Talk:Universal Darwinism

Initial article
After posting this article I received some comments (can't seem to relocate them) about links to some outside sources not being allowed and that if I disagreed I should discuss my objections on a 'talk page'.

The links I included on the page, outside of internal links to other Wikipedia articles, are:

1) Universaldarwinism.com - this site, containing a lot of information concerning Universal Darwinism, seems appropriate to be linked from a Wikepedia article on Universal Darwinism.

2) Susan Blackmore web site - there are numerous resources on this site concerning the work of Susan Blackmore who wrote 'The Meme Machine' containing perhaps an unparalleled description and explanation of Darwinian Processes.

3) Richard Dawkins web site - Richard Dawkins coined the term 'Universal Darwinism'.

In short these sites all seem appropriate resources for those interested in furthering their understanding of Universal Darwinism.

--Jockocampbell (talk) 22:47, 26 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Neither the Blackmore nor the Dawkins website mainpages give any more easy access to information on this topic than a Google-search would, so I've deleted them. This article appears to be no more than a collection of divergent usages of the term "universal darwinism", and as such is inappropriate per WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Additionally the last two paragraphs are unsourced. HrafnTalkStalk 03:58, 27 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the comments. I have added sources for the second to last paragraph. I will review the guidelines on 'indiscriminant.--Jockocampbell (talk) 06:42, 27 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I reviewed the criteria on 'indescriminant' articles, they are said to include:
 * 1) Frequently Asked Questions.
 * 2) Plot summaries.
 * 3) Lyrics databases.
 * 4) Statistics.
 * 5) News reports.


 * Clearly the nature of the article submitted is not one of the above. What authoritative sources have meant by 'Universal Darwinism' has changed over time and I have tried to convey that in this article. I considered constraining the article to only describe a particular meaning but thought that might be misleading.
 * --Jockocampbell (talk) 06:59, 27 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I have cited, in support of the last paragraph, an article from the Journal of Evolutionary Economics. --Jockocampbell (talk) 07:54, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Further comments on initial article
HrafnTalkStalk 10:47, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) This article appears to be an indiscriminate list of mentions of the phrase "universal darwinism", without any indication that it is a coherent heterogeneous topic.
 * 2) The article currently contradicts itself. It states that "Universal Darwinism was perhaps first coined by Richard Dawkins in 1983", but then goes on to list two articles from before 1983 as occurring "More recently".
 * 3) Darwin's Dangerous Idea does not appear to mention "universal darwinism", beyond a citation to Bendall.
 * 4) Without Miracles mentions it only in context of Dawkins.
 * 5) *According to FubarObfusco on Talk:Darwinism, Cziko refers to the idea as "universal selection theory" -- if so, then this needs to be woven in. The article needs some semblance of a narrative to weave the, currently indiscriminate, discussions of 'Universal Darwinism' together into some coherent whole. HrafnTalkStalk 07:42, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * 6) I couldn't track down any of the other citations on this point, so I am requesting quotes to verify that they verify that "More recently the term has come to refer to the cumulative theoretical efforts to utilize Darwinian Processes"
 * 7) arXiv articles are not generally considered WP:RS, unless accepted for publication elsewhere.
 * 8) The claim that "the theories of Quantum Darwinism and cosmological natural selection" mean that "Darwinian Processes have been postulated to be operating at the foundations of Physics, Cosmology and Chemistry" would appear to be WP:SYNTHESIS, unsupported by the cited sources.


 * I have rewritten some of this article to better meet your suggestions.


 * Do I need citations for items linked to other Wikipedia articles?
 * --Jockocampbell (talk) 19:51, 13 January 2009 (UTC)


 * You can get away without them if (i) the material is an unambiguous duplication/summary of the material in the other article (i.e. it contains no interpretation or other WP:SYNTH of it) & (ii) the material is well-sourced in that other article. A pipe to the particular section containing the material is also often a good idea. HrafnTalkStalk 05:12, 14 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I believe I have resolved the issue of the 'unreliable source?' and I have substituted a published citation. --Jockocampbell (talk) 16:33, 15 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I beleive I have resolved the issue of the 'page number needed' and the citation to Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea (paragraph 2) --Jockocampbell (talk) 16:39, 15 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I've cleared out the old tags (you can clear them out when you introduce the new ref that renders them unneeded). The third paragraph ("The employment of the Darwinian process...") still needs a lot of work however. HrafnTalkStalk 18:03, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Improper synthesis
In response to the editor's 'improper synthesis' comment concerning the phase:

"More recently Darwinian Processes have been postulated to be operating at the foundations of Physics, Cosmology and Chemistry"

The accuracy of this statement can be check at the Wikipedia link provided for 'Quantum Darwinism' and 'Cosmological Natural Selection'. Some passages from cited papers are copied below.

The cited peer reviewed paper on Quantum Darwinism postulated in regards to physics and its derivative chemistry:

"It also illuminates fundamental physics. Massive redundancy can cause certain information to become objective, at the expense of other information. The process by which this “fittest” information is propagated through the environment, at the expense of incompatible information, is Quantum Darwinism."

The cited paper on Cosmological natural selection contains:

"Thus, the hypothesis of cosmological natural selection explains the values of all the parameters that determine low energy physics and chemistry: the masses of the proton, neutron, electron and neutrino and the strengths of the strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions."

--Jockocampbell (talk) 01:46, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

History and Development
The first five paragraphs in this section is cited solely to the writings of the parties involved -- not a single third-party source in them. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 16:14, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

David Sloan Wilson
Shouldn't David Sloan Wilson, who publishes about Generalized Darwinism, be mentioned in this article? 173.88.246.138 (talk) 00:15, 19 September 2023 (UTC)