Talk:John Arbuthnot

Genealogy
To the Arbuthnot genealogists who have been entering text: Be aware that Dr. John Arbuthnot survived all of his children. None of them had children. Therefore, he is a dead end in the family line. His Jacobite brothers might have had issue, but they were both living in France. Geogre 14:27, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Surely Dr John died 1734/5 while his children died 1740 (Anne and Margaret), 1779 (George) and 1731 (Charles - who DID die in his father's lifetime). So which dates are being queried? - Kittybrewster 17:06, 7 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, that's a fault of the DNB, which only mentioned the male heirs. They had said that Charles died and, I thought, George, without issue.  My point was that genealogy is inappropriate in any case in an encyclopedia article.  For those interested in their lineage and what it has done for them, there are other projects.  Wikipedia explicitly forbids genealogy.  (And, for the anon., my own family is quite illustrious, and yet I do not feel compelled to trace them in an encyclopedia and confine myself to genealogy forums and texts.)  Geogre 21:54, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Attribution trouble
The story of JA letting his children burn his papers comes from Pope. Pope himself was a great conservator of his own papers and of paper in general (autograph letters show that he would reuse a single piece of paper and fill every milimeter of it), who was quite shocked. However, the source of that is.... It's either Spence (and our reference goes to a blues musician) or the correspondence. If anyone has access to Atiken's Works, I'm sure it's mentioned in the biography there. Geogre 12:37, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Spelling
The MoS calls for consistent spelling on any individual page, but also that the appropriate spelling varies by page, so that for an article on a nationally associated subject use that nation's spelling rules (so the article on Tony Blair should use British spelling, the article on George Bush should use American spelling). Appropriate spelling on this page would be British. - Kittybrewster  (talk) 21:57, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The MoS is incorrect in that regard, or your interpretation of it is. We have "American" spelling on any number of "British" subjects.  The better guideline is consistency.  When there is a single author on a page, that author's spelling habits will be consistent.  Going in piecemeal to "improve" a page by being sniffy about nationalistic spelling urges rarely results in as much consistency and generally results in a mid-Atlantic stew.  This is aside from the issues of which spelling system is more comprehensible to more of the English-speaking world or whether any of the reforms in use in the United States are, in fact, "American" or if any of the atavisms practiced by those in the UK are indeed "British."  Geogre 01:09, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Additionally, this article has been soft protected to prevent more nonce accounts trying to throw another Hyperborean fit on such a silly, silly, silly subject. Geogre 01:12, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Please do not describe other users as nonce accounts. Be polite! Hobson 01:16, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The fact that you have not established a user page sure makes you seem like a nonce account. However, I suppose now I shall have to ask others to try to protect the English language from the depredations of misguided nationalism.  Nor should it be my burden to find a mistake on your part, as you have demonstrated no reason to change from the status quo.  Geogre 01:45, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Kittybrewster set out the reasoning above. You have set out no reason to revert her or my edit, other than comments about people being sniffy, nationalistic or misguided, which I take to be claims that other editors are acting in bad faith. Please assume good faith. Hobson 01:51, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Please assume the assumption of good faith and take a look at the MOS page on national varieties of English. I quote a few sentences, but for the subtleties, I do recommend you to read the whole, it's not very long. Bishonen | talk 02:21, 17 April 2007 (UTC).
 * If an article is predominantly written in one type of English, aim to conform to that type rather than provoke conflict by changing to another.
 * If an article has been in a given dialect for a long time, and there is no clear reason to change it, leave it alone. Editors should not change the spelling used in an article wholesale from one variant to another, unless there is a compelling reason to do so (which will rarely be the case). Other editors are justified in reverting such changes.
 *  If all else fails, consider following the spelling style preferred by the first major contributor (that is, not a stub) to the article. (That would be Geogre.) Bishonen | talk 02:21, 17 April 2007 (UTC).
 * I'm not sure how I can assume someone is assuming good faith when right on this talk page they are accusing people of being motivated by other things. Seriously, if you have any advice on a better way of asking a fellow editor to be polite then please offer it. Surely we agree that accusing colleagues of being nationalists or having fits is unhelpful:) Thank you for pointing out the MOS page, although I had already read it. It seems to me that it offers a number of different criteria which might be used, some of which in this case would suggest using British spelling and some of which would suggest using US spelling. Hobson 13:20, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, I think this is better: Hobson, I moved your post below mine, as you kind of messed up the integrity of mine by posting in the middle of it. I hope you don't mind. Leaving other people's posts intact and readable is the courtesy of talkpages. Bishonen | talk 13:28, 18 April 2007 (UTC).
 * Sorry. I posted under your signature, which I took to be the end of the post, but I may have messed up. Thanks for correcting it. Hobson 13:40, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * You missed the key concept, which is that if there is a strong tie to a specific version, you use it. Even if United States was started in British English, you fix it.  This is the critical point, and it's occassionally missed by underexperienced editors like Geogre.  But it is the correct way to do things.  WilyD 03:51, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * User:Geogre is sufficiently experienced to know about WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA. Maybe the spelling issue should be resolved by a straw poll.
 * I'm not sure why this is directed at me. WilyD 14:00, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * It is not. - :)   - Kittybrewster   (talk) 17:27, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh - the indentation made it seem like it was. Sorry for the confusion. WilyD 17:43, 17 April 2007 (UTC)


