Talk:The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe

Failed deletion proposal

The Sleepwalkers was proposed for deletion. This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was KEEP

Advert for a non-notable book (contrary to the claims made in the article). Googling "The Sleepwalkers" gets over 5000 hits, many of which are not this book. Include the qualifier "cosmology" and the number reduces to 787 hits. SWAdair | Talk 08:32, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• • It appears I was wrong about this book. Dpbsmith, do you work for a book-finding service? There's this book I've been looking for...  :-) Keep. SWAdair | Talk 22:59, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Delete. That's a POV book review, not an article. —Rory ☺ 16:25, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. Retool. The book is notable. Googling "(sleepwalker OR sleepwalkers) Koestler" provides some 2400 hits, and they are meaty hits. --jpgordon {gab} 17:08, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. Or Merge into Arthur Koestler and redirect. I glanced at the VfD title, and I said to myself "If that's the Arthur Koestler book it's notable and I'll vote to keep." It is, and I do. It's certainly no ad, given that the book is out of print! Notability is arguable, of course (if it's so great why isn't it still in print?) A check of the local public library network shows that eleven out of thirty libraries in the network have it: ARLINGTON, BROOKLINE, CAMBRIDGE, CONCORD, DOVER, FRAM STATE, LEXINGTON/, MEDFORD, MOUNT IDA, NEWTON, WALTHAM. And for what it's worth, ten have it available but one of them lists it as "out," so someone is actually reading it. Article needs work, of course. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 17:34, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Comment. For some reason, this book is hard to find in online indexes, perhaps because of variations in its long title. The library listings above, for example, were split between "The Sleepwalkers," "The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe", and "The Sleepwalkers/A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe" (slash instead of colon!) It is in print, "The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe," ISBN 0140192468. Amazon sales rank 44,179. I personally consider a rank better than 10,000 to be clearly notable and a rank worse than 200,000 to be clearly non-notable. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 18:05, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Comment. The Columbia World of Quotations includes a quotation from the book: "If conquerors be regarded as the engine-drivers of History, then the conquerors of thought are perhaps the pointsmen who, less conspicuous to the traveller’s eye, determine the direction of the journey." I can't say that quotation really grabs me... More Googling turns up another quotation from [http://www.philosophers.co.uk/quotations/author_search.php3?author=Arthur%20Koestler&num=1 The Philosophers' Magazine Online: "Nobody before the Pythagoreans had thought that mathematical relations held the secret of the universe. Twenty-five centuries later, Europe is still blessed and cursed with their heritage. To non-European civilizations, the idea that numbers are the key to both wisdom and power, seems never to have occurred." Ah. Here's some paydirt. "More than four centuries after Copernicus’ death, writer Arthur Koestler claimed in his 1959 book The Sleepwalkers that nobody read De Revolutionibus when it first circulated." This claim inspired the current book, "The Book Nobody Read," by Owen Gingerich. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 18:15, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Keep and cleanup. I'll have a go eventually if nobody else does, but need to find my copy in storage first. Enormously influential book, but like most of Arthur Koestler's stuff its detractors tried hard to minimise its impact, so you won't see it quoted by many contemporaries who just discuss and reject its ideas while carefully avoiding any reference to either the work or its author. Andrewa 18:29, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. It's a published book. Just because the article sucks doesn't mean it should be deleted. It just means it should be edited so it doesn't suck any more. COGDEN 21:09, Oct 14, 2004 (UTC)

End archived discussion -- Graham ☺ | Talk 01:42, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Questia.com's online library has the book available to read at: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=59255222 -- although you can only read it in full with a subscription to Questia.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Chron (talk) • contribs) 16:56, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Gingerich

I have removed a longish paragraph dealing with Owen Gingerich, almost word-for-word copied from the article on him, including the poor punctuation. I put a link to that article in the "See also" section. We hardly need two copies of the same verbiage on Wikipedia.

In addition to being redundant, the whole thrust of the paragraph missed the mark.

A similar cherished old belief backlashed on Koestler. In "II THE SYSTEM OF COPERNICUS", he stated on Nicolaus Copernicus seminal De revolutionibus: "The Book that Nobody Read - the Book of the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres was and is an all-time worst-seller." After finding a richly annotated copy previously owned by Erasmus Reinhold, a German astronomer in Prussia shortly after Copernicus' death there, Owen Gingerich was inspired to check Koestler' claim and research who had owned and studied the books. The decade long quest showed that books were in fact often richly annotated, and thus Koestler was incorrect. It was recounted in The Book Nobody Read, published in 2004.

