Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/History of biology

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 21:24, 28 April 2007.

History of biology[edit]

The editors on this article have been improving it gradually over several months, with a recent burst of improvements. It was peer reviewed formally by Awadewit: Wikipedia:Peer review/History of biology/archive1, and improved substantially based on that feedback plus the comments of a number of biologically and historically savvy editors.--ragesoss 19:58, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support I had the pleasure of GA reviewing this arrticle and it was a joy to read. As I stated when the review was over I can't find anything wrong with it as far as formatting or MoS issues. It's well written and has also been looked over by several biologists, so I fully support it. Quadzilla99 20:59, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Preliminary suggestions Congratulations to the authors who have developed this fine article, which covers an ocean of literature. For want of time, I've only given it a quick read, but I'll return later to give it more time and thought. Here are some preliminary suggestions for making it an even better article:
  • [Replies were not composed in order, so pardon the mess--ragesoss 02:59, 24 April 2007 (UTC)][reply]
  • The division of all biology into molecular and organismal seems to miss out on the field of cellular biology, such as the structure of cells and their organelles, the evolutionary origins of the organelles (e.g., the mitochondrion and chloroplast), the chemical compositions of its various parts (e.g., lipid rafts), the various mechanisms for intracellular trafficking (e.g., microtubules), the various ways cells secrete or absorb (e.g., endocytosis or type II secretion).
  • One big problem is that there isn't much good history of cell biology (not much historical work at all really). For example, none of these topics you list is represented in the most recent general history of biology overview, Lois N. Magner A History of the Life Sciences (3rd ed., 2003)... although it's a pretty deficient text in many respects, but in this case I think it reflects an actual lack of secondary sources. I'll mention endosymbiosis briefly in the evolution section. As for the division of biology, this is how been treated by historians (though only a few, since it deals with large-scale issues and a recent timescale). I've now made it explicit that cell biology is contiguous with molecular biology (now "cellular and molecular biology"); there was previously a list of the main disciplines that fall under each side, but they were trimmed out to condense the lead some and to avoid link overload.--ragesoss 02:59, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The development of the cell theory seems important enough to warrant its mention in the lead.
  • I've tried for a double, by mentioning microscopy (in the first paragraph) as laying the groundwork for cell theory (which would otherwise appear in the second paragraph).--ragesoss 02:59, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would also include something about microscopy in the lead, since so many developments followed from it. More generally, I would give greater weight to describing how the development of new technologies led to new insights, and how scientists are continuing to develop new technologies for observing/measuring different biological processes, e.g., observing subcellular localization through GFP-tagged proteins and fluorescence microscopy. Also worth mentioning is the critical role played by techniques for isolating and recognizing what you want to study, ranging from purifying molecules (in biochemistry and molecular biology) to culturing different types of cells/organisms to developing pure strains.
  • It emphasizes technology quite a bit, in both general terms and with examples. I've now mentioned microscopy in the lead. As for the newer stuff, again, this was intentionally left out because of the problem of sources and historical distance.--ragesoss 02:59, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Along those lines, one has not finished cataloging all of life; taxonomy is still a work in progress, and was not concluded in the 19th century. There are a lot of species hitherto uncharacterized, unnamed and unstudied, ranging from bacteria to plants to birds. You might also want to mention some of the hypotheses concerning the origin of life, such as the RNA world hypothesis.
  • This is another area where it might be too early to write the history of it.--ragesoss 02:59, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I hope that this is not opening a can of worms, but please do not say that Watson and Crick "discovered" the double helix structure of DNA. "...proposed..." or "...hypothesized..." would be better, since the gentlemen did not take any data to test their model.
  • You're right. I had fixed that already in the molecular biology section, but I neglected the lead.--ragesoss 02:59, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The history of evolution section seems to suggest that the concept of natural selection began with Darwin. Some brief mention of his antecedents might be appropriate. More generally, the 18th century gets short shrift; how about Maupertuis' work, Venus Physique?
