursts of change. That's PRECISELY the evolutionary "pattern" I would like to see in this article, so you are right, Graft, although you didn't mean to be ;-) TxMCJ 22:00, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

TxMCJ did you read this Science article in relation to the subject? :Pagel M, Venditti C, Meade A. Large punctuational contribution of speciation to evolutionary divergence at the molecular level. Science. 2006 Oct 6;314(5796):119-21. Erratum in: Science. 2006 Nov 10;314(5801):925. PMID: 17023657 . I thought it was an interesting analysis. GetAgrippa 03:28, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Second law of thermodynamics vs. creationists

Expanded to-do list

I'm seeing a lot of talk on this Talk page, but not a lot of action, or even a lot of talk about the article. Here's my attempt to organize and start to codify a plan of action for improving the article and addressing unresolved content issues; additions and discussion are welcome. Hopefully this will help jumpstart a new wave of improvements that will get this article back on track for FA status—and, in the process, back on track for achieving higher value and usefulness to laypeople who want information on evolution. -Silence 06:17, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

0. Lead section

Status: Good length. Decently accessible. Probably receives more focus than the entire rest of the article.

• 0a - How much should genetics be addressed? How can genes be concisely but accurately explained here? Do we need to mention DNA?
• 0b - How many evolutionary processes should be discussed, and in how much detail? Do we need to mention mutations? Do we need to mention genetic drift? Should we add a mention of gene flow or genetic recombination?
• 0c - Does an entire paragraph need to be devoted to natural selection? The argument for this is that natural selection requires a more in-depth explanation to gain even a superficial understanding of, and can be explained in that much detail without appealing to confusing terminology, unlike genetic drift; the argument against this is that natural selection isn't any more important than genetic drift and the like for understanding how evolution works.
• 0d - The explanation of adaptation, speciation, and comment descent is currently relatively poor: it's clumsy and not as clear as it could be. This is probably the clearest area of potential improvement in the lead section.
• 0e - Should a sentence be tacked on to the third paragraph mentioning the social controversy surrounding evolutionary theory?
• 0f - Should supporting evidence for evolution (e.g., the fossil record) be mentioned?

0g - Where should the distinction between evolution as theory and fact be briefly explained, if anywhere? Here? Basic processes? Study of evolution?

1. Basic processes

Status: Decent length and quality, but could be better. As this section immediately follows the lead section, it is currently the most important section in the article to work on improving, as it should provide all the more detailed, but still basic, explanations for how evolution works. Also, the distinction between this section and "Mechanisms of evolution" is unclear. A substantial reorganization may be necessary if a non-arbitrary line between the two cannot be found.

• 1a - The discussion of Gregor Mendel is a useful device for explaining heredity in a simple way, but it is a bit out-of-place, especially since Darwin himself isn't discussed in the same level of detail until near the end of the article. Consider reworking the basic explanation to transfer the historical details to the "History" section. This section should ideally only explain heredity itself, not the history of scientific views on heredity.
• 1b - The relevance of the last three paragraphs of "Mutation" to the topic of mutation is unclear.

2. Mechanisms of evolution

Status: Same as "Basic processes". Major reorganization needs to be discussed if the current layout is arbitrary.

• 2a - "Selection and adaptation" needs references.
• 2b - Considering that "Gene flow" and "Gene migration" are synonyms, do we really need a separate section for "Migration"?
• 2c - The hybridization section should be shortened. We only need a very, very brief overview; detailed examples like wheat and mules are unnecessary.

3. Evidence of evolution

Status: Overly long. This is not an especially important section; the job of this article is to explain evolution, not to justify it. Any non-essential information should be removed, as there's already an extensive daughter article for covering any details or examples, Evidence of evolution.

• 3a - Specifically, "molecular evidence" should probably be shortened by at least a paragraph or so, if possible.

4. History of life

Status: Good length and good information, but disjointed.

• 4a - Going over "history of life" before "origin of life" makes absolutely no sense.
• 4b - Likewise, not going over "common descent" before going over the common descent-based theory of how life has developed makes no sense. If anything, these sections are exactly backwards. Old formats like this were simpler and made much more intuitive sense.

5. Study of evolution

Status: Needs some expansion.

• 5a - Why "History of modern evolutionary thought" when the daughter article is History of evolutionary thought? Isn't "modern" redundant? For the purposes of the evolution article, the concept of "evolution" is modern by definition, since it is Darwinian by definition. Moreover, pre-modern "evolutionary thought" is indeed already touched on (albeit very briefly) in this section, so that satisfies any concerns about chronocentricity.
• 5b - "History of modern evolutionary thought" is far too short of a section. It could be almost twice as big without problems. Because of its shortness, it lacks many very important details, like modern conflicts in evolutionary science (punctuated equilibrium, neutral mutation, etc.).

6. Social and religious controversies

Status: Decent, but needs some tidying in general.

• 6a - The creationism paragraph should probably either be expanded a little and split into two paragraphs, or shortened a little, depending on how important it is.
• 6b - The eugenics/social darwinism paragraph needs a POV check.
• 6c - We should consider whether there are any social effects other than social darwinism and creationism that merit mentioning here; if so, we could expand the section's title from "Social controversies" to "Social effects" in general.
• 6d - The daughter article Misunderstandings about evolution is largely redundant to Objections to evolution, and raises POV concerns in its very framing. Should it be deleted, or reworked? Does it have enough content that isn't also used as an "objection"?

7. Footnotes/References

Status: Inconsistent and confusing. Should be significantly longer as well.

• 7a - "Footnotes" is an inaccurate and misleading name; it should be changed to "References", "Citations", "Footnotes and citations", "Notes and references", or something of the sort.
• 7b - The "References" section below is so short that it should just be integrated into the above section. Find out what parts of the article are being backed up by the texts in question, then attach them to the text in question.

8. External links

Status: Just right. Concise, useful, and unbiased; nothing more could be asked for in a link section. The lack of a "See also" section is also a plus, as it prevents the accumulation of cruft.

