Talk:Aristotle/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Tim riley (talk · contribs) 14:15, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Starting first read-through. More soonest. Tim riley talk 14:15, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Tim riley, you just beat me at it, lol. Was about to paste my review, haha.--Farang Rak Tham (Talk) 15:50, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Many thanks Tim and Farang Rak Tham, your comments will be most welcome. Katolophyromai is co-nom. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:59, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Farang Rak Tham, I agree with Chiswick Chap: please feel free to paste your comments anyway. I'm sure they will be helpful to both me and the nominators. Tim riley talk 17:04, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Preliminary query: what variety of English is the article meant to be in? The spellings are mostly English (centre, criticised, fertilised, molluscs, practised, specialised, travellers, watercolour) but I spotted a few Americanisms (analyze, labeled, recognized, theater). Either is fine, of course, but it should be one or t'other. If you tell me which WP:ENGVAR is desired for this article I'll be happy to amend the spellings in passing as I comb through the text during my review. Tim riley talk 17:30, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Let's go for Brit if nobody objects. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:53, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

The Americanisms are probably my fault. I am an American and I do not really know British spellings, so I always just use American spellings. It did not occur to me as I was working on the article that Chiswick Chap is British and was probably using British spellings. (I actually had never heard that "labeled" was an Americanism; if that is the case, what is the British spelling?) --Katolophyromai (talk)

You can go quite mad if you try to work out why some words are spelled this way in AmE and that way in BrE. We (in England) spell the past tense of "label" as "labelled", but just as one has concluded that AmE goes for one 'l' and BrE for two, one runs into "fulfillment" in AmE which in BrE is "fulfilment". Leave the spelling to me and I'll tweak as necessary as I go through the article. Tim riley talk 19:47, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Comments from Farang Rak Tham

Thanks. Well, for what it's worth, here goes:

1. Prose:

• The article is generally well-written and at times is just brilliant, but it is cryptic in some places, which raises questions for the uninitiated. The section "Chance and spontaneity", for example, needs considerable rewriting to make more sense.

Tweaked the Chance section. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:51, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

• There is some editorializing in some sentences.

Tweaked the History section. Anywhere else? Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:56, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

• According to this Earwig scan, there are significant matches between the section on psychology and an external url. There is also close paraphrasing in the sections about metaphysics and epistemology. This needs to be rewritten.

There is a very high match between a March 2016 version of the Wikipedia article and this 7 April 2016 web posting, so it seems he copied us. There are much smaller matches with the Catholic Encyclopedia 2017; we're older than that, so either they copied us or we copied an earlier edition of them, I can't say, but I've edited out the few longer phrases that match just in case. Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:02, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

2. MOS: Not many problems here, but some statements in the lead are not found in the main body of the article, such as the quote of Cicero. The lead should summarize the article, and not introduce new information.

Taken Cicero and Proxenus out of lead. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:48, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

3. References layout: excellent.

4. Reliable sources: sources are reliable,but there are statements in the lead that are not supported (fully yet) by the main body of the article. Though obviously not invented, you need to support the advent of virtue ethics, as well as the influence on Jewish thought by reliable sources.

The link is meant, I think, to support the Islamic legacy discussed in the article, so I've pruned the mention.

5. Original research: none found.

6. Broadness: excellent.

7. Focus: at times, explanations of theories are too detailed.

I've simplified the motion, memory, and dreams sections. Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:56, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

8. Neutral: yes.

9. Stable: article is stable.

10-11. Pics: images are generally free and tagged. There are some layout problems with the tags at File:Aristotelis_De_Moribus_ad_Nicomachum.jpg and File:Arabic_aristotle.jpg, but nothing serious.--Farang Rak Tham (Talk) 19:38, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Tagged both images with PD-Art|PD-old-100. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:40, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks to Farang Rak Tham for the above: very helpful. I'll return to the review tomorrow or shortly thereafter. Tim riley talk 21:40, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, too. Good work!--Farang Rak Tham (Talk) 07:16, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Comments from reviewer

This is a mightily impressive article, and I find myself reviewing it to FA rather than GA standard as I should be doing. I'll need several goes, and here are my first lot of comments for your consideration. They cover the text down to the start of "Four causes".

• Lead
  • "Little is known for definite about his life" – I don't know why "for certain" is good English and "for definite" isn't, but it isn't.

    Certain it is.

  • "tutored Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC. Teaching Alexander the Great" – perhaps just Alexander the second time?

    Done.

  • "continue to be the object of active academic study today" – active as opposed to passive study? And if they continue you don't need "today".

    Fixed.

  • "In the 19th century, Martin Heidegger created a new interpretation" – he was a child prodigy if so: he was aged eleven in 1900.

    Fixed.

• Life
  • We don't normally link the names of capital cities like Athens

    Gone.

  • "Hermias's adoptive daughter … Hermias' death" – you need to standardise on the form of possessive for words ending in s. Hermias's is more usual in BrE and Hermias' in AmE, but that's not an immutable rule. Your call, but be consistent one way or the other.

    Hermias's it is.