  • It's really a question of significance and balance; a number of things could be pointed to as antecedents, Maupertuis' work among them, but some nuance has to be glossed over in such a sprawling topic. However, your comment (I assume you meant the 18th century) draws my attention to one naturalist who definitely should be mentioned (a more significant evolution antecedent, though he drew on Maupertuis): Buffon. Don't know how I managed to leave that out, when he's staring me in the face from the intro.--ragesoss 02:59, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The history of enzymology is slightly incorrect. The kinetics were not worked out by the end of the 19th century; even the basic Michaelis-Menten equation was not proposed until 1913. More sophisticated kinetics were developed in the 20th century, and enzymatic mechanisms are still being studied actively.
  • Yes, that was very unclear, since chemical kinetics (the basics of which were in place by 1900) was not meant to imply enzyme kinetics (which you rightly place in early 20th century). Fixed.--ragesoss 02:59, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • It does at least allude to structural biology in the molecular biology sections, but I'll try to flesh it out a tiny bit more. As for functional genomics and a number of other cutting-edge problems, we've intentionally removed everything that's too cutting edge to be represented in the historical literature. Otherwise, it begins to cross the border from history to journalism (and probably original research).--ragesoss 02:59, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • They're not that alien from one another; microbiology (and its precursors of bacteriology and virology) are generally a key part of most "origins of molecular biology" narratives. I've added a small bit more on virology.--ragesoss 02:59, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I guess I still see them as different. To be sure, molecular biologists have gleaned a lot of useful reagents and protocols from microorganisms and microbes make excellent model systems. But microbiology per se seems much more organism-centric than molecule-centric, studying higher-level topics such as quorum sensing, host-pathogen interactions and how the microbe coordinates its various metabolisms to survive various challenges over its life-cycle. Willow 11:00, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure about the exact edits that this may be about, but if the question is whether microbiology is micro-biology or the biology of microbes, it is actually the latter, as Willow correctly points out. Molecular biology deals with all organisms, and therefore has strong links with physiology, as well as botany; arguably the demonstration of plant cell shape by squeezing a bunch of peas was the first cellular experiment. I don't have time to check if that's mentioned, but it's quite a clever and prescient experiment. If any corners need to be cut, I'd rather lump molecular and cellular than molecular and micro. Samsara (talk • contribs) 11:16, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good luck and bon courage with this article! Willow 22:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • I wonder if some of these topics might not be more appropriate to the biology page itself in some sort of section like "Current research in Biology" (they have a similar section on the physics page and I thought that was a really cool idea)? Awadewit 06:50, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your swift replies and thought-provoking clarifications! :) I think I might better understand your perspective, along with the scope of the article. You'd like to cover biology topics that have been covered by historians of science, for which sufficient historical distance has been reached — is that right? Does it follow that biology topics that have not been covered significantly by historians lie outside the scope of the article? I'm concerned that good topics may be missed, like Cyclol. Unfortunately, not all scientific topics will be equally interesting to a historian's readership; some worthy but boring topics might be passed over for publication.

The article's present organization is chronological, which seems great. However, you might want to begin with a topical outline, to offer the reader threads to follow through the chronology. Some core questions of biology haven't changed since Aristotle's categories: What is biological matter made of? How are its components created and destroyed; how do they change over their lifetime? Where are the parts arranged within the whole and how do they interact? How are all these processes regulated? If such questions represent the historical tides of biological research, it might not be so bad to describe how modern approaches — even if not yet treated by historians — answer age-old questions. For example, you treat DNA sequencing, for which insufficient historical distance has elapsed, I imagine, but which is clearly significant for giving the DNA composition of a cell. Would the same rationale apply to, say, proteomics and mass spectrometry, which measure the protein composition of a cell? Trying to think this through, sorry for being slow, Willow 10:45, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    • Your comments are really helpful. I'm going to think about this more, and do some more source work, but I have two quick replies. First, I think what have historians have tried to do