Talk:Patrick Matthew

Clark's biography of C.D.
I have removed the section marked in red, which is not neutral. Notice that the sense of the passage is unaffected: Notwithstanding Darwin's insistence on ignorance of Matthew's work, it has been suggested that he may have encountered it, or a description of it, or in some other way have been influenced by it. Ronald W. Clark, a biographer of Darwin, suggested that even if Darwin had at some point encountered Matthew's work (of which there is no evidence whatsoever), it is possible that it simply did not register, but crept into his subconscious, only later serving as a forgotten basis of his ideas, which would not have been intellectual dishonesty. --Wetman 10:40, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * I've adjusted this further, by giving the exact words from Clark and making it clear that Clark had no basis for suggesting indirectly that C.D. had read the book. Macdonald-ross (talk) 17:16, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Natural theology
Writing to Darwin, Matthew stated his belief in "a sentiment of beauty pervading Nature [that] affords evidence of intellect and benevolence in the scheme of Nature." He further maintained, "This principle of beauty is clearly from design and cannot be accounted for by natural selection."

The section above has been in the article a long time without source, and so has now been moved here. Since it's claimed to be from correspondence with Darwin, I expected to find it in DarwinOnline, but the search shows no trace of it, and searching the web and google books was similarly unsuccessful. The only source seems to be this page, obviously it can be restored to the article if a suitable source is found. .. dave souza, talk 22:27, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I suspect it is a quote mined bit of text, or completely fabricated.--Filll (talk) 22:33, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I was wondering, but then found a similar summary of a letter in the Darwin Correspondence Project so I've paraphrased that. The above may be an exact quote, but that's not available online yet. .. dave souza, talk 23:00, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Regarding this passage: "There is little or no evidence that Matthew held these views as a younger man: there is no discussion of a religious nature in Arboriculture; neither is there any discussion of man in the book. It seems that he moved towards a more traditional world-view in his old age." To me it seems far more likely that he would have always thought man to have theological origins, or to at least be outside of the mechanisms he proposed, and that it was only Descent of Man that led to him to consider it and articulate a response. But either way, its speculative unless there is a reference. I will remove the last sentence. +&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;+ (talk) 04:22, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Quotation from Arboriculture
The main passage from which quotes are taken is Note B, the second section of the book. I am slightly troubled by the choice in the article which leaves out the two passages (from Note F, p384-6) chosen by Darlington (Darwin's place in history p90-91) to illustrate Matthew's ideas. I may stick the whole appendix into wikiquote: it's far too long to put in the present article. Macdonald-ross (talk) 18:00, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Original research
"Darwin here, as well as later commentators, erred by attributing Matthew's discussions solely to the Appendix, as the main text of the work also presents in sufficiently recognizable detail "this natural process of selection among plants" (see pages 307 to 308)." is original research, without a secondary source. There may well be a case to be presented, but it should be noted that even Matthew didn't cite pages 307 to 308 in his letter published by the Gardeners' Chronicle. I've therefore removed that paragraph.