  • "De Anima" – I'm curious to know why you give a Latin title to a Greek work in an English article. The Wikipedia article has an English title.

    On the Soul it is.

  • Does anyone need a link to "natural causes"?

    No.

• History
  • I can't work out the quotation marks in the first sentence. I take it that the words within the single quotes are Aristotle's but whose are the other words within the double quotes?

    Quotes gone.

• • Second para: "hence" is not a conjunction: we need a stronger stop than a comma here.

    Reworded.

• Analytics and the Organon
  • "some of his followers, sometimes identified specifically as Andronicus" – I see what this is meant to convey, but logic fails here: "some of his followers" can't be identified as one man.

    Reworded.

• Epistemology
  • Only a passing thought, but I think you're missing a trick by reproducing the Raphael without drawing attention to who is pointing where and why. (I can provide an impeccable citation on this point if wanted.)

    Mea culpa, I moved it into the ref as a bit of a detailed aside ... here it is back again. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:43, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

• Universals and particulars
  • "Aristotle's predecessor, Plato" – I doubt if 2,600 words into the article anyone who has penetrated this far will need to be told again that Plato was Aristotle's predecessor.

    Gone.

• Motion
  • I think a wiki-link for the Earth is distinctly overdoing it.

    Gone.

More a.s.a.p. Tim riley talk 11:16, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

General comment

I pause here for a general comment on the whole article, viz, that it is stuffed with superfluous links. Can anyone seriously maintain that all (or indeed any) of these will be of the slightest help to anyone reading this article: apple, beekeepers, cat, common sense, definition, dreams, ducks, Earth, elephant, experience, extinct, fishermen, flute, Greek, heart, insects, iron, liquid gas, man, matter, memory, memory, minerals, mouse, Muslim, organism, perception, perceptions, pump, rationality, recollection, scientist, sensation, senses, slaves, sleep, solid, theoretical and thinking?

Removed lots and lots. However, Common sense has a special Aristotelian meaning.

A matter of opinion, of course, but what is not is the number of duplicate references. Alexander the Great, logic and zoology are linked twice apiece before we even get to the end of the lead. Thereafter, within the main text these words are linked twice or more: animal kingdom, Thomas Aquinas, Boethius, botany, cephalopods, Dante, Empedocles, final cause, Galileo, Homer (3), Lesbos, Macedon, Nicomachus, John Philoponus and Theophrastus (3).

Removed.

Rest of the review

To conclude the review of the text:

• Optics
  • Just checking that ref 58 covers the whole paragraph. Fine if so.

Yes, it does.

• Astronomy
  • "Aristotle refuted Democritus's claim" – did he refute it or just contradict it? (I have no idea of the answer, and simply ask the question as a reviewer's knee-jerk reaction to the word "refute".)

It sounds like he refuted it to me, judging from his logical explanation of why it could not be correct. --Katolophyromai (talk) 14:09, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

• Empirical research
  • "Aristotle was the first person to study biology systematically" – says who and how is it demonstrated that nobody had done it before?

Leroi, page 7. "To be sure, some philosophers and physicians had dabbled in biology before him, but Aristotle gave much of his life to it. He was the first to do so. He mapped the territory. He invented the science."

• • "His data ... are assembled" – how nice to see "data" used in its traditional way, as a plural! Bravo!

Many thanks!

• • "until its rediscovery in the 19th century" – what is the "it" that was rediscovered? Not at all clear what this sentence is getting at.

Simplified wording.

• Influence
  • "Aristotle remains one of the most influential people who ever lived". I don't challenge the statement, but it could do with a citation of its own.

Added.

• On later Greek philosophers
  • Why the Tudor phrasing? North's I imagine, but surely a modern translation of Plutarch exists? (And the reference for this quote is inadequate: title and author but no page number or url.)

Ref added. It's indeed the Loeb 1919 version. If anyone can find a newer edition, we can happily use it.

• On Hellenistic science
  • "Ernst Mayr claimed" – I'd be cautious about the word "claimed": it is not quite a neutral word, carrying overtones of unjustified or unsubstantiated assertion.

I have replaced the word "claimed" with "states," which is more neutral and is in the literary present-tense, assuming that the work in which he claims this is still extant. --Katolophyromai (talk) 14:09, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

• On the medieval Islamic world
  • "Alkindus considered Aristotle as the outstanding" – the "as" seems superfluous.

I have removed it. --Katolophyromai (talk) 14:09, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

• On Early Modern scientists
  • I find the reference to "Galileo Galilei" a bit jarring, rather like calling Raphael "Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino" – correct but more than a touch pedantic. But I see the Wikipedia article on him is titled "Galileo Galilei", and so I can hardly press the point here.

"Galileo Galilei" is his full name and it would be best to give it as such the first time he is mentioned. After that, I think we can safely just call him "Galileo," but the first time should give his name in full. --Katolophyromai (talk) 14:09, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

• On 19th century thinkers
  • Is it relevant to this article that Nietzsche was German or Boole English?

