Talk:Biology/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Biology. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Old comments

EntmootsOfTrolls would have liked this article to be part of User:EntmootsOfTrolls/WikiProject Body, Cognition and Senses, which provides guidelines for articles on those topics, and seeks stronger cross-linkage and cross-cultural treatment of all of these topics. ---

Re: Charles Darwin being the first to rigorously expound the theory of evolution: this is misleading. Others had advanced theories of evolution before Darwin. What Darwin did was to provide a biological explanation for evolution, through the mechanism of natural selection. Darwin actually preferred the term "descent with modification".

I realize that you are going for the highlights in this introductory paragraph. But I still think the way it currently appears is misleading.

Marco Antonio Ribeiro Maribeiro@comcast.net

"Rigorously" is supposed to distinguish Darwin's theory from his predecesors and so make the assertion fair. I say no one was rigorous before Darwin b/c no one had proposed a sensible mechanism. A theory of evolution is not a theory of evolution if it doesn't explain evolution, or at least not a rigorous one. Without an explantion, it is a theory THAT evolution (occurs) and not a theory OF evolution. At least, that's how I use such language. 168... 21:16, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I recant. Lamarck did propose a mechanism, and I just forgot it. Sorry to have argued from ignorance. What Lamarck proposed was that adaptions arose from exercize or atrophy (e.g. giraffe neck lengthens from straining to reach the high leaves), with each individual's gain or loss being incorporated into its hereditary message to its offspring. This strikes me as perfectly sensible--it's just that DNA and heredity turned out not to work that way. So I'll agree it doesn't seem fair to distinguish Lamarck from Darwin on the basis of the rigor of their proposals. 168... 05:57, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)

16th Nov, 2002

Hi, I want to contribute a couple of article on Bioinformatics/comp. structure prediction, phylogenetic analysis, etc. Any suggestions/pointers ?

Cheers

Aiolos

Hi

did you check the page that already exist on bioinformatics ?
Some definitions to start ?

BTW, I think the correct plural of virus should be viri. But, who would recognize that word??

Apparently not (to my great disappointment). In Latin, viri is the plural of vir, man, while virus meaning poison is a collective and so does not have a plural. Since it is English speakers who made it singular, we are stuck with the inelegant plural viruses.

Btw, since when is viruses the plural of the Latin word virus? It might be right, but it's lame nonetheless. :(

I made that change, because that's always been the only correct plural. See, for example, [1]. --Lee Daniel Crocker

Ok. As I said, it's still lame. I see the point about the latin, but viruses is just an ugly word. Curse this useless tongue of ours, that isn't content to steal words, but must make them ugly to boot. But I guess I'll have to live with it, or learn more of another language and move to its wikipedia.

--- Subheadings would be good. That way we could maintain the simple serial format and still mark big sections clearly.

I have an idea. We could make all pages automatically in this format. Each article would have a "text" area and a "links" area. Each article would have, thus, two text boxes, which would be displayed in the same sort of format. Now this might work...but perhaps we should bear in mind the KISS principle. --LMS

Maybe something should be said about different classification systems, besides Linnean taxonomy, like the three domain system and nine kingdom system?

The idea of having a dedicated link area to the right for all pages is interesting, although consider that there are some lengthy pages (e.g., Alchemy where having part of the page taken up with a link table would be a Bad Thing. I suspect this may play havok with some of the mathematical pages that have formulas, or pages with a lot of PRE formatted text.

I've seen other content editing systems that differentiate between two or more different "doc types", that are used to select and define a page layout. For instance, one could have one layout that is all prose, and another one that is prose plus a link list. You can imagine extending this with placeholders for pictures, etc. The downside is that this incurs an extra level of complexity that the user must face.

The link to Eubacteria has just been changed to Prokaryota, but I think that's not correct. Prokaryota are all organisms whose cells lack proper nuclei, so both Eubacteria and Archaea qualify. --AxelBoldt

You are entirely right. I've changed it back.