-Silence 06:17, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Discussion of expanded to-do list

Way to go, bro -- I'll have some additions eventually but I'm exhausted at the moment. This outline format is great. TxMCJ 06:51, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Looking good. May I suggest that "Social and religious controversies" should have 6d – indicate early controversy, and fluctuations in level of controversy. The current opening sentence "Ever since the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859, evolution has been a source of nearly constant controversy" is misleading, as controversy was at a peak around 1810 – 1830, there was wide interest and less controversy in the later 19th century, then the current concepts of creationism gained headway in the 1920s: History of the creation-evolution controversy covers this in outline. Something on the lines of "Since concepts of evolution were put forward around the start of the nineteenth century there have been varying levels of controversy." would be more appropriate, with reference then being made to Darwin's natural selection being the focus of 20th century attention. Will think about it, .. dave souza, talk 10:12, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Ditto - thanks, Silence. One suggestion i have been mulling over for a while. I hesitate to make it only because I do think the intro is good and don't like to muck with good things. But I wonder whether it would be helpful to our lay audience to specifiy in the lead that "evolution" refers both to a fact (observable phenomena) and a theory (a model to explain that phenomena)? We can do so in a way that also introduces the structure of the article, as 1 and 2 are largely on the theory/model and 3 and 4 on the facts/observed phenomena. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:58, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure we need to go into the fluctuation, since that won't give much information to readers without specifying how and when and why it fluctuated; we could, however, replace the "Ever since the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859" with "Ever since the early 20th century", if editors agree that the relevant controversies and objections surrounding Darwinian evolution largely started then.

As for the theory/fact distinction, I've been thinking about that as well, but I don't think it would be helpful to discuss that in the lead section, just because properly explaining it there could overwhelm readers. If we always use "evolution" in this article to mean "the process of evolution", and always use "the theory of evolution" or "evolutionary theory" or similar when referring to the theory, then I think we should be fine, since we are careful to define "evolution" as a process (rather than theory) at the start of the article, and readers shouldn't be expected to assume otherwise about definitions unless we specify otherwise. I wouldn't be averse to trying to include that information somewhere in the article, though (perhaps under "study of evolution"?), since it may indeed be valuable to clearing up some potential misconceptions. We don't need to go into it in much detail regardless, though, since we already have a daughter article going into all the gritty details (evolution as theory and fact).

I am more interested in the idea of reorganizing the article along something like the lines you mention. We need some sort of meaningful overarching structure to the article, because currently the "Processes/Mechanisms" division doesn't seem to make much sense (unless someone could explain and justify the distinction). However, I'm not sure how we would successfully implement a layout trying to distinguish the theory/model from the observation for an article like evolution; theory is just too pervasive and vital in an article like this. It is the theory that makes evolution the "light" in which biology makes sense; without that theory, the fact is just a trivial observation. This is a particularly counterproductive way to present evolution to laypeople, who won't have any such grasp on history or philosophy of science. I also don't see how section 4 ("history of life") in any way constitutes "facts" or "observed phenomena"; since when have we directly observed the evolutionary development of all life forms? -Silence 12:03, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I can't argue as I have already said I feel ambivalent about the point already. However, I think a lot of lay people are confused over the relationship between fact and theory and that in the past we have sometimes gotten hung up on the best way to explain to a lay audience the relationship when the simpler/simplest thing to do is just state that evolution is both - and I don't think it would be too hard to show the difference (e.g. the fossil record, genetic evidence, and contemporary field studies provide overwhelming evidence that species change, diverge, and form new species; the theory of evolution provides a modle to explain how this happens ... or something like this). I agree that the two are deeply entwined which is why it makes sense to start with the more theoretical sections. I know as it stands 4 is kind of anomolous. I lump 4 with 3 and "evolution as fact" as a proposal really for how to develop 4 because the history (not origin) of life is reconstructed largely on fossil evidence and increasingly on genetic evidence but either way, well, call me old-fashioned but this is evidence and while it may be interpreted in light of the model, it nevertheless is empirical evidence for evolution. Put anothe way: the fossil evidence indicates that hominids evolved from australopithicenes - this is an inductive, not a deductive claim. How and why this occured is explained by the theory. Anyway, this was my thinking more or less. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:13, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

The easiest thing might be to say "evolution is both a theory and a fact", but I'd argue that that's far away from being the simplest thing, since it actually constitutes misleading our readers and confusing important scientific terminology; a fact can never be a theory, and a theory can never be a fact, in science. What we really mean by "evolution is both a theory and a fact" is that the word evolution is sometimes used to refer to a theory, and at other times to a fact; but these two words are not the same "evolution", and do not constitute one "thing".

I think it would be much, much harder to show the difference than you seem to realize. Consider, for example, your claim that various things "provide overwhelming evidence that species change, diverge, and form new species"; but new species have also been directly observed arising in studies! Is speciation theory/explanation, or observation/fact? What about mutation? Couldn't someone argue that even the cell model is just a "theory" to explain various facts (including the fact that we see certain things under a microscope)? Moreover, I don't see how it makes any sense to discuss the theory explaining evidence before we discuss the evidence itself; wouldn't it be less counter-intuitive to first tell readers what the facts are, and then to seek to explain those facts with some "theory" sections?

As for 4, you correctly note that "the history of life is reconstructed largely on fossil evidence and increasingly on genetic evidence"; the key phrase here is "reconstructed... on... evidence". The reconstruction isn't itself the direct evidence; it's the cluster of theories (with the overarching theory being "common descent") explaining the evidence (specifically, the fossil and genetic evidence, e.g., homology). To say that common descent is evidence of biological evolution is like saying that the Big Bang is evidence of stellar evolution; if you're using "evidence" so loosely as to apply even to the most theoretical of ideas, then you have already lost your "theory/evidence" distinction and the article layout becomes arbitrary again. The idea that hominids evolved from australopithicenes is not an observation, but a theory explaining the distribution of fossils; to say that this explanation is any less theoretical than the occurrence of speciation or mutation or many other processes/mechanisms of the evolutionary theory seems arbitrary to me. The fact that our evolutionary history might seem more "obvious" or "fact-based" to us than natural selection or other models doesn't make it any less theoretical. The key distinction is that it's still "fact-based", not factual: it's accounting for and explaining the evidence. -Silence 12:30, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Well said and entirely correct. Another major source of confusion is equating "fact" and "truth" (along with "theory" and "conjecture"). Thus "evolution is both a theory and a fact" has been used/understood by some to mean "evolution is both a scientific theory and true," as in, "the choice between theory and truth is a false dichotomy based on misunderstanding of theory." The problems with the language are too complex to be explained in the lead. (IMHO) Gnixon 13:11, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, I certainly did not mean to belittle the status of evolutionary theory or the complex relationship between theory and fact. I agree with everything Silence and Gnixon have written. I only meant to suggest that it might clarify things for a lot of readers to say in the lead that evolution is both a fact and a theory. I do not think that having one section on mechanisms of evolution and another section on evidence for evolution - a structural issue - suggests that theory and fact are entirely divorced. It is just a point about organizing the article. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:39, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't have any problem with separating mechanisms and evidence for evolution (especially if we are clear on what does and doesn't constitute a "mechanism"); indeed, that's the current status of the article. My problem was with how we should distinguish "fact" and "theory" in such a way as to have separate sections for the fact and theory of evolution here; distinguishing mechanisms from evidence is much easier. It doesn't resolve the current processes/mechanisms confusion, however.