I've also removed anachronistic references to eugenics, and rephrased some of that paragraph with the aim of clarification, and have reorganised the paragraphs a bit to made it clear that the passages we quote were published in the Gardeners' Chronicle letter. The quote added from OtOOS includes a response by Matthew: this was highlighted by Stephen Jay Gould on pp. 345–346 of The Flamingo's Smile, according to page 49 of Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea if we want a secondary source noting that passage. Don't know it there's an online source for Matthew's complete letter. . . dave souza, talk 18:21, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Children
I removed content from the life section about his children that seems insignificant. I tried to keep the gist of it, and left relevant content that reflects on Matthews character and work e.g encouraging his sons to go to NZ and planting american trees in scotland. I moved the ref. to Dempster up to the paragraph preceding this latter event because a cite has been requested for that - unless its in Dempster? +&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;&#124;+ (talk) 04:38, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Is the account of his children's movements correct ? The British Newspaper Archive has PM publishing and advertising an emigration guide (covering US, the Cape, Oz & NZ) and promoting (in association with some of his Chartist friends (he seems to have been a delegate to the National Convention)) a 'Scottish New Zealand Land Company' in 1839  ie a good 10 years before the California gold-rush Rjccumbria (talk) 02:30, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Come to that, was his farm really prospering ? The Edinburgh Gazette in 1848 carried an announcement of a meeting of the creditors of ' Patrick Matthew of Gourdiehill, corn merchant ' and his children don't seem to include a Patrick... Rjccumbria (talk) 02:42, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * After a lot of fossicking in census records (OR I know): in 1851 Patrick is still Landowner & farmer at Gourdie hill, his son Robert is a Corn Agent (a Merchant in 1861), from 1871 onwards Robert is farming Gourdie hill, which in 1881 is declared to be a farm of 50 acres; in 1881 Robert's son is a Civil Engineer. It sounds as though P did come a cropper in corn trading and the family had to draw in its horns. Rjccumbria (talk) 15:32, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Seer of Gourdiehill - did he foresee the use of cast iron piers ?
This chap's views on Bouch's Tay Bridge seem to be somewhat selectively reported here. He was generally agin it and hence came up with no end of reasons why the bridge would fail. The Tay Bridge, Its History and Construction by Albert Groethe (Dundee 1878) has the following MR PATRICK MATHEWS PREDICTIONS.