Is "The Tree of Life" project open content? If not, why are we linking to it? --LMS

Can we not even link to copyrighted sources? I thought we could. Mswake 12:08 Aug 6, 2002 (PDT)

If the concern is copyright infringement, then we definitely CAN link to "the Tree of Life". Linking to someone's front page is always fair use, however, there is/was some dispute about "deep linking". In this context, "deep linking" would mean linking to a page about a particular species.--adam

The pages on The Blind Watchmaker and Richard Dawkins mention something called "The Williams Revolution" -- but have no further explanation. Does anyone know what this is? I couldn't even find a biologist named Williams. Mswake 11:46 Aug 6, 2002 (PDT)

The logical order is:

Archaea -- Eubacteria-- Eukaryota User:Rojclague22.30 Aug 09 2002

I moved this specialised link:

What is degenerative disease?, http://www.nutritionreallyworks.com/WhatIsDegeneration.html : A look into the nutritional deficiency aspect of degenerative disease.

to the Disease article. I also added Disease with subclassifications for Infectious diseases and Genetic diseases in the list of fields to cover the additions made by previous user. -- Lexor 17:52, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Changes to Preamble

Dear Lir: I have had little to do with writing this article, so I am not being defensive when I say that, although I recognize that your recent changes to the preamble are well-intentioned, some of them seem to be doing more harm than good. I think that it is evident that quite a lot of thought has gone into both the substance and the presentation of this article. In particular, the preamble has been stable for a while in part because it is reasonably well balanced with the rest of the article. Could I suggest that you use this "Talk" page more often to discuss or propose changes that might already have been considered by some pretty smart people? Thanks. Peak 05:46, 25 Dec 2003 (UTC)

How about you use the talk page yourself, to address whatever your concern might happen to be. I'm not psychic, you know... Lirath Q. Pynnor

Dear Lir: The preamble as of 168...'s last change (16:30, 6 Jan 2004) is fine. Please do not incorporate any of the changes that you have previously proposed and which have been rejected. If you want to CHANGE existing work, then please discuss your ideas on the Talk page.

As I mentioned above, I have have had little to do with writing this article, and have had even less to do with writing the DNA article, so I am writing mainly as an observer and a "concerned Wikicitizen". These articles were generally very good and in places excellent before your intervention. Everyone makes mistakes, and most people are naturally defensive when their mistakes are pointed out, but it is also important to spend the time reflecting on one's assumptions and other people's attempts to point out one's mistakes. If you cannot do this, then you should refrain altogether from CHANGING other people's considered work. Otherwise your persistence in propagating your own mistakes and POV will look more and more like harassment. Peak 01:05, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Recruiting for Wikibooks Biology book(s)

Warm greetings from sister project Wikibooks where I am writing a general biology textbook all by my lonesome. My profs donated a sizable bunch of notes that make up the structure of an entire introductory biology book. However these notes are in outline form and need to be fleshed out into full text. Then, some images .. I am confident that this will become the standard college text over time but need some help to get it there. --karlwick

Where is the Requests page for Biology?

I was looking around Wikipedia on the "Request a Page" and couldn't find a Biology/Biological Science category anywhere. How odd... and I doubt Health Science would be the place to put up a request for a specific organism in the animal/plant kingdom.

The block of pictures showing "the variety of life"

I'd like to suggest including a picture of a human in the block of pictures showing "the variety of life" (which currently shows bacteria, a fern, a gazelle, etc.). Doing so would reinforce the notion that humans fall under the study of biology just like all other terrestrial organisms. Moreover, it would help to illustrate the true variety of life that exists on Earth; humans (because of their intricate cultures) are kind of unique compared to other species. —Vespristiano 06:17, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I have no objection to adding an image of a human elsewhere in the article (perhaps next to section on anatomy), but I don't think it's necessary to add it in the initial block of four. I mean, it's not like we don't have many articles extolling the uniqueness of humans, and I think it's worth emphasizing some of the non-human life especially in the biology article. --Lexor|Talk 13:26, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

List of photos for plants.

Hi

I am a german wikipedia-contributer (nickname lumbar). I own a lot pictures (GFPL) of plants, all names in the latin scheme (the names have been verified by two biologie-professors of my university).

Here you can find the list:

Lumbars page

and here is my galerie with fotos I already uploaded. All are in commons and are catogerized.

Fotos

Because the list is so long I need some help. I split it up in 4 tasks:

Select good pictures (some plants have more than one pic)
Improve the pics (sharpness, crop the pics, colours...)
upload them to wiki-commons
link them to the en and de wikipedia.