 * American English
 * Geogre I did not add my name. (A poll has not been formulated properly, conducted properly, or concluded. Geogre 19:37, 18 April 2007 (UTC) )


 * British English
 * Kittybrewster  (talk) 07:47, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * WilyD 17:44, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * If the person pre-dated american spelling, then British spelling would make more sense. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me) 14:17, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Hwæt! Ðæt gemaken ne sense! (Let's do the real 1690 orthography, then: capitalize all "important" nouns, spell however one wishes, and, of course, employ most of those things that Kittbrewster believes are "American" in spelling.)  Utgard Loki 14:30, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I believe that Bishonen has stated it well enough. "Civil" and "NPA" are nonsensical, if not desperate, claims to make here. No straw poll needed. No calling up members of the genealogical society would be helpful, nor calling up all the folks who have found my work useful. No wretched appeals to "Well, he may be right, but he was mean to me in the process" is going to be useful or to the point. In fact, I have been and will remain quite the one attacked rather than attacking when I work for months to untwist DNB, Spence, Pope, Herbert Read, various editors and then see someone come along and decide, through some interest in the borrowed fame of family names, to mark the article by making it not merely useful and clear, which it is, but now sniffy. If anyone wants to have a poll, let's take a poll and find out who knows the history of English language orthography. Let's find out who knows the difference between "American" and "reformed" spelling. Let's then use that to try to discern what would make a spelling system more or less comprehensible and accurate for readers, as we are supposed to be serving them and not the local antiquities council. Geogre 10:23, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * That is a wikipolicy discussion for elsewhere. I hear that you feel attacked but your words are attacking. What do you mean by "sniffy"? Please use colons rather than bullets per WP:TPG. - Kittybrewster  (talk) 13:25, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I have to say, I really dislike doing a strawpoll where the MOS is so clear. Why hold on to a bug in the article that contradicts convention, and would (for instance) prevent the article from reaching a featured standard? WilyD 17:44, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * If consistent orthography kept this from making featured, then there is no desirability of FA status whatever. I have never seen even the smallest of the small minds at FAC raise such an objection.  Furthermore, the MoS is clear: do not make changes for preference and call them "corrections."  Such a comment is, in fact, ignorant as well as misguided.  Geogre 10:52, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Articles that don't follow the MoS shouldn't be promoted to featured status, its just that simple. The MoS is very clear on the point that this article should be written in British English.  This can't seriously be disputed. WilyD 15:35, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Because Geogre doesn't like MOS or policy and we are trying to talk it through and reach consensus in preference to edit warring. - Kittybrewster  (talk) 07:44, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Please consider this a warning about personal attacks. Do not speculate on my motivations, my knowledge, my desires, or my personality, including my level of experience and objectives, as those are summaries of my personality, and when these observations are reductive, as they are, they represent genuine personal attacks.  Geogre 10:52, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Observation is not speculation. Suggesting that observations are summaries of your personality is something I would not have suggested. I doubt that cap fits. - Kittybrewster  (talk) 14:57, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Nonsense. If you read above, you will read very clearly what the MoS says, as Bishonen has, in fact, quoted it for you.  It does not say "Apply Brit(t)ish spelling on all subjects who might have lived in a place now considered part of the United Kingdom."  It says that there needs to be a compelling reason to make the change and that making such changes is, in fact, a hostile and fruitless act.  I understand that you do not like it.  I'm sorry that you do not.  However, the MoS, which is not policy (only preference), is wholly on the side of wandering off to find another article to improve.
 * The arguments against such toying are numerous and boring. The arguments for playing in the article is, "But, but, but... my NATIONALITY demands it."  Do not be surprised if I express scorn for nationalism, bigotry, and chauvinism.  You will note that, at least so far, all of my insults have been aimed at this impulse and not at persons.  Ask me what I think about the small minds who have to go about defending national hono(u)r by rewriting in their regional variant, and you'll get an earful.  Ask me what I think in particular about the electric defense of "British" orthography (not British English; it is "sniffy" because these differences in orthography are purely graphical; they are not pronounced; therefore, insisting upon them is not, in fact, creating, defending, or instituting British English; it is, instead, simply trying to make the graphical form conform to a personal (not national) preference and to make the text sniff in U at the non-U vulgarity of the authors), and I'll tell you that it is intellectually bankrupt and morally reprehensible.  Unless one of you wishes to self-identify as a chauvinist, I have not insulted either of you.
 * Please obey the MoS, however, and leave the article as the single author has spelled it. Please add content if you have some.  Please add information, if you have some.  Please correct mistakes, if you find them.  Please toddle on to greener fields if you simply want to monkey with spelling.  Geogre 10:48, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I remind you again. Please use colons rather than bullets per WP:TPG. - Kittybrewster  (talk) 13:17, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Requests to be civil to fellow editors are not part of a game. It's not a challenge to find a way of insulting people using a form of words which will get you off the hook if someone complains. It's about creating an atmosphere which makes it easier rather than harder for people to work together to improve articles. Please, if anyone feels a need to call hypothetical people - not you Hobson, no, not unless you yourself admit to possessing these qualities - a shagging nationalist, do it on my personal talkpage or something. Hobson 13:25, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