I also agree with you that it would be helpful to readers to clarify that process of evolution (evolution) is a fact/observation, and the theory of evolution (modern evolutionary synthesis) is a theory/explanation/model. I just haven't seen an adequate way to insert that information into the article yet; I'm very hesitant to add it to the lead section and risk overloading the first few paragraphs with subtle terminological distinctions. We could certainly add it to Evolution (disambiguation) and Evolution (term); perhaps we could mention it in Evolution as a footnote at the start of the third paragraph? That would raise the problem that most people wouldn't bother clicking the note, though, plus it would introduce inconsistency in the reference style... Perhaps the solution is to priefly discuss the issue at the very beginning of "Basic processes" or something. That section's pretty short. -Silence 13:59, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

The fact and theory issue has come up before and initially I think a Gould quote was used to address the issue. It definitely needs to be addressed somewhere in the article, but I think many people still don't get it when it has been addressed. I think the history section spends too much time on ancient history and Darwin and not enough on the Modern synthesis and hardening thereafter. Since most of the definitions, nomenclature, etc. are derived from the Modern synthesis and NeoDarwinism, it seems approriate to emphasize the roots of current evolutionary thought. I also think it is a good idea to address misconceptions as they arise by topic, so more Modern can bring up distinctions between fitness and fittest, natural selection and population genetics rather than mutationism, etc. Just a suggestion. Oh yeah, I think Silence deserves a big hand for consistently being so methodical in addressing issues within the artilce. It generates the most productive bouts of change in the article. GetAgrippa 14:30, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Approve strongly of addressing misconceptions within relevant sections (as opposed to a separate section or ignoring them altogether). Gnixon 15:23, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

As for this fact/theory thing, maybe it would make sense to point out in the lead that "evolution" refers to both the general observation/idea of populations changing over time and the scientific theory explaining those observations. We might be able to avoid problems of terminology by not using charged words like "fact" and "theory" (but use only "scientific theory," perhaps). I notice another language issue: we can use "theory" to refer to the theory, but we seem to have trouble coming up with a way to refer to the basic observations that don't depend on the full structure of the theory. For example, "evidence" has horrible connotations. I won't attempt any specific suggestions just yet. Gnixon 15:23, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

On second thought, perhaps "observations" fits the bill. What would people think about retitling the "evidence" section? (I've never understood its raison d'etre.) Gnixon 15:24, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

What's it all for, anyway?

Let me just say first off, Silence rocks.

I am in the middle of massive projects in real life right now, so haven't had a lot of time to commit to this or other articles lately (and won't for awhile), but there has been something buzzing around in my mind for awhile that I really want to bring up. It came to mind during one of the numerous discussions over the lead. It seems that we here have been ignoring--or are simply unable to follow--the cardinal rule of good writing: know your audience. There is a lot of back-and-forth on length, how much detail to include in the lead and the article, how much "jargon" to use, how much background to expect etc., with different editors clearly holding different opinions on the matter. But we haven't really asked what it is that we think readers want from this article.

TxMCJ drew attention to the fact that this page is the first one that comes up on a Google search of "evolution." So who's Googling "evolution?" What information are they looking for? I think little bit of dicussion of this question could go a long way to helping focus the article, and in particular improve the lead (which, as you all know, is what most people will read).

Chances are we can come up with a few categories of people who will be browsing to this article. Of course we can't know for sure, but I think for the most part this is a fairly perceptive bunch of editors, so we can make a good start. Once we have those categories, I think it would help to make sure that the lead, at least, provides something for each of them, directing them, if necessary, to the article or section that will answer their questions. It might also help with the occasional discussions that come up over moving, renaming, splitting, etc. the main article.

So I'll start with some ideas:

People Googling "evolution," or searching for it on Misplaced Pages, may include:

• People like TxMCJ, who are well-versed in the subject but want to see what else is being said about it. Probably these people should not be considered part of this articles true "audience."
• People who know little about the subject, or who may have gotten some misleading information in the past, or who have heard one side or another of the ID-evolution "debate" and are trying to find more information to make up their own minds (I originally came to this article looking for a good place to point these sorts of people to, as I found I could locate remarkably little about evolution that was written in an engaging, lay-oriented style).
• High school or even university students looking for something to use in an assignment.
• People who know a little about biology, or maybe just saw a documentary or zoo/aquarium exhibit that piquesd there interest, and want to learn more.
• Creationists wanting to see if there is "bias" in the articles and "correct" it if they find it. (Again, probably not our target audience--unless they are what I would call "soft" creationists, i.e. folks like those in #2 who may be fence-sitting or leaning towards ID because they heard some convincing, but incorrect, arguments, in which case providing them with corret information could help bring them around).

Additionally, considering that most people will read only the lead, and that they will probably remember at most 2 or 3 main concepts from it, what is the "take-away" message that we want them to have after they read it? If they remember one thing a month from now, what should it be? Agree on that, and you'll be halfway to the perfect article IMHO.

Finally, I'm sure most of you have seen the National Geographic article from a few years ago, "Was Darwin Wrong?" This is one of the best lay introductions to evolution I have seen, and perhaps some of it could be used as a model for this article. If you haven't seen it, do check it out.

