Talk:Modern synthesis (20th century)/GA2

GA Review
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Reviewer: MadScientistX11 (talk · contribs) 14:54, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Not sure if I'm doing this correctly, I've never commented on a good article nomination before. Apologies if I'm getting the format incorrect. Modern synthesis is not a good article. It has a strong philosophic bias. For example the discussion of logical positivism. I've never read anything that supported the idea that the criticisms of the logical positivists made a big impact on people like Haldane, Fischer, etc. There is no mention of the term "Neodarwinism" (except as it was originally used in the 1890's) even though that is the more common term now for the New Synthesis. There is only one mention of Richard Dawkins and that is only in the context of sociobiology, nothing about his very important role in popularizing Neodarwinism through his book the Selfish Gene and other writings. The article is POV. It says "the edifice of the Modern Synthesis has crumbled, apparently, beyond repair", to be replaced by a 'post-modern' synthesis " based on the writing of one obscure (at least I've never heard of him) person. Neodarwinism has not crumbled, it is still the dominant paradigm in modern biology right now. This article not only is not a good article it is well below the normally high bar for scientific articles on important topics in Wikipedia. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 14:54, 14 October 2017 (UTC)


 * @: Thank you for taking this on. However: for the record, I hold straightforward, mainstream Darwinian views on biology (and have written many Good Articles on evolutionary biology). The article is absolutely not anti-Darwinian in any way.


 * This is a complex historical subject concerning a period when Dawkins was either not born or was a small boy, so it would be rather strange to discuss his much later views. I have however added footnotes, dates, and glosses to clarify the situation. It is important to distinguish the "modern synthesis" (an unfortunate title, but that's what Huxley called it) from several later syntheses of evolutionary theory. There is no POV in the article - all of it is carefully cited to reliable sources in the history of biology, and please be very clear that this is a historical subject, not necessarily the same as today's biology (Dawkins's or anybody else's). On philosophy, there is one short section on positivism, which was briefly influential, as described and cited; apart from that, the article is simple plain history of biology, X did Y on date D, not abstractly philosophical at all. The 'crumbling' refers to the way that modern biologists, Dawkins included, have come to see that the 1940 version (to pick a date) is no longer quite right, and it has been (is being) replaced by a wider synthesis that takes in new biological sciences like genomics, evo-devo and so on.


 * On your approach, you are jumping to conclusions that I am certain are not justified by the facts. You are starting from what you have heard and familiarity with the well-publicised Dawkins, rather than from the assembled historical evidence cited in the article, which is where a reviewer must begin if they wish to do the job correctly.


 * If you would like to review this history-of-biology article, you will have to do it slowly and steadily, taking the Good Article criteria one at a time. I strongly advise you to read the Instructions for Reviewing Good Article Nominations as well. If you decide not to do this, that's fine, no hard feelings, we can just reverse this page and put the article back in the queue. Either way, do let me know. Many thanks, Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:23, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I stand by what I said. Since the Modern Synthesis article is essentially the Neodarwinism article it seems to me undeniable that such an article has a point of view if it fails to mention the one person who is most associated (at least in the intellectual world in general) with the movement. It would be like an article on the history of Darwinism that didn't mention Huxley (who like Dawkins didn't make significant contributions of his own but did do a lot to popularize the idea). I've been self educating myself on evolutionary theory in the last few years and everything that I've read or classes that I've taken mention Dawkins quite a bit when it comes to the New Synthesis. The "crumbling" gives a very distorted view. It says that the New Synthesis is "beyond repair". That implies that it's gone the way of Lamarckism in biology or Freudianism in psychology, that it's not the current paradigm. Dawkins (and IMO most biologists) would absolutely not agree with that. Yes, of course things like evo-devo, epigenetics, etc. matter but those are refinements to neodarwinism, the gene focused point of view absolutely still is valid. I'm not going to try and edit the article. I don't have time for it and I find these kinds of debates to be too draining. I will say that I find it rather unusual that such an important article had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING on it's talk page before I commented and that  in the history of edits Chiswick Chap seems to essentially be the only editor going back as far as I can see. For such an important article I think it would be good to get other editors involved rather than just one person, especially if it's to be considered as a good article. I've used Wikipedia as part of my education on biology and mostly found the articles to be outstanding but I stand by what I said that IMO this article is well below the quality of most Wikipedia articles on important scientific topics. Regarding commenting on good article status: as far as I can tell the guidelines leave it up to each editor what format to use and I've said what I want to say.   --MadScientistX11 (talk) 18:49, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
 * @MadScientistX11 - many thanks for your detailed reply. The format doesn't matter; what does is that you have not understood that "modern" here refers exclusively to a historic episode that took place in the early 20th century, long before Dawkins — modern biology has far surpassed it, which is all that Koonin meant by saying it was crumbling - he absolutely wasn't and isn't anti-Darwinian. Do you not see that that turns your criticism absolutely on its head? (And by the way, old talk page discussions (relevant to old versions of the article) have been archived, see the box.) Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:58, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I think most of the problem is the redirect from Neo-Darwinism, which frankly does not fit well here. I have changed the redirect, restoring the original article.I may well rename the current article to emphasize that it is historical, as we're plainly talking at cross purposes. Dawkins and his intellectual forebears (Hamilton and Williams) now get paragraphs in "After the synthesis". Normally in a GA process, we edit the article to match the reviewer's suggestions, which I'm quite willing to do, and you should be too. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:29, 16 October 2017 (UTC)