 * What the heck is up with you people wanting to change other peoples' comments? That is a major no-no.  I restored Geogre's asterisks because it's his right to use them if he chooses.  Good grief!  I came to look at this thing, and I see some really bad ideas being floated.  Do NOT alter another user's comments without permission.  Complain about them all you like, but do not change them.
 * If even how a person chooses to indent is going to be hotly disputed, then we should stop indenting altogether.
 * Now, to the point: As I indicated above, "British" spelling prior to 1850 was moderately fluid. Prior to 1750, it was very fluid.  Prior to 1650, it was in flux.  Geogre is right: almost everything that people in England and Scotland now regard as "American" was thought up, proposed, and practiced in England and Scotland.  H.L. Mencken, in his The American Language, but many more mainstream linguists as well, has discussed how all of these orthographic reform movements were underway and making a dent until Noah Webster put them into practice.  Then, suddenly, they were "vulgar."  He is also correct that these differences in spelling between the United States and Canada and England and Scotland and Wales are not pronounced.  In fact, the Webster reforms were proposed to make the spelling more nearly reflect pronunciation.  Therefore, to insist now, at this date, that there is a "correct" British spelling or that anything that does not follow it has "mistakes" is pretty weird.  Utgard Loki 14:42, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Just to avoid any misunderstanding, as Utgard Loki's post may appear to be a reply to mine, I haven't removed any asterixes or altered any talk page comments. Hobson 14:50, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