Ok, I'm outta here for awhile. I'll be back in a few weeks to help copy-edit and cite check. A big thanks to every single one of you for all the work you're doing here.--EveRickert 15:48, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi -- I would like to point out that my interest in this article has nothing to do with "wanting to see what else is being said about it", and everything to do with the fact that I'm a science educator and would like to see all of the people in the categories below* above have immediate access to a quality, accurate, and complete article. I have stated this point on a number of occasions. Thanks TxMCJ 16:25, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Man TxMCJ you don't get a break. Even if you were an elitist egomaniac that doesn't deny your valid concerns and contribution to the article (as you pointed out there was some basic information either partially described or not at all). As I have said before this is often a poor medium to communicate and often debates are semantic, often editors can jump the gun in conclusions without fully researching the debate and proponents, and some people are just abrasive (but who cares if they do good work!). The process can be like a ward of bipolar obsessive compulsives arguing over the meaning of life.GetAgrippa 17:06, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think Eve's post was in any way intended to be critical of MCJ. Gnixon 17:12, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Jeez I made my own point about a poor medium to communicate. I just described myself, and bipolar obsessive compulsive probably fits also. Sorry! My misunderstanding!GetAgrippa 17:15, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

The meaning of life is obviously cheese. Graft | talk 17:38, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

42 Gnixon 17:39, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

(*Re-threading this to keep individual comments together, and small edit to TxMCJ's comment so the re-threading makes sense...) Sorry, of course that's what I was trying to say, but of course you can state your intentions better than I. What I meant was, seeing "what else is being said about it" is the first step in finding out if "what else is being said" amounts to "immediate access to a quality, accurate, and complete article." After all, if you'd found that when you came here, we wouldn't be having this discussion, right? And a "quality, accurate, and complete article" might amount to different things for different groups.--EveRickert 16:40, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Excellent points. I would add as major components of the readership

• Undergraduate biologists learning the field, wishing to "read ahead" or read deeper, and wanting to help out by editing the stuff they already know about.
• Grad student biologists, a more advanced version of the above breed, possibly with more time and inclination to contribute.

I would also suggest that creationists, particularly "soft creationists" (as defined by Eve) are a larger part of the readership than most editors here appreciate. I think we could better address the interests of those readers without turning this article into creation-evolution controversy. Gnixon 15:59, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Sections

In hopes of provoking a better organization of the article, here are some thoughts on the major sections:

• Basic processes Probably too detailed and certainly misplaced. Why are we leaping into genetics immediately after the lead? Section doesn't follow its intro, which refers to drift and selection, topics that are covered in the next section. Why are there separate "Variation" and "Mutation" subsections?
• Mechanisms of evolution Starts out well with a reasonable discussion of natural selection and adaptation. Again, far too much genetics in the rest of the section. Having more than "natural selection" and "genetic drift" as next-level subheadings is inconsistent with the intro. "Speciation" is not a mechanism.
• Evidence of evolution I have no idea why this section exists in its current form. Are we trying to prove evolution? Is the existence of evolution debated among scientists?
• History of life This section probably contains the information that most general readers are most interested in. It's sad that it has to be a separate section so that readers don't have to slog through the textbook-like other sections to find this info. Obviously not well organized.
• Study of evolution Subsections "History of evolutionary thought" and "Academic disciplines" are basically unrelated. Not sure history needs its own section. Isn't current research more notable than "academic disciplines?"

Gnixon 18:57, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposal

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)

By the way, I'd point out that starting to enact that proposal wouldn't be a gargantuan task---one could rearrange text and compose a few transition sentences in probably under an hour. After the completion of that crucial first step, others could fill things in and improve consistency in the evolutionary style that Misplaced Pages is so good for. That style only works when there's already a reasonable overall structure. Gnixon 20:33, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Discussion of proposal

I cannot support either of these proposals: Genetics is important to evolution, indeed, much of evolution is applied genetics. Removing as much from the basic processes and mechanisms sections as you suggest and cutting genetics would leave the article much less useful. Also, the history section is probably the least relevant, and there have been frequent proposals to cut it. This places it at the top and expands it, while specifically refusing to allow it to begin to communicate information about evolution proper. No. Simply no. Adam Cuerden 22:14, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Strongly agreed. This article needs to focus on processes and mechanisms. TxMCJ 01:29, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Wait a minute. I must not have been clear. I made one proposal, which was to reorganize the article. (I objected separately to how we slam readers with genetics from the very beginning.) I'm just suggesting that the most involved details should come a little later in the article. I'm not proposing a history section at the top---in fact, I'm arguing that we should cut any separate section on history. I only mentioned that briefly introducing each subtopic in a historical style can be useful for situating the readers. Does that resolve your objections? Also, after reviewing the table of contents, do you think the article is properly organized now? Thanks for responding. Gnixon 22:23, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure i follow either proposal, then. Could you re-explain in more detail what you want done? As for how it is now... well... a lot of nonsense down at the bottom; I did the last major reorginisation, but couldn't garner support for removing much, so I just put the less useful sections last. A couple of them later did get removed, I believe; we used to have a huge section on misunderstandings of evolution. I don't think we really need the "study of evolution" section, and there might be a case for swapping "evidence of evolution" and "history of life".

I must admit to utter confusion as to what your "Observations" section would contain. Adam Cuerden 22:42, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Concurred TxMCJ 01:29, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, the proposal is simply to have an article based on the second outline rather than the first. I think we could get there largely by rearranging what's already in this article. For "Observations" I'm imagining all the facts that support and illustrate the theory---a major component would be the fossil record. I realize the distinction between data/observation and theory is clearer in, say, physics (e.g., big bang cosmology based on Hubble redshift relationship, presence of cosmic microwave background, etc.), but it's relevant here, too, and could provide structure. It would also help with theory/fact issues, because things like common descent, speciation, etc., can be discussed as "observations" directly inferred from fossils, genetics, and so forth. They would be obviously distinct from issues of the theory like why natural selection and genetic drift happen or how exactly traits are passed from one generation to the next. Gnixon 01:12, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I've tried rephrasing parts of the "proposal" to be more clear. I'll also rephrase my comments under "Sections" so they won't be confused with the proposed outline. Gnixon 01:30, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

MCJ, I lost track of your comments within those threads. Can you please clarify what you were agreeing with and concurring on? Gnixon 01:40, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Discussion above this point seems to be focused on my comments about the current organization, not the "proposal" for a new outline. I've cut any suggestions from those comments under "Sections" in order to avoid further confusion. Gnixon 01:49, 14 April 2007 (UTC))

Another suggested structure

Another way to write this article would be to organize it into the basic themes that all Evolutionary textbooks (e.g. Futuyma's two texts) and most university courses in Evoluion are taught. I know this article isn't a textbook nor a college course, but there exists a time-tested logic and effectiveness of the way Evolutionary concepts are organized for people new to the concepts, and I think we'd be doing well to use those models. Understanding basic genetics is genererally a prerequisite for Evolution, so although genetics are essential to Evolution there may be a way to crosslink this article to genetics articles, and trim a lot of RAW genetics info out of here.