is, because there is just so much of 20th century biology, focus on the things that have had the broadest impact across biology. The disinction between microbiology and cell biology is important, and microbiology doesn't fit as comfortably with the molecular/organismal divide as most things (and it was a somewhat fuzzy overall trend, not a hard and fast separation, anyhow). I've made the story of molecular biology central to the 20th century, but it shouldn't come off like all these other things that tie in to that story are simply part of molecular biology. As for instruments, I think your feeling here is probably right, that the article would benefit from still more emphasis on tools, techniques, and technologies. Broad histories of 20th century biology could be written as a history of model organisms, a history of laboratory instruments, or a history of experimental methods.--ragesoss 15:03, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. I really, really like this article, but there is an issue with layout. There are a lot of images near the top of the article, and relatively few in the bottom half or more of prose. If you took out the Roman emperor and added just one image near the bottom of the article (do we have a colourful illustration of recombinant DNA? colour is also sorely lacking at the bottom...), the problem would be fixed. Alternatively, you could add more copy near the top. And maybe someone should give that thermal cycler image a bit of post-production love. Samsara (talk • contribs) 23:00, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • [Allow me to interject.] I've change up the images some, including a pretty featured picture near the bottom. I think it's much closer to a pleasing layout now, though it's still not perfect.--ragesoss 04:15, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I uploaded and inserted a brightened version of the thermal cycler. It could be brightened further if needed. Quadzilla99 23:25, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Do you really feel that this is a reason to outright oppose this article? I might agree with you if this were an article about art or something that required illustration to properly understand its topic, but the illustrations here, in my opinion, are really just nice additions that we are lucky to be able to have. It seems to me that you could have commented first and asked the editors to improve this minor issue. Awadewit 01:08, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm just going to hazard a guess that I've been participating in this process a fair bit longer than you. The way it works is, if you have some meat that needs to be sorted out, you oppose. When the meat is fully cooked, you change to support. And I'd strongly advise you not to go around questioning everything that everybody does, because things get very, very nasty after a while. Not a way to make friends for sure. And we have enough of it at RfA. Samsara (talk • contribs) 02:15, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
And all of those editors at the credentialling debate a couple of months ago were worried that we academics were going to throw our weight around ("I'm a PhD, so you should listen to me"). It seems to me, in my admittedly brief six-month stint at wikipedia, that wikipedia users who have "been around" are far more likely to use that argument ("I've been here longer, so you should listen to me"). I have actually spent a fair amount of my time here at wikipedia at FAC (both reviewing and submitting articles) and I've noticed that many people use comments, rather than the more aggressive oppose, to urge editors to improve their articles (per the instructions listed above - "To provide constructive input on a nomination without specifically supporting or objecting, write Comment followed by your advice.") It seemed to me, anyway, that you really were trying to provide "constructive input," but perhaps I misinterpreted your meaning. And I don't "go around questioning everything that everybody does;" I question what I feel are inappropriate actions or statements. There is no reason why I should not; in fact, to not do so would be an abdication of my duties as a wiki-citizen. I'm sorry that you personally feel overwhelmed at RfA, but that is not my problem and is irrelevant to this debate. Finally, I am not on wikipedia to make friends per se, although I seem to have formed excellent working relationships with any number of users and for that I am grateful; I participate in wikiepdia to disseminate accurate knowledge. Awadewit 04:09, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't worth wasting keystrokes over; Samsara has a valid point whether he frames it as oppose or comment, and I know he has the article's best interest in mind.--ragesoss 04:18, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I peer-reviewed this article as an educated lay reader; I am also an avid reader of popular science books. I tried to imagine non-scientists and college students reading these articles. I feel that this article, while it does get a little jargon-heavy at the end, is an excellent introduction to the history of biology (if you make it all the way to the end, I am guessing you are really interested, so I'll let that go). This article is well-written, comprehensive as I far as I can tell from my one little undergraduate history of biology class and well-sourced. Another nice article from the history and philosophy of science crowd (is it a crowd?).