It seems there is no consensus to follow the result of a straw poll. So I seek another way forward. An MOS priority in determining spelling which is not universally agreed is avoiding disagreed words. In this case they seem to be these, following. I suggest we use different words. All are free to suggest alternatives. - Kittybrewster  (talk) 15:38, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * analyzed -> contended
 * endeavour -> effort / attempt
 * humour -> wit
 * systemises -> arranges
 * satirising -> parodying / ridiculing
 * recognised -> acknowledged
 * These substitutions would not be acceptable. First, they are not semantically adequate.  Secondly, the Manual of Style is quite clear in saying that there is no changing of English from one spelling system to another without a darned good reason.  The desire to own a historical figure is not a good reason, and orthography wouldn't convey it anyway.  The desire to make all characters born here or there part of a contemporary spelling system's idiosyncracies is not sufficient.  Therefore, no.  I welcome corrections of fact and additions of material.  For example, I am currently reading the John Bull pamphlets.  I would like to cover them in more detail, but, of course, I cannot cover them, I suppose, as I might spell in a perfectly acceptable and correct way that is not British.  I have recently re-read the Treatise on Political Lying and would like to cover that.  I suppose I ought not bother, though, as I will need someone to come along and translate my acceptable, well written prose into approximationish and British spelling.  Geogre 19:37, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * There seem to be issues of WP:OWN here. Your prose is good but I doubt you would contend that only one word encompasses the intended meaning. Indeed some of the alternative words I suggest seem to me more closely to correspond with and convey the meaning. - Kittybrewster  (talk) 21:13, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * You seem a little mislead about the purpose of a straw poll. They are not meant to be followed. They are meant to help us see a consensus more clearly after discussion has taken place. I see a consensus to use British English. I don't see the value of sidestepping otherwise fine words and limiting future wording, when all we need to do is pick one. I think we have. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me) 16:12, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I count Geogre and Bishonen saying "Do not change an article to a regional variant". I find Hobson and Kittybrewster insisting.  Now you say that there is consensus to change?  Dude: 3/2 isn't consensus.  It isn't even quorum.  Utgard Loki 17:05, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


 * There is no poll. For those interested in polls, there is a longish guideline for how they are formulated, how they are conducted, and who should or should not conclude them.  People who "vote" in them do not conclude them.  HighInBC may not be aware of these guidelines.  In fact, the Manual of Style says quite clearly that changing an article to a variant is the way to provoke an argument, and that is why you should not do it.  Indeed, it does a great job of telling us how to avoid disputes: don't go along and demand that your favored spelling system be used.  Geogre 19:37, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I would also like to say the whole point of the MOS is to make these sorts of arguments unneeded. HighInBC(Need help? Ask me) 16:14, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I am happy with either approach. I would like Geogre also to be happy. - Kittybrewster  (talk) 16:17, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Royal Academy of Music
Amazing that Arbuthnot managed to be a founding member of the Royal Academy of Music 87 years after his death.... Gustav von Humpelschmumpel 12:21, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Quite. I never get into categories, but I can only assume that one of the people above misunderstood "Royal Academy" as being "of Music."  Arbuthnot was important to the Royal Academy of Sciences.  Geogre 12:27, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah so was he a founder member of the Royal Academy or the French one? Gustav von Humpelschmumpel 13:35, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
 * He was.... Well, he was more or less thrust into the British Royal Academy, although "founding member" would be erroneous, as the Academy had been going for about 20 years at that point.  He was in the founding generation, though.  He worked with Newton and Flamsteed and Boyle and the other great men.  He was both a physician and mathematician, but I get a sense from everything that he did not want to be regarded as one of them.  (See, for example, his constant parodying of the silly excesses of "projectors."  The language machine that Swift has in book III of Gulliver's Travels came from notes from the Royal Academy, probably supplied by Arbuthnot, and is partially a swipe at Wilkins and the very system that later gave us computers.)  As a sensible, politically connected, intellectual, he was certainly in the Royal Academy and of it, but it's not exactly one of the first ten things one would say about Dr. Arbuthnot.  Geogre 14:50, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Wait a sec I think we are actually referring to the Royal Society not the Royal Academy as the latter was founded 1768 a mere 33 years after his death! Gustav von Humpelschmumpel 15:04, 16 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Arrrrrgh. Or, in my native parlance, "D'oh!"  Geogre 15:13, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