Based on courses I have taken, TA'ed, and taught myself (all in all, involving maybe 10 different professors at 3 universities), I recommend something like this. Note that other than the lead, I am being very specific here as to the *actual* topics and themes.

1. The lead

2. Observable aspects of the natural world that imply shared ancestry and descent with modification (fossils is only one of about ten or so things, a few others of which I've listed above. Don't emphasize fossils -- that is only one record, and it is one of the weakest records because it is piecemeal and incomplete. There are plenty of things we can observe *TODAY AND NOW* that imply shared ancestry and descent. Focus on those.)

3. The step by step, self evident mechanism of natural selection (this section would also describe variation, and fitness)

4. Population genetics/dynamics: would include gene flow, migration, and drift

5. Special cases of selection: would include sexual selection, kin selection, and adaptation

6. Speciation (mechanisms) and extinction

7. Molecular evolution: would include more detailed information on mutation and chromosomal/genome evolution (e.g. gene and genome duplications, a *huge* component of eukaryote evolution), HGT, and the like

8. A rundown on phylogenetics ("tree-thinking"), and how this field are used and applied to all fields of comparative biology (this is the "evolution is the central organizing principle" section)

9. Biogeography... integrated history of landmasses and taxonomic groups

10. Coevolution (why are angiosperms and insects so diverse? What's an evolutionary arms race? Parasites/herbivores/hosts/mutualisms/pollinators, etc.) A short coevolution section is sorely missing from the article.

11. Evo-Devo (evo devo is a very prominent theme now for eukaryote evolution) I can help write this section. A HOX genes blurb would be great, even though some people think it's too specific or jargony, it is a wonderful and fascinating story in Evolution, and really gets to core themes like origin of novelty, evolvability, homology, etc.)

12. Early origins of life on Earth (including early chemical evolution of earth and the RNA world... endosymbiosis, etc.)

13. "The big epic story"... a synopsis/rundown of the diversification of major lineages of life (3 domains, then basic Eukaryote diversification, major adaptive radiations and extinction events, etc.)

14. Common misconceptions (yes I think the article would be well served by this... this is where you define the words theory and fact, and talk about adaptations and exaptations, and ideas of generalism vs. punc. eq., and ideas of contingency vs. optimizing "improvement", etc.

15. History of Evolutionary thought... talk about Malthus, Darwin/Wallace, Lamarck, and the Modern Synthesis. BTW, does this article currently mention Lamarck? That is a gigantic topic and a very important one that MUST be included (the fact that acquired traits are not inherited)

16. Social controversies (keep this BRIEF, SHORT AND SWEET, and link out of this page). Focus on legal cases involving schools.

17. Links and references

This may seem like a lot, but I really can't justify leaving any of the above topics out of this article. The article is incomplete if any of the above are omitted... and there may be a couple of things I'm forgetting. TxMCJ 01:57, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Discussion of structure

Should we have 17 separate sections in this article? Gnixon 02:01, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Why not? Is that some kind of sarcastic comment? Meaning: are you really asking if seventeen is the magic number? I don't care if it's seventeen or seven or seventeen thousand, you've got to be complete. The number is arbitrary and irrelevant. Your comment reflects the type of wholly trivial concern that in the past has prompted me to say: stop micromanaging the irrelevant, and focus on content.TxMCJ 02:05, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I was not being sarcastic. Let's not get involved in another silly fight for no good reason. 17 main sections is far too many for an encyclopedia article. Your outline in it's current form would only be appropriate for a textbook. I think the outline I offered above is much more appropriate for an encyclopedia, but yours might be acceptable if you grouped sections within a hierarchy. Gnixon 02:11, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Please provide the impeccable math by which you calculated 17 as too high of a number of sections. I'm sorry that this article won't fit onto a matchbook cover, but we're not talking about a synopsis of an I Love Lucy episode. We are talking about the history of life on Earth, and how it came to be, and the mechanisms involved, and damn it, it's just not short and simple. If any article in Misplaced Pages justifies completeness, it's this one. If you can think of a way to classify all the above topics into a fewer number of sections (though the actual article length wouldn't be shortened by that), and if those section headings are well-descriptive and not too overgeneralized, then please be my guest. But you're going to have a very hard time justifying omission of any of those topics, with the possible exception of the last 2, history and controversy sections. I would support removal of those if length is a concern. TxMCJ 02:15, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

See my proposal above. Subsections would obviously be appropriate. I wish your tone was less combative. Gnixon 02:20, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

And I wish, for the sake of progress, you'd focus on content rather than "how many sections will there be". My outline above was simply dividing topics up conceptually, not a demand for precisely seventeen sections, and this is a topic that I cannot believe you are even remotely concerned about. The length of the article in terms of word-count is a totally different issue from how many subdivisions there are. TxMCJ 02:33, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Also, I don't think starting from the traditions of textbooks and college courses is likely to yield a good format for this article. College courses and textbooks have goals and responsibilities that are entirely different from encyclopedia articles. For example, a good encyclopedia article on quantum mechanics would look nothing at all like a textbook on the subject. The goal of a textbook is to help students practice and understand the hard parts of the theory. The goal of an encyclopedia article is to inform a general readership about the big picture. Gnixon 02:20, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Trust me: nobody is trying to write a textbook here. This article can include all of the above topics without being overly long, technical or verbose. Don't believe me? I could produce the thing myself, and I guarantee it would be about 1/100th the length of a textbook. The only "big picture" in Evolution is a complete picture. Please reread what I posted above in my preface to the outline: I am well aware this isn't a textbook nor a college course, but the logical structure and flow of textbooks and college courses are TIME-TRIED and TIME-PROVEN MODELS for how to organize this information. We can learn from those models and it would be moronic to instead follow some kind of vague "how are encyclopedia articles written?" model that nobody here has any real professional experience in (although if you'd like, why don't we just have a look at the Britannica article for comparison, if "encyclopedia article format" is our goal? I would support that little experiment.) Furthermore: I cannot fathom, for the life of me, what possible objection you might have to the actual content I've suggested. ONCE AGAIN: PLEASE FOCUS ON CONTENT. Just take a moment to compare your proposal with mine. Yours is strictly organizational, and nothing more than that. You suggest almost no content. Mine is organizational AND it provides the required content. Want to cut down on what I've suggested? Fine --tell me what content you would omit. I've already suggested omitting the history and social controversy sections. TxMCJ 02:33, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Obviously your outline is focused on content over organization, whereas mine focuses on organization over content. I happen to think the organization is more important at this point. Please read what I posted immediately above your last comment: I don't think starting from the traditions of textbooks and college courses is likely to yield a good format for this article. Gnixon 02:40, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I am not talking about *traditions* of textbooks and courses. I am talking precisely about the thing you claim to be so concered with: organization. And furthermore, this is what really boggles my mind, and what I mean when I say that your "facilitation" is an obstacle to progress with the article. Why are you spending so much energy arguing how many sections there will be, and waxing philosophic about your perceived differences between encyclopedia articles and other forms of information delivery... and so LITTLE energy on considering what content to include and how to organize it? Here is some good faith for you, and a peace pipe you may choose to smoke, or not. If you're *really* interested in facilitating things and *really* interested in organization, and you've already admitted a number of times that you do not really have the background to provide core content, then I have a kind suggestion, and request for you. Go through my outline above, develop and present sound arguments here for anything I listed that you think should be omitted (or anything you feel I forgot), and once you've done that, group all of the resulting *specific* topics of content into a set of organization categories that you think fit within your idealized model of what an encyclopedia article should look like. In all good faith and honesty: that would be truly helpful at this point, and I will thank you in advance. Produce that document, and we're ready to go, and you will have been the facilitator.TxMCJ 02:47, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Three points:

