Talk:Axial Age

Error in citation
Some criticisms of Jasper's rather generic formulation include the lack of a demonstrable common denominator between the intellectual developments that are supposed to have developed in unison across ancient Greece, Palestine, India, and China; lack of any radical discontinuity with 'preaxial' and 'postaxial' periods; and exclusion of pivotal figures that do not fit the definition (for example, Jesus, Muhammad, and Akhenaten).[4]

Axial age 8 century BC - 3 century BC. Akhenaten lived 1400 BC, Jesus 1 -30 AD, Muhammad 650 AD. These are not in the Axial age timeline. 2604:3D09:A685:FC00:711C:C1D5:FD8E:510A (talk) 01:40, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

(Subsection 'Reception') Who is Suzuki, Provan, Whitaker?
In the section 'Reception' it is currently written:

In 2018, contrary to Suzuki and Provan, and similar to Whitaker, Stephen Sanderson published another book [...]

As a complete layman and non-scholar, my question is: who is Suzuki, Provan, and Whitaker?

And yes I do not have access to Prof. Sanderson's book (and I suspect neither does potentially the majority of visitors to this Wikipedia article). I suspect 'Provan' is Iain Provan (inferring from the preceding paragraph in the article), otherwise the other two names are mentioned only once throughout the article as it currently is, and I do think readers would benefit from knowing the full name of all three mentioned academics.

--Ferdi Zebua (username: Lemi4) (talk) 11:45, 28 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Hello. I'm with you that the reception section needs some more information. I believe that "Suzuki" is David Suzuki as it is mentioned on the Goodreads page for the book by Iain Provan: "Conversely, the myth of ... as narrated by David Suzuki and others asserts that the axial age ...". Would be interesting to know to "Provan" is in this context. RealLifeRobot (talk) 14:14, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

What is the Axial Age?
There are a lot of words, but I don't see anything that clearly defines what the Axial Age is supposed to represent, especially not in the lede. There probably should be something more concrete defining what this article is even about (particularly in the lede) with maybe at the least an immediately following example to drive the meaning home (again, especially in the lede). "[B]road changes in religious and philosophical thought" is pretty much a completely meaningless phrase since that pretty much applies to every single moment in time. You might as well be another fake fortune teller saying, "You will notice that something will happen this week." Just as meaningless. — al-Shimoni  (talk) 15:58, 8 December 2022 (UTC)