"So you want to be a biographer?" (Birth places)
Encyclopedia Britannica 1911 is hopelessly inferior as a source on Arbuthnot to the 21st century Dictionary of National Biography. The current EB can be equal in authoritativeness, but it is much weaker about citing its sources than DNB.  Both references, however, are like us: they require other people to tell them things. Now, the DNB is sometimes a secondary reference work (they go look at original documents to get their information), and that's what makes them most valuable, but the EB, like us, is a tertiary source of information: their authors rely on other authors who look at primary sources. Therefore, if the new EB has an announcement about exactly where Arbuthnot was born, they will need to be drawing from an article or book that has appeared since the time the DNB article was written. I would be extremely careful about being overly precise. If Arbuthnot wouldn't say where he was born, and if 18th c. accounts wouldn't say, and if multiple claimants shows up in the 19th century, I'd say that his birth place needs careful corroboration. Geogre 13:07, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Portrait
Is there any evidence that portrait is by Kneller? Where is the portrait? Kittybrewster  &#9742;  09:01, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Unbox
Arbuthnot is like Paderefsky and some others: an actual polymath. Not only are boxes optional, with the "opting" done by the page constructors," but in cases like these there is a powerful argument against them, and that is which box? Most of all, the last of those, "he lived, he died," would stick out, claim priority, and squash the extraordinary contributions of a person who was so accomplished that no box could contain him and no biography could be just. The least we could do for this person is subject him to the indignity of an infobox.  Geogre (talk) 09:27, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) Science infobox, as a mathematician?
 * 2) Medicine infobox, as an important figure in the history of medicine?
 * 3) Scotland infobox, as an important Scot?
 * 4) Literature box, as an important writer?
 * 5) Politics box, as a major mover in the Tory ministry of Anne?
 * 6) Biography, merely as someone who lived and died?

Newton
Source:

Today is the baptism day (not birthday which is unknown) of the Scots physician John Arbuthnot (1667 – 1735). Arbuthnot was a good friend of and a loyal lieutenant to Isaac Newton. He served in the Royal Society commission to kidnap John Flamsteed’s Star Catalogue and it was in fact Arbuthnot who carried out the dirty deed, travelling to Greenwich to collect the manuscript. He also served in the Royal Society commission called into being to investigate Leibniz’ complaints concerning the origins of the calculus. A commission that directed by Newton from the shadows found against Leibniz and for Newton. The friendship between Newton and Arbuthnot was slightly strange as Arbuthnot was a politically active High Church Tory and Newton was a Unitarian and politically active Whig in a time when the boundaries between the political and religious parties in England were extreme.

Arbuthnot was a mathematician whose claim to fame was based on his translation into English of Christian Huygens’ book on probability theory (the first English text published on probability) and on his statistical analysis of the male and female birth rates in England. This is probably the first use of probability in a social statistical analysis and the earliest case of a statistical significance test. Arbuthnot also published a highly praised essay on the usefulness of mathematics, which was not a generally accepted concept in England at the time, for as Arbuthnot pointed out mathematics was not on the syllabus of a single English grammar school. A passionate numismatist he also contributed to the development of archaeology and history with his papers on Tables of Grecian, Roman, and Jewish measures, weights and coins; reduced to the English standard. Kittybrewster  &#9742;  21:05, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Place of death (sources)
Noting the above caution on sources I wonder how reliable the Arbuthnott Family Association is considered to be? For example, it gives the place of death as Hampstead not Mayfair as in the Wiki article.

Enjoyable contretemps on language. Personally, I am a 'when in Rome' type although a little confused when those who call Bombay Mumbai then take their holidays in Tuscany instead of Toscana! Chrysippo (talk) 10:33, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

His father and the Act of Settlement
Further clarification is required regarding "the new Act of Settlement required all ministers to swear allegiance to them as heads of the Church of England, Arbuthnot's father would not comply." Had his father moved from Kincardineshire to England by then? In the context of a Scottish Episcopalian priest is the inclusion of "as heads of the Church of England" simply misplaced here and should be removed? Is it my understanding of history that is incorrect and ministers (or just Episcopalian ones?) in Scotland were required to swear allegiance to the monarchs in their capacity as heads of a body in another country (surely not)? Mutt Lunker (talk) 09:27, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

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