... During the six years the scheme of Mr Bouch had been under discussion the Seer of Gourdie Hill had been so absorbed in his incantations to the powers of Nature that he failed to comprehend the change which public opinion had undergone regarding it, or to mark the progress which had been made towards its realisation. But when the resolution to proceed caught his eye the fairy curtain which obscured the face of his magic mirror is drawn up like the mist from the brow of a mountain, and he beheld the Bridge completed. It is a high, slender, rainbow-like structure, having a barrier of strong palisades on either side to protect it from the fury of the waves and the destroying breath proceeding from the "storm throat" of the Tay. The piers of the Bridge and its protecting palisades have the effect of increasing the velocity of the currents, and these in their turn are scooping out deep channels which threaten to destroy the foundations, while the mud and sand disturbed in the process are forming enormous banks, which will eventually obstruct the entrance to the Harbour, and perhaps endanger the fairway at the mouth of the river itself. But there is still another danger. He sees a ship which has slipped its anchors during a storm. It is drifting up the river, manned by a drunken crew, who, regardless of the consequences, allow it to run against a pier, and, strange to say, the ship is uninjured by the shock, while the Bridge is toppled over like a child's house of cards. Yet a little while and a train filled with happy people is swiftly proceeding along the tortuous structure. Its weight and velocity acts with such a centrifugal force upon the curve that the workmanship is unable to bear the strain, and he sees the Bridge open up, and the train, with its human freight, precipitated into the river a hundred feet below. An islet is now seen in the firth where no islet existed before, and its component parts are loose stones, fragments of iron and of wood, together with mangled human bodies, and the eels are gliding out and in between the interstices of the horrible scene. The Bridge itself is a wreck, and never more will be used as a medium of communication between the counties of Fife and Forfar. And yet once more. A giant, restless in his sleep, is seen struggling under the district of Comrie. At every turn the monster makes the earth is shaken as if subjected to an attack of palsy, and the radius within which these shakings and tremblings are felt includes the Carse of Gowrie and — Dundee ! A shake which scarcely moves the tallest and most slender chimney in the smoke-begrimed town has ample power to throw the rainbow bridge into the Tay, and all the powers which man can exercise can hardly set it up again. Thus the Seer predicted the fate of the great undertaking in a series of eight letters written to the Dundee Advertiser, beginning, on the 7th of December 1869 and ending on the 11th of March 1870. Through whatever medium the Bridge might be viewed, Mr Mathew saw nothing but disaster, and it is a question had he lived to witness the heavy ballast trains which have daily crossed the Tay by its iron roadway whether he would not have found some other agent as a substitute for that centrifugal force which has so treacherously failed to aid him in the fulfilment of his predictions. Whilst Grothe doubtless ended up regretting some of that mockery, from the dates given, those predictions were made when contracts had yet to be let, and the bridge piers were to be brick; perhaps some elucidation could be given of which castings the Seer was predicting to be defective.Rjccumbria (talk) 20:37, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Claims of plagiarism by Darwin and/or Wallace
I have edited the first paragraph to remove two sentences that claim that both Darwin and Wallace were “aware of Matthew’s work” and that they “might have been responsible for 'the greatest known science fraud in history by plagiarising Matthew's complete hypothesis of natural selection, his terminology, observations and creative explanations'”. These claims have been made by Mike Sutton, and are detailed in his blog (http://www.bestthinking.com/articles/science/biology_and_nature/genetics_and_molecular_biology/internet-dating-with-darwin-new-discovery-that-darwin-and-wallace-were-influenced-by-matthew-s-prior-discovery). Sutton’s evidence is: (1) via a search of digitized book libraries, Sutton has found several new examples of citations of Matthew’s book, including some by people known to Darwin and Wallace (he therefore claims that Matthew’s ideas would have been known to Darwin and Wallace). (2) Sutton has employed a plagiarism text comparison tool to propose that certain passages of Darwin and Wallace are similar in style to Matthew. Sutton’s views have not been widely accepted, since his evidence can be alternatively interpreted as showing that: (1) people read Matthew’s book (this is not in doubt), but did not grasp his views on evolution; (2) similarities in 19-century writing style could confuse a text comparison software. The situation with regards to possible plagiarism by Darwin and Wallace therefore remains as described in the section “later opinions” of this article – a possibility but one without any firm evidence. Mikeweale (talk) 20:03, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Sutton claims that Matthew was given the run-around in 1867 when the BA held its annual meeting in Dundee in what Sutton describes as "one of the most shameful examples of scholarly platform blocking in the history of modern science".
 * "Matthew at the age of 77 years wanted to give a paper at the conference on his discovery of natural selection. We learn by way of his letter of complaint published in the Dundee Advertiser (Matthew, 1867)that he was thwarted. Matthew wrote of his outrage that his paper, which had been placed last on the programme, was seemingly blocked on the spurious grounds that there was insufficient time for him to read it."
 * It isn't clear where Sutton gets the information that Matthew's rejected paper was on 'his discovery of natural selection' as opposed to 'natural selection, which he had discovered' and even less clear why he thinks the paper crowded out was on either of those topics.Sutton's reference is to a passage in Dempster, not to the issue of the Dundee Advertiser in which Matthew's letter of complaint was published.  The letter can be found in the Dundee Advertiser of 13 September "'the conduct towards me of the soi-disant British Association for the Advancement of Science has been such that I consider it right to lay the subject before the public. I gave in to their Assistant-General Secretary nine papers to be read. Of these they rejected seven and admitted two, one of the latter, on Botany, I withdrew as I thought it required the rejected to appear along with it . The other I did not withdraw, as it had an immediate importance, but which the Society managed, by delaying the reading till the last, not to read.  I will match the importance of these nine papers, in a national point of view, against all that was read at the Dundee meeting, of which the public will have an opportunity to judge.  With regard to one of these papers, on what is termed Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection, but which theory was published by me about thirty years before Darwin (honourably acknowledged in his last edition by Darwin), at a time when man was scarcely ready for such thoughts, I surely had the best right to be heard upon this subject.  Yet others were allowed to speak upon it, and its parent denied to do so .  Such is the conduct of a Society terming itself the British Association for the Advancement of Science'"


 * The Dundee Advertiser of 11 September 1867 reports the session (10 September 1867 )at which a paper by Matthew was to have been taken. In Sectional Meeting F (Economic Science & Statistics), Matthew was to have read a paper on "Employer and Employed - Capital and Labour" - given his past Chartist politics, it would be interesting to know what he intended to say . In the event, the first paper presented - on the funds available for education - triggered a long discussion, and two papers, one of them Matthew's, were dropped. (Matthew's letter does not complain that the lack of time was spurious,  merely that it was his paper which suffered)  Rjccumbria (talk) 21:07, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Prior claims to discovery of principle of natural selection
I have edited the last two sentences of the section on “Later opinions” to clarify the earlier claims for the discovery of natural selection. The key point about Matthew is that, like Darwin and Wallace, he saw natural selection as a mechanism for macroevolution, as opposed to within-species microevolution. William Charles Wells and Edward Blyth both proposed versions of natural selection as a within-species force only. The earliest proponent of this limited version of natural selection currently known is James Hutton, so I have added his name here. Mikeweale (talk) 20:39, 29 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Recent edits by got Sutton's "Big Data" claims wildly out of proportion, I've put them in the "later opinions" section after removing duplicate and dubious sources. Have any historians other than James Moore discussed these claims? . . dave souza, talk 17:18, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

