Talk:Howard T. Odum

This article
The article needs to do a better job of justifying its existence. It simply throws out facts relating to Howard Odum in semi-random order, without regard to what's important or what relates to what. It doesn't even specifically say what Odum profession was!

Suggested organization: (1) Brief statement of who he was and why he was imporant (Something like, "Howard Odum was a system ecologist who pioneered...") (2) Biographical sketch; (3) Summary of Odum's important contributions and accomplishment. The book references are fine, but you might also want to sort through the many references to Odum on the web, and link the better ones.

The article also needs a some basic copy editing, but I can do that for you, once you get a proper article structure in place. ---Isaac R 06:57, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"Ecosystem ecologist" sounds tautological. Perhaps you mean "system ecologist" (a term I've heard applied to Odum)? If so, a separate article defining the profession is would be informative, since many people (well me, anyway) have no idea what such a system ecologist is. ---Isaac R 19:29, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * No, ecosystem ecology is a real subfield, one of the major subfields in ecology. Systems ecology is a term that has been used by some - Odum editted a 1983 book by that name - but it is not the same as ecosystem ecology, and it's not that widely used.  I agree that an article on ecosystem ecology is needed - it's been on my "to do" list for a while.  I'll make a stub and work from there.  Guettarda 20:19, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The questionable choice to label this thumbnail biography "pseudoscience"
Hello. My question is whether, in this particular case, Mr. McCready's application of the “pseudoscience” categorization was unjustified.

H.T. Odum earned a B.S. in zoology (Phi Beta Kappa) at the University of North Carolina, worked in the Air Force as a tropical meteorologist, and earned a Ph.D. in zoology at Yale University. He then entered into the field that his brother Eugene Odum was pioneering: systems ecology. Howard Odum later founded the Center for Wetlands at the University of Florida, and by the end of his life had written some 300 scientific papers.

Odum got his degrees in the science departments of solid, respectable universities, one of them being Yale. As to ecology itself, it is accepted as a science and taught in countless university biology departments around the world. That it is a young science, barely over 50 years old, does not make it a pseudoscience.

Granted, "systems ecology" is a specific line of inquiry and hypothesis/theory within ecology. Again, I doubt this makes it pseudoscience. But, in any case, the article in question is a thumbnail biography.

I'd like to hear some other opinion as to whether there can be any justification at all for labelling the Howard T. Odum biographical article as a "pseudoscience article". Joel Russ 15:00, 22 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Commented out pending sourcing. Guettarda 15:20, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Copied from the User talk:Sholto Maud talk page
I'm sorry I reverted you, but I would like to leave those quotes out for the moment. - Mdd 23:04, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

I've just seen that you made some more edits, and maybe I've been to quick in referting you. If so I'm sorry. As you probably have seen, have I completly wikified the article. I realize, that I probably made some mayor and minor mistakes, which you will have to correct... I want to give you the time to do so.

I however keep the opinion that those quotes should not return in the article. This is a matter of lay out. With the makeover I've shown that those remarks can also be listed in the references/notes. I'll like to keep it that way. Good luck. - Mdd 23:23, 13 August 2007 (UTC)


 * ''Copied from the User talk:Mdd
 * Thanks for your note on my userpage. I saw your edits. You have done major work, and as you say there is yin and yang in what has been done. I think some of the quotes should be left in for effect. I'll leave it alone for now, however I would like to see some of the quotes in the text of the article because they are challenging, give a good representation of the man's thinking, and hence, should not be relegated to the footnotes. I agree that my previous referencing was over the top, but perhaps we can come to a mid-way point. Some quotes should definately stay in the text. Sholto Maud 02:21, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for this feed back. I think there is more at stake here then just the quotes. But first this: Now my mean interest at the moment is to improve the H.T. Odum article. And I'll like to work on at the moment. I propose that we argue about article related subjects such as the quotes on the articles talk page. I'll also copy your above comment there and will respond there - Mdd 15:08, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
 * You did a wonderful job bringing all the information about H.T. Odum together in the past years.
 * I merely did some art-directions and restructured this biographical article, like I did before in dozends similair cases. By doing so I also investigated what is still missing in the article, I collected and added some of these basic data, and I wondered and wonder what else can be done to improve the article. Now I think this article has great potential, but still needs a reasonable amount of work.
 * You also did a great job in the surrounding of the article... bringing together all kinds of imformation and illustrations.

The quotes
What to do with the quotes in this article:
 * I stick to my opinion that those quotes should not return in the article.
 * I also agree with Sholto that not everything should not be relegated to the footnotes... that some of them are challenging and give a good representation of the man's thinking.

Now I think there is a simple mid-way point. Some of those quotes can be written into the text. I already did this today with the Taylor (1988, p.223) quote, see, about Howards youth inspirations. Maybe this is acceptable? In this case the quotes don't return as a layout feature. - Mdd 15:08, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

The section about Odums work
I rearranged the section about Odums work in five chapters. This is a first attempt to get some more coherence into this whole section!? - Mdd 22:50, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 16:48, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

The picture of the wetlands
The pic of the wetland reserves should be better captioned. When I first saw it, I thought it was a picture of the Center that Odum founded, which it's not. DHN 18:13, 8 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for this feedback. I made a first step to improve the situation. Please improve it anyway you like. I guess the use of this picture kind of surpriced you. I used this picture to give an impression of the things H.T. Odum inspired and worked on. My first idea was to use some more of those pictures: of an ocean ecosystem and a jungle. One of the most fascinating things of H.T. Odum's work is that he studied all those different kind of ecosystems. - Mdd 19:19, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Copy-paste registration

 * In this [edit] text was copy-paste from the Ecological Engineering article. -- Mdd (talk) 12:53, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

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External links modified
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I have just modified 4 external links on Howard T. Odum. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added tag to http://dl.dropbox.com/u/36922691/Odum_EnvGen.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070415202736/http://www.energybulletin.net/docs/RealisingTheEnlightenment.pdf to http://www.energybulletin.net/docs/RealisingTheEnlightenment.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070819094252/http://grove.ufl.edu/~wetlands/index_011.htm to http://grove.ufl.edu/~wetlands/index_011.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070926221601/http://www.marssociety.org/MDRS/fs02/1114/index.asp to http://www.marssociety.org/MDRS/fs02/1114/index.asp
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070926221241/http://www.marssociety.org/mdrs/fs02/1117/index.asp to http://www.marssociety.org/mdrs/fs02/1117/index.asp

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