It is worth noting. For one thing, it shows Aristotle was influential on philosophers of all languages and cultures. It also helps provide basic background information on where the people he influenced came from. --Katolophyromai (talk) 14:09, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

• • "However debatable this is" – says who?

Removed.

• • "Aristotle rigidly separated..." – could do with a citation.

• Modern rejection and rehabilitation
  • "until one remembered an advance he made" – is there a word missing here? "until one remembered what an advance he made"?

Done.

• • If you must mention Ayn Rand you should cite the quotation from her.

Done.

• Loss and preservation
  • "with an intent for subsequent publication" – reads rather oddly. "with a view to" or some such would be more usual.

Done.

• Depictions of Aristotle
  • You might add a link to Jonathan Jones (journalist).

I have added it. --Katolophyromai (talk) 14:09, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

• Info-box
  • The two sub-sections Influences and Influences are labelled but empty. Can they be deleted for this article?

Gone.

References

• To my dismay I find the references let the article down badly, to the extent that I cannot promote it to GA unless they are very considerably improved.

Before I get to the individual inadequacies in the references I offer for your consideration what I hope is a helpful pointer. There are no rules or, as far as I know, even suggestions in the Manual of Style about separating explanatory footnotes from general citations, but if you want your readers to read the footnotes you have carefully written, such as those at refs 4, 31–33, 53, 111, 163, 168 and 176 etc, I'd flag them up and put them in a separate section by means of the {{refn|Blah blah blah|group= n}} templates and {{Reflist|group=n}} for footnotes and then a {{Reflist}} for citations. Entirely up to you, naturally.

Sorted all but two, maybe you can see how we might separate them? Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:43, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Done. Please check you're happy with what I've moved into the Notes from the References section.

Thanks Tim, that's great. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:29, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Turning to the details of the existing refs:

• Ref 1 lacks an ISBN. We also need either OCLC numbers or ISBNs (13-digit ones, please) for 4, 5, 6, 10, 15, 17, 18, 21, 25, 29, 30, 38, 61, 62, 69, 73, 85, 87, 91, 110, 111, 127, 133, 165, 168, and 174. Useful tools: WorldCat for OCLCs/ISBNs, and ISBN converter to turn 10-digit ISBNs into 13-digit ones as requested by the MoS.

ISBNs: Done (between the two of us). We hope that's all of 'em.

OCLCs: Done.

• More generally, the references range in thoroughness from 109 (Author, Title, Date, Place, Publisher and ISBN) to 87 (Author – surname only – and Title and nothing else). You need to go through all the citations to books and add any of the six elements of bibliographic details that are currently omitted.

Tim riley: I've been through all of it and believe I have it in a clean state. Now so cross-eyed I can't see the remaining errors: would be much obliged if you could lend eye and hand to clean up anything that remains. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:41, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

• For websites you should add any missing site names, e.g. 13.

Done.

• WP:RS: I am not going to make an issue of it here, but if you go to FAC you may be challenged to show that the sources for 11 and 14 are reliable.

Noted.

• 16: first link broken: 404 message appears; second link OK

Removed the dead'un.

• 31–33: these are unsupported statements that need a citation apiece.

Added.

• 54: also later refs to this book. This points to a title in the Further Reading section. Sources such as this should be named in their own right in the sources section.

Moved.

• 69: I don't believe this capitalisation is accurate.

Fixed.

• 74 and 78 seem to be the same as each other.

Merged refs.

• 140–142: this appears to follow a different referencing convention from earlier citations such as 87 and 90, where only the author's surname is repeated. (And 140 is lacking a bracket the other two have.)

Formatted, moved Sorabji to Sources.

• 146: I have no idea what this is supposed to point the reader to.

Used Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy instead.

• 164: I don't imagine that so fine a scholar as Humphry House omitted the possessive apostrophe.

Fixed.

• 168: who says it's definitive?

Removed.

That will do for now. I daresay I have missed some points in the references that need attention, but I think I have caught the worst offenders. In the circumstances I am putting the review on hold for a week, and will watch progress with the most benign interest, despite the carping tone of much of the above. – Tim riley talk 13:32, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Many thanks, Tim. We'll work on all the above. Given the Easter break we may need a little longer than a week. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:27, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Conclusion

We're pretty much there, I think. The references are several parasangs short of FA standard, but they will suffice for GA. I have rechecked the criteria, and I am satisfied that the referencing now passes muster. One final quibble: refs 43 and 44a-c both seem to point to the same book, and that book is listed under Further reading, which I don’t think it oughter. But before we all lose the will to live I am declaring this article promoted.

Moved Lloyd 1968 to Sources and linked. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:37, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

I know little of philosophy – just haven't got that type of mind – but it seems to me as a layman that this is a superb article, with clear potential to get to FA. If you do go down that route in due course I'd be happy to give all the references a thorough overhaul beforehand if you wish. Meanwhile,

Overall summary

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. References to sources:

   Well referenced.

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

   Well referenced.

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

   Well illustrated.

   B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

   Well illustrated.

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

Tim riley talk 13:18, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Many thanks for the review. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:37, 30 March 2018 (UTC)