3RR and Darwinist Preventionism
Sorry lower case 'dave' Souza. You may be a Scot, or live in Scotland, but you are hardly Scottish! Upholding the issue of 'Taking Out' my addition of a VERIFIABLE FACT is totally reprehensible. I was merely drawing attention to the fact that Patrick Matthew's prior coining of the phrase Natural Selection was in 1831which is 28 years before Charles Darwin and doing so in a quite reasonable way. Your DISLIKE of this and editing out really disqualifies you as an editor of Encyclopaedic information. Wikipedia is NOT a right-wing newspaper and nor is it sold on street corners, so STOP editing the pages as if it were one. If you do not want Wikipedia to be rejected globally as a source of verified data then STOP your incessant editing OUT of nouns and adjectives and even verbs thus altering the meaning of other people's carefully thought out scripts and making their intentions seem wrongful. Leave people's additions as they are and discuss with them PREVIOUS to EDITING OUT to find out where they got their information from so that you can independently verify the same if you want to of course. If you don't want to because you already know that you are wrong, then LEAVE editing to others who have a balanced view. Wikipedia will lose its place in the global setting, and already has as any University papers DO NOT ACCEPT wikipedia references now. All down to you and the likes of you. Well done, lower case 'dave'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SuueDee (talk • contribs) 08:30, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * See No personal attacks and comply with talk page guidelines: focus on content, not on other editors. If you think Patrick Matthew coined the phrase Natural Selection please provide a reference and quotation. If you think this belongs in the article, what reliable third party source discusses its significance? . . dave souza, talk 08:57, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

03/11 2017 Well Said Sue Dee... dave souza is most certainly not a True Scot as we are. Your late father would no doubt be very proud of you. With time, his work on Patrick Matthew of Gourdiehill will become much more significant with the additional information of who Patrick Matthew 'actually was.' Patrick Matthew will no longer be trivialized by 'dave souza' or in such dismissing undertones as Darwin implied through the pages of the Gardener's Chronicle in 1860. Especially not now after his resurrection rightly won of his "Historical" introduction of the Giant Sequoia's to Scotland and Europe (See patrickmatthew.com under "The Matthew Redwoods")dispelling the myths of John Lindley, a close associate of Darwin and a fellow member of both the Linnaean and Royal Societies who actually was the 'Managing Editor' in 1853 of the "Gardener's Chronicle" and William Lobb of Veitch Nursery that were falsified by Lindley himself as to their being responsible for the Wellingtonian name suggestion and the introduction of the Trees to the UK and Europe in 1853. In 1866 one year after the death of John Lindley in a retraction of the Gardeners Chronicle the editorial staff discredited the Lindley and Lobb claims to priority and awarded both John Matthew and his Father, Patrick Matthew respectively.( See also Patrickmatthew.com...under subtitle 'The Matthew Redwoods' ) With this newly revived information as well as Patrick Matthew's now known famous blood line connections to several influential members of the Admiralty living within his own lifetime...there is no doubt that Patrick Matthew is rising from the ashes of Darwinian Totalitarian mythology. As these family ties to the Admiralty continue to be better understood, they too will become more well publicized to future readers who are aware of just how important Naval timber was to the rise of the British Empire. Patrick Matthew's close Admiralty connections include, Admirals Adam Duncan of Lundie, Camperdown and Gourdiehill and Patrick Matthew's next door neighbor and relative Admiral Adam Drummond of Megginch who also traces his own linage back through the same Duncan Lairds of Lundie. This is considered to be the "other" obvious discrepancy intentionally provoked by Darwin...the trivialization of the very subject of Naval Timber. Both Admiral Duncan and Admiral Drummond as well as others the likes of Lord Nelson, Sir Thomas Cochrane and Samuel Hood were all advocates of the need to discover and capitalize on acquiring superior stands of timber throughout their many voyages to points throughout the world. Native stands of Timber in the British Isles were well on their way to being totally devastated due to Naval use. Recognition of such a possibility was recognized It would have been of no surprise that had these Men of such Naval stature been witness to Darwin's trivial remarks of the subject you can be sure that his fantasy britches would more than likely have been put aflame, had all lived to see this trivialization in 1860.