I do have just remaining question. You write in the article that Darwin's theory of evolution was accepted because of the tone of his book and his overwhelming evidence, all arguments I have heard before. But I have also read/heard that Darwin and Wallace had a mechanism (natural selection) whereas other proponents of evolution did not. Is that not correct? That you do not emphasize. Awadewit 01:08, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The Lamarckian mechanism was in other evolutionary theories, and the mechanism was the least well-received aspect of Darwin's (at least in the 19th century), which is partly why he gradually shifted toward more and more Larmarckism in later edition of Origin. Even Darwin's Bulldog T. H. Huxley didn't think natural selection was a viable mechanism. It seemed incompatible with what was known of heredity (in particular, the observed phenomenon of Regression toward the mean with various biological traits like height made it seem like there were random variations about a fixed mean, so that selection for slight variations would not result in heritable changes).--ragesoss 04:27, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
And natural selection had been proposed as a mechanism by at least two people before Darwin/Wallace, although probably not by that name. Samsara (talk • contribs) 04:33, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I find this all very fascinating. I took it upon myself to read some of the material mentioned in your notes (whoever does that?). I don't have the Bowler you mentioned, but I do have his Evolution: The History of an Idea and Secord's Victorian Sensations. It would appear that, indeed, according to Bowler, natural selection was not widely accepted. But, Bowler does emphasize that the search for "precursors" does violence to the historical record: "There have been many efforts to undermine his [Darwin's] originality by claiming that the selection theory had been developed by earlier writers, including Edward Blyth, Patrick Matthew, and William Charles Wells . . . Such efforts to denigrate Darwin misunderstand the whole point of the history of science: Matthew did suggest the basic idea of selection, but he did nothing to develop it; and he published it in the appendix to a book on the raising of trees for shipbuilding. No one took him seriously, and he played no role in the emrgence of Darwinism. Simple priority is not enough to earn a thinker a place in the history of science: one has to develop the idea and convince others of its value to make a real contribution." (158) Also, I wonder if this history is not favoring one historical method over another. The editors seem to be citing books that focus on a cultural history of science rather than the "great man" theory of history or a paradigm-shift theory of history. While I tend to agree more with the first theory myself, I wonder if relying so heavily on one methodology might be considered POV. (By the way, if you had included page numbers in your footnote for Victorian Sensations, my life would have been made so much easier!) Awadewit 05:53, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If histories of science are going with the great man theory or (with a few exceptions) the paradigm shift theory, that's probably an indication that they are out of date. As with most history fields, there are major historiographical issues at stake in the history of biology, but I've done my best to be neutral when it comes to those. The ways in which the article does have possible bias issues relate to the overall focus, on intellectual developments. But my intention was that more social and cultural approaches could be treated in parallel articles some time in the future, like cultural history of biology and institutional history of biology. Regarding the Darwin story (at least in as basic a form as described here), there is pretty much consensus among practicing historians. (At least with a well-defined topic like "Darwin", historians seem to agree that intellectual and cultural history aren't incompatible, it just takes a lot of work; hence Janet Browne's succes). The main exception to the Darwin consensus is actually probably Victorian Sensation; one way of reading Secord's argument is that (despite hardly mentioning him until the end) it was really about Darwin all along, that Darwin reaped what Vestiges sowed (you probably don't need me to tell you this, but others may find it helpful). Obviously that's a different kind of argument than the one Bowler is dismissing in the quote you give, but it's also not an argument that sits comfortably with many Darwin scholars. This article only gives a brief nod in that direction, in mentioning what Darwin had going for him that Vestiges didn't.--ragesoss 06:25, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have finally broken down and bought Browne's biography of Darwin. This debate has now cost me $32. :) Awadewit 06:36, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Actually I think this article does a pretty good job of compromising between the old fashioned (even Whiggish to use a dirty word in modern history of science) style of focusing on people, dates, and ideas, and the more currently in vogue approach of looking at science as a cultural product. Incidentally I do think a little such Whiggishness is appropriate in an encyclopedia article, which should convey basic facts such as who, what, and when as well as more scholarly conclusions about how and why. As to the issue of natural selection and its role in the acceptance of Origin, it is true that even in Darwin's life time only a minority of scientists (perhaps only Wallace and even he had reservations when it came to the human mind) believed that natural selection was sufficent alone to explain most of evolution, but it did provide a purely mechanistic non teological mechanism for evolution. Although most people think of the inheritance of acquired characteristics when they think of Lamarkian evolution, Lamarck only attributed relatively minor adaptive details to that process. His idea for the main driving force for the transmutation of species was an inate teological drive pushing creatures up the great chain of being from simple to complex. Vestiges had the same teological orientation with a strong implication of a divine plan for progress. This made the Origin inherently more attractive to someone like Huxley who badly wanted to free science from the influence of natural theology. It might be reasonable to mention this in history of biology, but where it really needs to be discussed is history of evolutionary thought, an article which in my opinion needs a lot of work. Rusty Cashman 04:35, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes it does. I went over there for information, but it was useless. Crediting Lord Monboddo (whose works I have actually read) with coming up with a theory of natural selection seems a bit far-fetched to me. The page is just a list of contributions in parts - not a historical "narrative," if you get my drift. Awadewit 04:41, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose for all of the same reasons cited above. This is a very good article, but the omissions noted by Willow are needing to be fixed. I also have some items missing.