Now the point that Koestler was making is that it took a surprisingly long time - over 65 years - for Copernicus' ideas to seep into the consciousness of the general public, and only with the discoveries of Kepler and Galileo. One aspect was the abysmal publishing record of De Revolutionibus. That Erasmus Reinhold, a young professor of astronomy at the University of Wittenberg, had a copy and made notes in it does not deal with the issue at hand, nor is it surprising. It is especially unsurprising as the other astronomy professor at Wittenberg was Georg Joachim Rheticus who took a leave of absence to visit Copernicus, became his (only) disciple, and oversaw the publication of De Revolutionibus for the dying Copernicus. I have not read Gingrich's book, but I would lay long odds that Reinhold didn't even buy his copy, but was given it when Rheticus returned to Wittenberg.

That the few copies that were sold were "richly annotated" by the few professionals who read it, in no way refutes the claim that it "was and is an all-time worst-seller." B00P (talk) 07:43, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I would strongly advocate putting the paragraph back in. I have read both a translation of De Revolutionibus, The Sleepwalkers and Gingerich's work, and Gingerich pretty much rips apart every piece of The Sleepwalkers. Koestler is quite simply just wrong in most what he writes, and it becomes very clear when you read Gingerich's work that he just simply never made any independent research.

Gingerich's project is not just to survey a few copies of the book, he found them all, more than 400 copies. By just looking at De Revolutionibus, you'll notice that it is an extremely opaque book. It is a scientific treatise, not like "A brief history of time", which can be a best-seller, but a book that only a few professors and grad students at the time would have any interest in. I'd say 400 copies is a lot, and this mere fact contradicts central ideas of The Sleepwalkers.

The Sleepwalkers is notable, if not for anything else than the amount of stir it has caused, but no article about it is complete without the very substantial and well-founded criticism of it. --Kjetil Kjernsmo (talk) 21:35, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Gingerich pretty much rips apart every piece of The Sleepwalkers - of course he doesn't; he doesn't cover the same ground William M. Connolley (talk) 19:17, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Moved page

Roman Spinner, The Sleepwalkers has not been moved properly, a primary page should not redirect to a disambiguated title. Incoming links look like they also need to be checked. Boleyn (talk) 09:49, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

As always, the reminder is most appreciated. Both the redirect and the links will be rectified within 24 hours. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 14:18, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

I moved it back. There was no need for the move in the first place William M. Connolley (talk) 17:19, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Requested move 1 December 2017

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved. Andrewa (talk) 03:47, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

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The Sleepwalkers → The Sleepwalkers (Koestler book) – While Arthur Koestler was a major author, not every one of his books has an immediate claim to be the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. There are 47 other entries at the Sleepwalker disambiguation page, including another book bearing this title, The Sleepwalkers (Broch novel). The Sleepwalkers should redirect to the Sleepwalker dab page in the same manner as Sleepwalkers, Sleep walkers, Sleep walker, The Sleep Walker, The sleepwalker, The Sleepwalker or Sleepwalk. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 05:56, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

• Support, good call; no primary here. In ictu oculi (talk) 12:06, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
• Comment. Even if a consensus develops to redirect the short title, The Sleepwalkers to the Sleepwalker disambiguation page, a form accepted in a recent RM may provide an alternative to the use of the parenthetical qualifier "(Koestler book)". At Talk:The Human Factor (Graham Greene book)#Requested move 27 August 2017, an additional proposal to move The Human Factor (book) → The Human Factor (Kim Vicente book) was amended so that the title would be moved to its full form — The Human Factor: Revolutionizing the Way We Live with Technology. Analogously, the full form here, as indicated in the article's lead sentence and on the appended illustration of the book cover, is The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe. Taking a wider view, we already have numerous expanded titles of non-fiction books which would otherwise require a qualifier in their short forms:

Above and Beyond: The Encyclopedia of Aviation and Space Sciences

Alternative Energy: Political, Economic, and Social Feasibility

Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World

Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future

The Gift of Time: The Case for Abolishing Nuclear Weapons Now
and many others. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 09:03, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

• Support as proposed. Clear absence of a primary topic. bd2412 T 17:21, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
• Support per nom. No clear primary topic. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:36, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Requested move 5 March 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. – robertsky (talk) 13:37, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

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• The Sleepwalkers (Koestler book) → The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe
• The Sleepwalkers (Clark book) → The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914

– Per WP:SUBTITLE (When the most commonly used name is ambiguous, the full title and subtitle might be suitable to be used as a form of natural disambiguation), WP:NATURALDIS, and WP:NCDAB, natural disambiguation is preferable to parenthetical disambiguation. As Roman Spinner pointed out above, many other non-fiction books use subtitles to disambiguate, and other moves of book articles, like this one that was closed very recently, also follow this pattern. Malerisch (talk) 02:40, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

• Support per nomination. Enhanced main title headers of this nature are helpful to users. When such titles, with subtitles, are not forced, but appear on the book's cover or on the title page, their usefulness in disambiguating same-titled books should be taken into consideration. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 17:06, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.