It's quite obvious that Patrick Matthew coined his "Natural Process of Selection" some 28 years before Darwin in his 1831 publication "On Naval Timber and Arboriculture." With Darwin's own full capitulation of Matthew's preemption of both he and Wallace's so called published papers to the Linnaean Society and Darwin's own publication of "Origin's of the Species," then it's also obvious that the time frame of publications i.e. 1831 verses 1858 itself credibly stands alone, because Matthew's entire "ONT&A" work and not just the referenced appendages that Darwin selectively chose to respond with in 1860, ... the year of Patrick Matthew's calling out of Darwin on the carpet for his duplicity and failure to cite him and his work... is just as implicating of irregularity. The obviousness of an intentional suggestive smoke screen by Darwin can be seen to misdirect others following the "Gardeners Chronicle" coverage of the... Matthew to Darwin and Darwin to Matthew Editorial letters... away from the full reading of Matthew's 1831 work, which most definitively supports Matthew's definition of evolution in the management of timber ...as well as most of his lifetime of work devoted to orchard husbandry for the purpose of the hybridization and creation of different varieties of Apples and Pears...which in and of itself is one of the fulcrum  mechanisms of Artificial Selection verses that of Natural Selection.

As noted by Sutton (2014 )through the Google search Big Data Research mechanism to sort through millions of books and documents Patrick Matthew was the first noted scientific mind to use the technique of double analogies. The use of Double analogies has always been very rarely used in Scientific research. Yet Patrick Matthew in his originality deliberately chose to uniquely do so in 1831... and Darwin not realizing his fallacy, implicates himself of Plagiaristic indecency a few pages into "Origins of the Species published in 1858 by repetitiously following suit and... used/duplicated... the rare technique himself, despite his remarkable sense and capability of rewriting his own similar double analogies into his own words.  There could not be a more telling smoking gun on that fact alone...but there is! Darwin was incredulously taken in with his own newly acquired authoritarian status.  So much so, that he chose not to even bother changing the subject...which so happened to be Patrick Matthew's Forte...and not Darwin's.  Patrick Matthew in his book "ONT&A" noted not only the similarities of both Natural and Artificial Selection in creating new varieties of 'Apples' and Pears...he noted also in both, their dissimilarities as well. His double analogies for both Natural and Artificial Selection have been for years redundantly shown and espoused by Dr.s James W. Dempster, in his:  Evolutionary Concepts in the Nineteenth Century" and  Michael Sutton in his "Nullius in Verba."  Others such as Raphael Zon (1913) Jon Barker, (2009) and Wainwright (2011) have clearly stated that Patrick Matthew is the originator of the Theory of Evolution and not Charles Darwin.  And with the implications as well as the ramifications of the disastrous effects of the recent Indonesian Great Tsunami and the Japanese Earthquakes, DR. Michael Rampino of New York University has gone even further with his 2011 Article " Patrick Matthew's Theory of Evolution Much More Accurate than Darwin's," in regards to the effects that catastrophism has on the extinction of geologically isolated species and the ability of either regeneration of species or the introduction of new species within the newly formed fertile fields created by such catastrophic events.