1. A 17-item laundry list of topics to cover does not constitute organization

Gnixon: my list above is *absolutely* organized into a logical and clear order, where each point builds on the previous one, and I have absolutely organized specific topics under each of those headings. It is organization AND content. Like I said, I don't care if the article has 17 headings or 7, but that is the list of information that belongs in ANY article about evolution. Still want to argue this futile point and continue wasting time? A few sections above you tried to argue that "organization at this point is more important than content". REALLY? Well here's a painfully obvious question: what exactly is it that you are "organizing", if it's not topics or information? Organization of an article without a "laundry list" (as you call it) of what goes into the article, is an inane exercise in utmost futility, and it is what I refer to as micromanagement. Please: if topics and information are not what you're organizing, then what *are* you organizing? And don't answer "the article", as that is not a meaningful response. The only thing there is to organize here, is information INTO an article. TxMCJ 06:28, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd just be repeating myself if I tried to respond. An ordered laundry list of topics still does not constitute organization. Gnixon 14:25, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

And I'd be repeating myself to counter, again: I don't care how many subheadings there are, my outline above does *organize* the topics into a hierarchical conceptual structure. #2, Observations/Evidence: I list further up what belongs in this section. #4 Population dynamics: I list what belongs in that section. #5 Special cases: I list what belongs in that section. #7 Molecular evolution: I list what belongs in that section. Continue reading my outline. It is not a laundry list, it is a conceptual breakdown of topics. I will also add, that perhaps the most important organizational aspect you can introduce is what *order* to present the information in, and I have also provided a logical suggestion for that. TxMCJ 16:03, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

1. I think your constant, lengthy complaining about all things under the sun, and your frequent attempts to pick fights are more disruptive here than anything I've done. Please just be nicer.

I have complained about only one thing: debate about pointless things standing in the way of progress. I will be a lot nicer (i.e., less impatient with this process) if you would stop immediately objecting to every contribution of content I provide, and countering it with some banal complaint about encyclopedia philosophy or organizational structure or not wanting to follow educational models or textbook models. Those objections are not meaningful. You are not contributing substance. You are impeding the process. You have objected to my information-packed outline for totally absurd reasons, none of which have anything to do with the information itself. You are not commenting on the information or suggesting what to include or not to include. You are wrapped up in meaningless jibberjabber about vague organization of mysterious unidentified content that you have not laid out. What I've done above is laid it out. If you want me to be less impatient (or more "nice"), then quit trying to *own the article* as others before me have accused you of, and as is abundantly clear now. My snappy tone is not arrogance or nastiness -- it only comes from impatience with your refusal to consider and focus on the pertinent information and content, while instead building eternal obstacles of vague objections and wikibabble. Please, stop. TxMCJ 06:28, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I can think of one other editor who said I was trying to own an article, and some other editor said he was just being a troll. But you knew that. Your snappy tone is both arrogance and nastiness, and it didn't start with me. Gnixon 14:25, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

As for content. In my experience, someone who swims in details without being able to organize their thoughts or explain them clearly is in fact showing that they don't really undertand the "content" all that well. Someone famous has a pithy quote about it. For all the time you spend boasting about your teaching experience (that'd be a few years as a grad student and a year or two as a postdoc by my count), I'd think you would have by now learned something about presentation. Gnixon 14:25, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

6 years in grad school and 5 as a postdoc, 3 of the last 5 which I've spent teaching Evolution specifically. I also write and publish in Evolution, and have written grants for Evolutionary research that were funded by the National Science Foundation. Writing and teaching are *all about* presentation. How about you, Gnixon? What's your experience in presenting evolutionary content in a way that lets you keep your job? Look, I really have no need to post my resume here, other than to show that you're mistaken, and I have never *boasted* about teaching experience -- I just refer to it a lot because it is completely relevant to what we're trying to do. Quit the attacks, as they are quite juvenile. Focus on the task at hand. TxMCJ 16:26, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

1. In good faith, I'll work on your list if you'll return the favor by suggesting any changes that are needed in my broad outline above, then suggesting content that would be included in each of the major topics.

Gnixon 03:05, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I would be more than happy to rethink your outline, since as I've said, an organizational scheme without any prior consideration of *what you are organizing*, is a completely backwards approach to *anything*. TxMCJ 06:28, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Just trying to help out, since you seem incapable of organizing anything. See my above comment about the implication. Gnixon 14:25, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