    • The development of the scientific method in the 17th century is missing entirely; the process is so vital to all experimental sciences that I find its omission here glaring. A passing mention would suffice, and this article has NO mention of it.
      • Developing methods of doing life science are mentioned throughout the article, and the 16th and 17th centuries particularly dwell on the growth in experimental and quantitative approaches. There is more or less no such thing as the development of the scientific method, in the 17th or any other century.--ragesoss 03:11, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

**Also, no treatment of non-western traditions is really given. Did not the Chinese and Arabs have their own contributions to the eventual development of Biology? Ernst Mayr's quote aside, the article seems to be missing any mention of non-western traditions in medicine and natural sciences. Again, I would not want to see the entire article overtaken by minutae, but to lack any significant mention of non-western traditions, especially in the Ancient and Medieval Knowledge section, seems a problem. Again, this article is VERY GOOD, but I am not sure it is featurable yet.

      • The Mayr quote is not a unique statement, historiographically speaking; most histories of biology simply say the same thing by failing to mention any significant contributions to the history of biology from non-western cultures (unlike with history of medicine or the history of astronomy, for example) . I included the quote for some explicit justification of not having anything else, but I don't know what could be put in without going out of the way just to find something, without regard to broader significance.--ragesoss 03:11, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • By no means should intellectual rigour be sacrificed to political correctness. Samsara (talk • contribs) 17:14, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

--Jayron32|talk|contribs 02:13, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support Fair enough. I have been convinced. The article deserves full support for Featured Status. Good job. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 18:03, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. It's a brave step to try to cover so much in one article, but it's crucial that Wikipedia's "meta" articles be of a high quality. There is some ongoing discussion about the relative weighting of several subject areas, including currently ecological niche theory and species concepts, and I expect some of this discussion will continue for some time. That said, it is an even braver step for the editor to nominate this article for FA - expect there to be more discussion still if and when it goes on the front page! I know you'll be able to deal well with the many opinions that will be inflicted on you via the talk page. It may turn out to be one of the few articles that are actually further improved by the process. Samsara (talk • contribs) 23:02, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment and query. What do the editors think about establishing a cut-off date for this page and creating a separate "history of modern biology" page? Just to be difficult. Awadewit 23:07, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Moving wall, not cut-off date. Samsara (talk • contribs) 00:37, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm missing something. Awadewit 04:12, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • I'm sure you mean a subpage right? If the article is still called history of biology it will have to include all history. Quadzilla99 04:43, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
          • I meant an entirely new page (I'm not sure what subpages are). But there is no such thing as "ongoing history" really. That is why I was thinking that a "history of modern biology," which could have all of the up to the minute reporting on it might be a good idea. That way this page wouldn't rely on journalism but that one could have a mix of journalism and history. (I was thinking about this because someone I was talking to said "they can't really write a history of biology past DNA, can they?") Now, I don't know at what point the history would stop, but there is a point in that. At some point, there is not enough distance to establish the influence of a discovery. Stem-cell research is probably a good example of that. That is why I was thinking that relegating all of those emerging fields and recent discoveries whose place has not yet been completely established to a "history of modern biology" page might be a good idea. In twenty or forty years, we can move them over (I'm sure we will all still be editing then). Awadewit 05:13, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
            • Maybe a "Recent developments in biology" section in Biology (right after that "History of biology" section that duplicates this article's lead) which could break off into its own article if it gets too big. Which reminds me, the history section of Biology needs to be updated. It looks like this has now been promoted (thank you all so much for the quality comments and criticisms); while I can't say I'm disappointed, I was hoping for more voices to weigh in before the nomination closed.--ragesoss 05:22, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
              • That sounds like a good idea. The physics page has something similar. I hope against hope that someone will read it and go "cool, I want to solve that problem" and go into physics. The whole point being - we need more good scientists. Add it in, I say. Intrigue people. I think that it's good for non-scientists, too. That way they understand why science needs to be funded and what we are still learning through science. Off soap box now. (And I'm a humanities person!) Awadewit 05:27, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.
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