Howard L. Minnick Major Corps of Engineers U.S. Army Botanist and Range Conservationist — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.219.90.154 (talk) 02:01, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

The use of claimed private emails and referencing un-evidenced misleading claims made in a private blog site to criticise published research
SOME EDITOR going by the THE NAME OF J F DERRY HAS most recently PUBLISHED STATEMENTS ABOUT PUBLISHED RESEARCH ON the Patrick Matthew PAGE. In many cases, he has referenced a blog site only for his sources and his own claimed private email conversations. Many of the claims made from the blog site he quotes and references are, arguably, completely misleading. Please can this be sorted out by an objective Wikipedia n accordance with Wikipedia referencing guidelines - and requirement of interdependently verifiable evidence. 152.71.156.113 (talk) 12:15, 16 June 2017 (UTC)


 * If you object to statements in the article, you'll have to explain which statements, otherwise no-one is likely to take any notice. Personally, I believe that most or all of the material about a dispute involving "Sutton" should be deleted. Maproom (talk) 13:51, 16 June 2017 (UTC)


 * As pointed out by on your help desk request, you need to identify specific edits to which you object.  has made many edits recently. An easy way to do this is to look in the history of the article and copy the link connected to the word "prev" on the edit in question.
 * While I have your attention, I note that your IP address is assigned to Nottingham Trent University, which is where Mike Sutton (criminologist) works. Are you in fact that person, or are you connected to him in your employment? If so you may need to declare that you are a connected contributor under the WP:COI rules, since Mike Sutton's research and writings are referenced in this article. --Krelnik (talk) 13:54, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

I've taken a scythe to the weeds that had sprouted in the article. I'm not claiming that no more such work is needed. Maproom (talk) 20:38, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Time for a separate page on Matthew (1831)?
I've added just about everything known, relevant to production of Matthew's book. While it forms a significant reason to be interested in Matthew, it is far from the only aspect worth investigation. To keep the page balanced, perhaps it needs to be relocated. At what point should that now large book section be moved to its own page? Who makes that decision? Who carries it out? Not confident I know how. That's me finished on here as far as I can tell Jfderry (talk) 22:35, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
 * You might want to consider whether the simple solution to Huskisson being a 'late minister' in a portion of the book supposedly written before he died is that 'late' refers not to Huskisson, but to 'minister' (in the same way that where we would talk of 'the previous government' the/a standard phrase at that time would have been 'the late ministers'). The phrase was much in use in that sense in 1830 in the context of the aftermath of the July Revolution in France; to give an example taken not entirely at random: an editorial in the Perthshire Courier of 2 September 1830 remarked "To appease the popular fury, it is almost certain that the lives of some of the late Ministers are to sacrificed". Rjccumbria (talk) 00:55, 30 June 2017 (UTC)


 * that is excellent thank you  - i never would have known that. pretty obscure piece of knowledge you have there, although, as you say, a quick dig through Cobbett's Political Register, &Co and it turns plenty of ministers with exaggerated deaths. It was never a main point, more of an enigma, and now you've solved it. Thank you. *applause* -- I've used your Perthshire Courier quote as it illustrates very nicely. Do I now cite you for that. I think it's one of those newspapers capitalised on by the British Library, so I can't do a direct link. Jfderry (talk) 04:44, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
 * One of my interests is bulking up the WP articles on the supporters of the Ten hour movement and sooner or later the MPs amongst them stand on a hustings and deploy all the political jargon of the day, so after a while it gets to be horribly familiar, rather than pretty obscure.


 * (I do have a minor problem with Matthew bracketting Huskisson and Sadler, by the way. Sadler's views I know (because his chief claim to fame is his advocacy of factory reform; otherwise these days he is -probably rightly - deeply obscure): he thought British shipping was going to hell in a hand cart because protection had been (partially) removed. But that (partial) removal was an achievement that Huskisson was proud of, and he defended it in a Commons debate in March 1830, pointing out that so far from British shipping being in decay and ruin, it was now moving 50% more goods than in 1816. But that's Matthew for you... )


