Talk:River Out of Eden

Added inappropriate tone tag

I added this tag to the article, as it it currently a collection of points about the book, coupled with a huge number of quotes. This article should not be an essay on every subject covered in the book, so it needs a rewrite to conform with the guidelines at the guide to writing better articles. Thanks. Mushin^talk 23:54, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Mushin. This was my first Wikipedia article and I agree that the style is not really what we want. I had it in mind to write a short piece with a few quotes, but then the quotes just took over. I don't think I'm going to make any further contributions for now, but I'd be quite happy to see it radically altered or replaced. Thanks. --Laurence Boyce 16:46, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Glad to have your understanding. There is definitely a lot of good stuff in there. I'm quite busy at the moment, but if I do any edits I'll try and preserve as much of your content as possible (obviously minus some of the quotes). Mushin^talk 18:55, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Some things seem to sound a bit unencyclopedic/POV/sounding like the voice of an author, e.g. "He tears their ... argument to pieces"; "This is the why question about life which philosophers and theologians have been pondering in vain for ages". Also, perhaps changing the "Dawkins shows..." to "Dawkins asserts..." 128.250.6.243 01:30, 8 September 2006 (UTC) (• Leon 01:31, 8 September 2006 (UTC))

The previous discussion was about the earlier version of this article. But as you pointed out, the new version is still not quite encylopedic. I'll address your concerns soon. Fred Hsu 04:21, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I also feel as if phrases like, "startling, yet true claim" and "proudly claim" are inappropriate for an encyclopedia article. Doesn't wikipedia have a tips section for usage of the word "claim" as well? Seijihyouronka (talk) 00:30, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Please check the history page. The above comments referred to the version of article before the rewrite. I know the rewrite still does not make this book a proper wikipedia article. This book is not as well known as Dawkins' other books and as a consequence did not receive a lot of reviews. The article as it stands now is basically a summary of the book, the way most articles on movies contain plot summaries.Fred Hsu (talk) 22:13, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

The word "claim" in "startling, yet true claim" is appropriate. It is unmistakably true. It cannot be otherwise.

The word "claim" in "But we can all proudly claim an unbroken chain" is also appropriate. But I just removed th word "proudly".

Rewrite

• previous version

I am thinking about enhancing articles on books by Dawkins, Pinker, Sykes and Baker. Perhaps I'll start with this article. Fred Hsu 01:59, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi Fred – good move. As well as writing this lame article, I have made a number of edits across all the Richard Dawkins articles, with a view to achieving some consistency of style. One of the things I did was remove the ISBN numbers – I only mention this because I notice you put one back in A Devil's Chaplain. For example, in The Selfish Gene, I replaced a bunch of ISBN's with a paragraph explaining the dfifference between the various editions, which in my view is more helpful. I'm not convinced ISBN's are terribly informative or useful here – of course others may disagree. In any case, the full list of ISBN's are in the Richard Dawkins article where I'm sure they will remain.—Laurence Boyce 13:31, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I was planning to write the article basically as a chapter-by-chapter summary. But I don't know if this is what articles on books are supposed to be. Do you have an idea what the correct style should be? Fred Hsu 00:44, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any book article guidelines. I think one may either employ a chapter-by-chapter approach, or talk about the whole book in the round – in either case it mustn't be a book review of course.—Laurence Boyce 11:22, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

As for the ISBN number, I have seen people add the ISBN number to lead paragraphs of articles on books. I was surprised that the A Devil's Chaplain did not have an ISBN number. I was going to buy it. I ended up going back to the main Dawkins' page to find it. Don't you think the ISBN number is one of the most important number for an article on a book? I mean, after all, it is a unique number identifying the book; the title itself may not be unique. I know that different editions of the book will have different ISBN numbers. And perhaps a section on various editions for a popular book can list ISBN numbers for all editions. But most books don't have a second edition... Fred Hsu 00:44, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Most of Dawkins' books have had either a second edition or reprint, so which one do we use? – the original I suppose. Also aren't they different for hardback/softback US/UK editions? Is it really worth it? Shouldn't the article be about the book, not helping people to buy it as such? I mean there's only one Richard Dawkins. However, I'm not that fussed about it – I just wanted to tell you what I had done and why.—Laurence Boyce 11:22, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I was going to add ISBN numbers to all his books, but I stopped after adding the first one. I tried to find a wikipedia article about writing articles on books, but have not yet found one. I won't mind if you remove the number from that page again. Fred Hsu 00:40, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

The rewrite is finally completed!!! Fred Hsu 03:54, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Fred. I've removed the previous version from talk and created a link above. Thanks again.—Laurence Boyce 07:02, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the edit to the main article to clean up my typos. As you suggested in your own talk page, the article seems too long. As I was writing it, I thought perhaps I should move most of these to other articles. For instance, chapter 2 can be largely moved into Most recent common ancestor, and have that article link back to River Out of Eden. Fred Hsu 13:28, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I moved part of the chapter "God's utility function" into an article of its own. Fred Hsu 05:26, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