See my comment above about what constitutes meaningful organization. You need to know what the "anything" is, before you can attempt to organize it TxMCJ 16:03, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I'll agree you know more about this subject than I do, if you'll agree you can't write well or organize your thoughts. Maybe then we can stop this stupid bickering and each look to others to fill in where we're lacking. Gnixon 16:09, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Are you joking? You want me to agree that I can't "write well"? (please compare my contributions to the article with your own)? I write professionally about evolution, and I have also won two specific literary awards (both previously won by Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Updike as well) that are *specifically* awarded to essay-writing geared to a layman audience. I am not bragging about this, I am just saying that any attack on the quality of my writing is nothing more than a simpering attack on your part. And you want me to agree I can't "organize my thoughts"? Buddy: you've got to have the thoughts before you can organize them. My thoughts are plenty organized in that I am able to organize, to an order of magnitude more effectively than you can, what the key concepts and topics in Evolution are, and how to group them into a logical sequence (grouping and sequencing = organization.) Please, man. Your little statement above is the silliest little jab I've seen here, second only to your little tirade about "worshipping authority". TxMCJ 16:20, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I was referring to choices like this one to detail natural selection in the lead (with an odd choice of formatting). But you're right. Whether true or not, it was a petty jab and I apologize. If we meet someday in real life, we can discuss the quality of each other's professional and personal capabilities, but I'll drop it in this forum from now on. I'd appreciate some measure of similar effort on your part, but this isn't a quid pro quo---no more personal critiques from me. Gnixon 16:33, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

A previous attempt at describing selection was already in the lead, my dear. The edit you link to was my attempt to make it more accurate. I was not the one who chose to try to explain selection in the lead -- all I did was correct and improve the pre-existing presentation. If you think that the mechanism of selection needs to be removed from the lead and inserted further down, fine -- that's not a point I am particularly passionate about debating one way or the other. TxMCJ 16:47, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Please don't address me with diminutives. I've managed to avoid calling you names, and I don't think it'd be hard for you to return the favor. Gnixon 16:50, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Discussion of structure 2

Britannica:

• Introduction
• General overview

• Evidence for evolution
• History of evolutionary theory
• The cultural impact of evolutionary theory

• The science of evolution

• The process of evolution
• Species and speciation
• Patterns and rates of species evolution
• Reconstruction of evolutionary history
• Molecular evolution

• Additional reading

Total article length is 73 pages. All subtopics under General overview and Science of evolution have further sub-subtopics. Gnixon 02:53, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

OK, now I'm really confused, utterly and thoroughly confused. Does you posting this outline mean (following your above insistence that we are writing an *encyclopedia article* and not a textbook, and thus 17 sections is "far too many"...) does you posting this Britannica report mean that you think we should model our article to be somewhere along the lines of 73 pages, since (as you insist) it is an *encyclopedia article* and not a textbook? I am now thoroughly bewildered at what your position on length could possibly be. Do you prefer the above "encyclopedic" model over my outline because it only has 12 headings instead of my 17, even though the Britannica article takes up 73 pages? I have to say, I really thought we could write ours in far fewer pages than that. TxMCJ 06:28, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what's so hard to understand. You asked for the Britannica outline. It has four first-level headings, then 4-6 subheadings under each of the two main subsections, each of which has further sub-subheadings. This is the essence of organization. I would certainly hope that the entire content of our Evolution article and its subtopics would cover over 70 pages. Luckily, though, we have the advantage of providing links to sub-articles to make our ("entire") article easier to navigate. By linking to long subtopics, we should have no trouble keeping this article to around 10 pages. "Summary style" may be useful for such a deep subject as this. Gnixon 14:14, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

All right, I've done as asked, and here's my report.

Gnixon suggests four categories: observations, theory, research, and social impact.

After the lead, I agree that something akin to an "Observations" section is a good way to start (#2 in my list), but I think calling the section simply "Observations" is a little obtuse. Straight up "Evidence for Evolution" is a fine title for this section, and it is basically an "observations" section including the kinds of things I've listed above, and more.

I have a problem with the next section, simply "Theory", 1.) because as a section title, that's a loaded word for most readers, and so we should be smarter about its use in the article... but I also have a problem with a single "Theory" section because 2.) under a 4-part article as Gnixon suggests, this is the only section to place the bulk of the scientific concepts (my points 3 through 15, if we were to use them all.) An article built the way Gnixon suggests may only have 4 sections, but this second one will be the biggest one, and I kind of feel that it needs to be subcategorized quite significanty.

I also have a bit of a dilemma with a "Research" section, not because it's a bad idea (it's not a bad idea, it's a good one), but because there are so many possible research projects and programs that could be mentioned here. I mean, there are literally thousands of evolutionary research projects going on right now, as we speak... projects in systematics and selection and evolutionary ecology and phylogenetics and molecular evolution... so what belongs in this section? It's not very clear. And I have a strong sense that any inclusion of a "research" section may result in swift deletion because it kind of gets away from the point. It's not like there are 3 or 4 active research projects in evolution right now. There are thousands.

Social Impact -- as some have voiced, this section may not even belong in this article at all. I won't argue that point one way or the other.

So, in summary, while I like beginning with something like an "observations" section, and then going immediately into a description of the theory, concepts, and mechanisms (albeit without calling that section a straight-up one word title "theory" because 99% of readers can't define that word correctly), the problem that remains is that there is too much information that makes up evolutionary science to just lump and cram into a single section, and thus that second section would have to be huge. The proposed 3rd section (Current research) is not a bad idea, but I'm not sure what projects we'd pick, or why we'd pick ithem, or how much to include, or how much to leave out, and honestly a lot of such a "research" section may come across as being trivia and only tangentially related. An alternative way to integrate current research into the article is just to provide frequent links to recent papers, and mentions of recent or ongoing studies throughout the article. Social controversies: I'll take that section or leave it... there are other articles for most of that, right?TxMCJ 07:28, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm not tied to the "Observations" title, but I don't want "Evidence" to become "proof that evolution exists." It's certainly as loaded a word as theory. I think that section could be broader than you imply, because as you've pointed out, there's tons of evidence for evolution, but beyond that, there are lots of observations supporting and verifying all aspects of the theory. The human genome project, for example, might be worth discussing there. I'm also not tied to the title "Theory," but it seems like any science can be usefully divided between "observation/experiment" and "theory." I'd point out that most of the things that might be confusing under "theory," such as speciation, common descent, timeline of history of life, would fit better under "observations" (or maybe "evidence"---see the difference?). Of course "theory" would have many significant subsections, and I probably should have filled in the next level in the hierarchy. Simply explaining "research" in the appropriate other sections might work well, but for such a big subject as evolution, I would have thought research could be divided into subfields whence having a section devoted to that classification would be useful. As for "Social impact/controversies," I've pointed out before that many readers of this article are more interested in that topic than in genetics, so I can't support cutting it. I'd point out that Britannica saw fit to include it after "evidence" and "history", but before any of the "science." I'll fulfill my half of the bargain later this weekend. Gnixon 14:14, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but your above distinction between "observations" and "evidence" doesn't make any sense to me at all. When you say observations, do you mean something like "controlled experimental data"? Even if that's what you mean: experimental data fits directly into the broader heading of Evidence (whether you use the word "evidence" or not, is not my point.) It is also not clear to me how the Human Genome Project fits into a section about evidence/observations. Or why you'd pick the "human" genome project when there are a number of other genomic models that have been sequenced. TxMCJ 16:12, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I meant "observations" as a broader and less charged word than "evidence." It's really not a big deal to me. But Sweet Baby Jesus! Who cares which genome project I mentioned? The human genome project has been in the news a lot. Substitute drosophila if that makes you happy. Gnixon 16:17, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Mainly I don't know how ANY genome project fits into that section. Please clarify. TxMCJ 16:21, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Surely a complete gene sequencing can elucidate the evolutionary history of an organism, but let's not get hung up on one example. I was just trying to illustrate the possible breadth of an "observations/evidence" section, i.e., how much of interest to this topic can be discussed before getting into details of the theory. Others can disagree, and I'm not really interested in defending my brief thoughts against good faith objections. I was just trying to start a discussion about the overarching organization of the article. I thought it would be a simple matter to reorganize what we already have without getting into some protracted, rebuild-from-the-ground-up debate, but clearly I set off your "don't let this jerk have a say" button. I'm sorry. That wasn't my goal. Gnixon 16:40, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