 * I got the Perthshire Courier quote via Findmypast/British Newspapers Archive (invaluable if you want reports of hustings speeches in the 1830s, but I doubt if that's how they make their money) From a slightly enlarged quote it should be obvious its politics were not Matthew's:
 * "Every day bands of idle mechanics parade the streets of Paris, singing the notorious Marçellois hymn, and bearing flags, with inscriptions, borrowed from the worst days of the former Revolution. To appease the popular fury, it is almost certain that the lives of some of the late Ministers are to be sacrificed" :(the direct link is http://search.findmypast.co.uk/bna/viewarticle?id=bl%2f0001174%2f18300902%2f022, but I don't like citing the direct link with 'subscription required')
 * Ooops - forgot to sign Rjccumbria (talk) 22:13, 1 July 2017 (UTC)


 * I think you just won the prize for niche interest (sign previous before you get botted?) Jfderry (talk) 21:00, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Compared to CD spending a couple of decades worrying about the beaks of finches on a small group of islands in the Pacific, I reckon I'm just a beginner. Rjccumbria (talk) 22:13, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

copyvio
I have removed a section of very close paraphrase based on a blog, https://historiesofecology.blogspot.co.uk (The blog appears to be so much a personal statement that I have not actually linked it). Even if it were rewritten from scratch, the blog is not a RS.

I think the rest of the article is wildly excessive detail, but that's another matter.  DGG ( talk ) 00:58, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Matthew even had calling cards...
Since no citation has shown up, I've removed this sentence: "There is no foundation for assertions that Matthew even had calling cards printed with Discoverer of the Principle of Natural Selection, which may have come from Loren Eiseley (1958. Darwin's Century)."

The nearest I've found is in, but the source of this point is cut off on google books; it seems to be an addition to the older online version. If someone has full access to the 2021 book, please review this and show where it was sourced. . .dave souza, talk 11:23, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Article is not from a neutral point of view
This article does not follow WP:Neutral point of view, especially in the sections on Matthew's legacy in evolutionary science. I removed some of the worst sentences, but I'm positive there are some that I missed. Examples include:

"Misconceived claims are made on behalf of Victorian evolutionists, with all the tedious inevitability that was predicted by Stephen Jay Gould in his piece on Natural Selection as a Creative Force,"

"The equally inevitable rebuttal of these claims tends to require an inordinately disproportionate investment of effort (see Earp 2016 for an explanation), sometimes only concluding after years of counterarguments (e.g., Roy Davies' The Darwin Conspiracy: Origins of a Scientific Crime). Unfortunately, the media coverage that accompanies these revisionist campaigns is the version most likely to be seen and remembered by the public, not the peer-reviewed paper appearing in the scientific literature a year later. The damage is therefore multifarious and insidious, from time lost to the individual, to misinforming the public en masse. Contrary to the stated intention, the unfortunate outcome of the latest claims made in Matthew's name might very well do more damage than good."

"Combining these facts, Robert Chambers had probably not read or received the message about natural selection in Matthew's book, but has surely not promulgated it in the Vestiges, and probably neither in conversations." Pac-Man PHD (talk) 13:17, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Misinformation on Patrick Matthew on Wikipedia
Wikipedia and editors of the Patrick Matthew page are embarrassingly shown to have seriously and deliberately misled their readership (in archived and current content). The information about this is published in a chapter on Patrick Matthew in a new Springer book on Ethics. The work of one of the authors of the chapter is seriously misrepresented by named Wikipedia editing individuals in the book chapter. Is any Wikipedia editor interested in correcting the serious lies and other falsehoods? Get the facts. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-43292-7_14 2A02:C7C:56B2:CB00:1964:F1A8:8ED4:598D (talk) 10:26, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Matthews did publicize his ideas on natural selection
In the first paragraph this article states:

He published the basic concept of natural selection as a mechanism in evolutionary adaptation and speciation in 1831 (i.e. resulting from positive natural selection, in contrast to its already, widely known, negative role in removal of individuals in the Struggle for Survival), but did not further develop or publicize his ideas

It is wrong to say he did not publicize his ideas as he or his publishers on his behalf placed adverts in a number of publications. For example a more than half page advert was placed in the Encyclopedia Britannica which includes the following:

In embracing the philosophy of plants, the interesting subject of species and variety is considered,– the principle of the natural location of vegetables is distinctly shown,– the principle also which in the untouched wild “keeps unsteady nature to her law,” inducing conformity in species, and preventing deterioration of breed, is explained,– and the causes of the variation and deterioration of cultivated forest trees is pointed out. [Highlighting added by me]