External links

[1] removed the only external links on July 19, 2006:

• Critical review from Answers in Genesis

I left this Creationist link unchanged during rewrite, because I felt that they needed to be given a chance to defend themselves, even though they would never succeed. The critical review attacks the book on peripheral non-issues, but not the central issues as summarized in this article. I felt that an intelligent person would be able to see through this fallacy in an instance, so I left the link alone. But I am fine with the removal of the link. I don't care either way. Fred Hsu 13:07, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Capitalisation

The recent change in article name is entirely incorrect. The correct capitalisation is River Out of Eden. Laurence Boyce 10:03, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes. I'll leave a message on User:Extraordinary Machine's talk page. He also renamed the article :( Fred Hsu 02:50, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

There's a precedent on Wikipedia (see, for example, Wikipedia:Naming_conventions#Album_titles_and_band_names) not to capitalise prepositions in titles of articles about books and similar topics. As for the capitalisation on the book cover, in most cases that's not relevant because we should be modifying typography to our own set house style (which happens to differ from the publisher's in this case); it's not unusual for some book covers to use all caps or none, for example. Extraordinary Machine 13:46, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I entirely agree with this. Also I notice that you have changed the Dawkins template, but not any of the articles that link here, so we are currently inconsistent. Laurence Boyce 14:05, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I added two NPOV tags

I added Template:POV-section to two sections of this article: Do good by stealth and God's utility function. Their summary of the book seems reasonable (I haven't read it, so I can't comment), but they're peppered with praise for Richard Dawkins. They need to be rephrased in a neutral way. --Ultra Megatron 05:16, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I fixed the one phrase which was out of guideline. The rest of Dawkins 'said this', 'wrote that', 'showed yet another thing', etc. were in my opinion OK. The article can surely use more academic criticism. I will add more if I run into them. Fred Hsu 03:48, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Failures

I was struck that the phrase 'Dawkins fails' appears in the third paragraph of the description of 'Africa and her Progeny'. While I agree that he does skip this, maybe there should be a 'Critiques' section where a source can be found stating that he fails. While as I said I agree it is missing from the book, including a reference here makes it less enyclopedic and more essay style. Psychodolly (talk) 15:54, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree. It should be changed. I will think about it a bit and change it later when I have more time (next week). Feel free to rewrite the sentence though. This is not a popular book; you will have a hard time finding other references. What happened was that when I was writing the summary, it took me a very long time for the light in my head to turn on. I finally realized what he tried to say by talking about both genes and organisms back and forth. If only Dawkins explicitly stated what he was doing by explicitly contrasting organisms to genes, the chapter would have been even more user-friendly. The sentence as stands smells of original research, I know. So, it should be toned down. Fred Hsu (talk) 21:57, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

In 'Do Good by Stealth', Dawkins does not actually address the point in the minister's letter extracted at the start of the chapter. The letter concludes "if the orchid did not look and smell like the female wasp, and have an opening suitable for copulation with the pollen within perfect reach of the male wasp's reproductive organ, the strategy would have been a complete failure." (p.70). The letter writer thinks that perfection is required in two senses. Firstly, in that the look and opening must coincide (looking like an orchid does not help if the pollen cannot be reached; and having the right opening does not help if the orchid does not attract the male). Secondly, the geometry of the opening and pollen must perfectly match the wasp's reproductive organ. Dawkins only discusses perfection in looking like a wasp; which the letter does not actually mention (it just says "look like" and "resembled very closely"). While I think an argument can be made for the simultaneous evolution in stages of the look and opening coinciding; and for the opening and pollen to match the male wasp, Dawkins doesn't make this argument. That is, he does not address the point in the letter he quotes. This is especially unfortunate given Dawkins rather sharp dismissal of the minister ("Have you, in fact, given the matter a split-second's thought?" - p.72). 203.217.74.20 (talk) 10:33, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

River out of Eden

I do not like the recent change that moved this article to River Out of Eden (with an initial capital in "Out"), and the subsequent change of the title in the article text. I raised the issue at User talk:JHunterJ#ALBUMCAPS but there is a guideline that we should follow a convention that results in "River Out of Eden". I suppose it's trivial, but the ugliness bugs me, and it rather looks like "River Nile of Eden" (with a hint that there is a river named "Out"). I note that the {{Richard Dawkins}} box at the bottom of Richard Dawkins says "River out of Eden" which I think is Dawkins' intended spelling, although that's ambiguous given the all-caps title on the book cover, and apparently irrelevant. Any thoughts? Johnuniq (talk) 02:35, 9 July 2009 (UTC)