another proposal

I am not going to argue forcefully for the following - here are just two suggestions and my hope is that even if people criticize it it will help us clarify what we do want to do.

1. statement that evolution refers to the fact that species change over time and that different species are related, as well as concepts/models that explain how and why species change over time and are related
2. evidence that species change over time/history of life (this would include MCJ's 7, 8, 12, 13 - the story of life and the evidence are infused)
3. evidence that species are related (see paranthetical above)
4. basic genetics, assortment, mutation all explain how, even were all life descended from a common ancestor, life can take so many different forms
5. natural selection and drift explain why some forms endure and others do not
6. special cases: sexual selection, kin selection
7. historical background: the move away from Linneus and Lamarck to Darwin and Wallace to Mendel to Fisher, Dobzhansky, Sewell, Wright, Simpson, etc, to present. Can we tell this story in a way that emphasizes the recursive relationship between observation (and when appropriate experimental data) and theory? I think we should try.
8. recent developments: coevolution, evo-devo
9. social controversy
10. misconceptions

Like I said, just an idea - working on the fine work Silence and MCJ have done, and considering Gnixon's thoughts. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:31, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Hooray Slrubenstein! This is a fantastic contribution, and an example of good organizational thinking, since you refer to the actual topics. Merging an outline like yours with the key topics I've posted above (and Silence's earlier to-do list which focuses on fine-tuning the content) should be a fairly simple task, and is the right direction to move in. TxMCJ 16:32, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Going in the right direction

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)

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)

I think Slrubenstein's way is wonderfully reasonable. TxMCJ 16:33, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

1. ^ Futuyma, Douglas J. (2005). Evolution. Sunderland, Massachusetts: Sinauer Associates, Inc. ISBN 0-87893-187-2.
2. Lande, R. (1983). "The measurement of selection on correlated characters". Evolution. 37: 1210–1226. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
3. Haldane, J.B.S. (1953). "The measurement of natural selection". Proceedings of the 9th International Congress of Genetics. 1: 480–487.
4. ^ "Mechanisms: the processes of evolution". Understanding Evolution. University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved 2006-07-14.
5. Gould, Stephen J. (2002). The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Belknap Press. ISBN 0-674-00613-5.
6. Dawkins, Richard (1989). The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press Press. ISBN 0-674-00613-5.
   Lake, James A. (2004). "The Ring of Life Provides Evidence for a Genome Fusion Origin of Eukaryotes" (PDF). Nature. 431. Retrieved 2007-03-18. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
7. UCLA Report (2004). "Ring of Life". Retrieved 2007-03-16. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
8. Doolittle, Ford W. (February 2000). "Uprooting the Tree of Life". Scientific American: pp. 72-77. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
9. Lake, James A. and Maria C. Riveral (1999). "Horizontal gene transfer among genomes: The complexity hypothesis". PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Science). 96:7: pp. 3801-3806. Retrieved 2007-03-18. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
10. Bapteste; et al. (2005). "Do Orthologous Gene Phylogenies Really Support Tree-thinking?". BMC Evolutionary Biology. 5:33. Retrieved 2007-03-18. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)
11. Gogarten, Peter (2000). "Horizontal Gene Transfer: A New Paradigm for Biology". Esalen Center for Theory and Research Conference. Retrieved 2007-03-18.
12. "IAP STATEMENT ON THE TEACHING OF EVOLUTION" (PDF). the Interacademy Panel on International Issues. Retrieved 2007-03-20.
13. "Statement on the Teaching of Evolution" (PDF). American Association for the Advancement of Science. 2006. Retrieved 2007-03-20.
14. Futuyma, Douglas J. (2005). Evolution. Sunderland, Massachusetts: Sinauer Associates, Inc. ISBN 0-87893-187-2.
15. Gould, Stephen J. (2002). The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Belknap Press. ISBN 0-674-00613-5.
16. Lande, R. (1983). "The measurement of selection on correlated characters". Evolution. 37: 1210–1226. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
17. Futuyma, Douglas J. (2005). Evolution. Sunderland, Massachusetts: Sinauer Associates, Inc. ISBN 0-87893-187-2.
18. Haldane, J.B.S. (1953). "The measurement of natural selection". Proceedings of the 9th International Congress of Genetics. 1: 480–487.
19. Gould, Stephen J. (2002). The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Belknap Press. ISBN 0-674-00613-5.
20. Lande, R. (1983). "The measurement of selection on correlated characters". Evolution. 37: 1210–1226. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
21. Haldane, J.B.S. (1953). "The measurement of natural selection". Proceedings of the 9th International Congress of Genetics. 1: 480–487.
22. Myers, PZ (2006-06-18). "Ann Coulter: No evidence for evolution?". Pharyngula. scienceblogs.com. Retrieved 2006-11-18.
23. IAP Statement on the Teaching of Evolution Joint statement issued by the national science academies of 67 countries, including the United Kingdom's Royal Society (PDF file)
24. From the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest general scientific society: 2006 Statement on the Teaching of Evolution (PDF file), AAAS Denounces Anti-Evolution Laws

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