In view of this I think it is misleading to say he did not "further publicize his ideas" and I would suggest removing that clause from the first paragraph. Gourdiehill (talk) 21:50, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Clarify statement on selection
I think the following sentence could be clarified:

He published the basic concept of natural selection as a mechanism in evolutionary adaptation and speciation in 1831 (i.e. resulting from positive natural selection, in contrast to its already, widely known, negative role in removal of individuals in the Struggle for Survival), but did not further develop or publicize his ideas

I think it would be better to substitute "directional selection" for "positive natural selection" because the former term is used in Wikipedia's page on Natural Selection and there is an article on "Directional Selection".

For me the phrase "already, widely known, negative role in removal of individuals in the Struggle for Survival" is problematic. I do not know what is meant by "negative role" here and feel it could be clarified by sticking to concepts for which Wikipedia has articles. If I had to guess I would say negative role is referring to Stabilizing Selection but if so then I think it is wrong to say it was already widely known. Also it needs to be said that Matthew describes it in his book.

I would be grateful on some clarification on my confusion over the above.

I would suggest that the sentence be changed to the following:

He published the basic concept of natural selection as a mechanism in evolutionary adaptation and speciation (Directional Selection) and species constancy or stasis (Stabilizing Selection) in 1831 but did not publicly develop his ideas further until after Darwin and Wallace published their theories in 1859. Gourdiehill (talk) 22:59, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Darwin, Matthews and Stabilizing Selection
Previously I posted on this talk page a post titled "Clarify statement on selection" in which I questioned the characterization in this article of Mathew's ideas on what I think are stabilizing selection. I got no response so went ahead and made changes to the article which I think are an improvement.

On reading the article recently I noticed that there is another subsection (Bilogical Concepts) which quotes from a website which no longer exists at the given URL. An extract from the quote reads "Matthew's theory of evolution is a chimera pairing the old doctrine that natural selection (usually) keeps the species fixed ...". As far as I can determine the idea of natural selection keeping species fixed is what is today called stabilizing selection. In Naval Timber and Arboriculture, Matthew clearly describes how natural selection is responsible for curtailing variation and when it is relaxed through domestication more variation is observed. I am not aware that this was an "old doctrine" in 1831 when Matthew published it. I would be very grateful if someone could point to the literature prior to 1831 where stabilizing selection is described.

It is important to note that Darwin, in the first two sentences of The Origin of Species, also attempts an explanation of why more variety is observed under domestication than in nature. He states that: "I think we are driven to conclude that this greater variability is simply due to our domestic productions having been raised under conditions of life not so uniform as, and somewhat different from, those to which the parent-species have been exposed under nature". This explanation is nothing to do with natural selection. Later in chapter 1 he states that "the remarkable effect which confinement or cultivation has on the functions of the reproductive system; this system appearing to be far more susceptible than any other part of the organisation, to the action of any change in the conditions of life." Domestication would be a major "change in the conditions of life".

It is noteworthy that despite Darwin reading Matthew's book after he published The Origin (if not before) he still failed to incorporate Matthew's explanation of greater variability under domestication which is a formulation of what we currently call stabilizing selection in any of the subsequent editions of The Origin. As Darwin fails to comprehend stabilizing selection I find it surprising to see it referred to as an "old doctrine". This misconception which incidentally Matthew explicitly anticipates and rejects resurfaces in many places in The Origin both directly but also indirectly in Darwin resorting to disuse (in the Lamarkian sense) as an alternative to natural selection frequently. Such cases as moles losing their sight or flightless birds and insects are difficult to explain by natural selection if you don't realize that sighted mammals and flying birds and insects are continually acted on by natural selection to stop them from losing these faculties. Ultimately Darwin's misunderstanding of this issue leads him on to develop his pangenes theory which is a mechanism for Lamarkism.

I would be very grateful for any thoughts on this issue as I think it is very important. If I am not persuaded otherwise I will probably remove the section quoted above from the article. Gourdiehill (talk) 00:02, 3 May 2024 (UTC)