Is anyone here willing to help me with one or more of the steps? The pics are not yet online. Please answer on my german discussion page.

I am now done with the uploading. Here you can find the galeries: A-M and N-Z. I hope you will use them! Lumbar

You might also want to ask on the talk page for botany, that page was more actively edited than was this one, until I did a major rewrite recently, but I'm not much of a botanist. I can help with the linking step. --Lexor|Talk 13:17, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

I added a comment there. Thanks. Lumbar

one-celled organism studied in school

Can anyone answer this Biology question: [2] ?

Jawed 06:16, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

hey

k machin estan estas ondas de las celulas no?
si estan chukiz

Biological drawings

In the Graphics article I wanted to add a link to biological drawings, but I can't find any article on it. Surely it must exist, but what is it called then? DirkvdM 08:32, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

supernatural?

Hello, there is a content dispute at Methodological naturalism that I've filed an article RFC for [3]

The original question is whether or not the scientific method is a natural method or a supernatural method of scientific investigation. One editor (Markus Schmaus) refuses to allow the scientific method be listed as a natural method unless a link can be provided to support the claim. I assume he is a proponent of Intelligent Design which pushes the view that ID is "scientific" even though it investigates supernatural causes such as how God must have creaeted life on earth. I assume it is this POV that is getting pushed, and Schmaus will not allow the scientific method be listed as an example of MN because then ID would not fit in the scientific method.

In an attempt to resolve the dispute until some sort of consensus was reached, I removed the mention of the Scientific Method as an example of methodolgical naturalism and instead inserted "astronomy, biology, chemistry, geology, and physics" are examples of methodological naturalism. Schmaus is now disputing that these are examples of MN and insists on a URL to prove that they are natural methods rather than supernatural methods of scientific investigation.

[4]

Since methodological naturalism is a minor article with only a few editors, the dispute has remained unresolved for lack of any sort of consensus. Please weigh in with your comments at the following links:

Scientific method is natural or supernatural

astronomy, biology, chemistry, geology, and physics are natural or supernatural methods

If you have links to support whether it is supernatural or natural, that would be greatly appreciated. FuelWagon 18:09, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

There's plenty of good literature available about the history and philosophy of science. There is no set "scentific method", however, as science usually contends with things that are observable, predictable, falsifiable, experimental, a discussion centered around these ideas usually elucidates the shortcomings of supernatural explanations within science. Try researching some popular science philosophers such as Karl Popper, Paul Feyerabend and Thomas Samuel Kuhn. Also try Methodological Naturalism and the Supernatural as well as Justifying Methodological Naturalism TaO! 14:48, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Microbiology and mycology

Is there a reason that botany and zoology are discussed, but microbiology and mycology are not? It seems like three whole kingdoms (well, more than that really) have been excluded from the discussion. I would like to remedy this, but I'm not sure if there was some logic to it that I'm overlooking. Mycota 06:18, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

publication

would you like to publish this article? -- Zondor 22:24, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Improvement drive: Frog and pheromone

If you would like to see the articles Frog and Pheromone improved, you can vote for them here. - Samsara _contrib ^talk 15:05, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Frog vs. cold war in WP:AID

Anyone that hasn't voted yet feel like giving frog the edge over the cold war? Vote at Wikipedia:Article improvement drive! - Samsara _contrib ^talk 20:23, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Temp page

There is a temporary page at Talk:Biology/Temp that hasn't been edited in a month and hasn't seriously been edited in over a year. Someone who actively edits this page should go through and see if anything is salvageable and then speedy delete the temp page with the {{db|temp page}} tag. Pepsidrinka 20:51, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

picture caption

The caption for the first picture could link directly to tree fern and Goliath beetle. The more specific links make more sense to me, but I don't want to change it without checking here first, in case people think it's better to link to the more general articles in an article as broad as biology. --Allen 01:13, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Assessment as core topic

I just downgraded the assessment for Core topics, and thought I should mention my reasoning. The article itself is excellent IMHO, and if a short overview of history and a few major biologists were included I think it could go to WP:FAC. However, the fatal flaw in the article is the lack of formal references. If some of the external links or further reading were used for writing the article, then they should be listed in a references section. Some more refs will probably need to be added retrospectively, which has to be done very carefully by matching up content with suitable sources like biology high school or intro college texts. Could someone take a look at this? We're really like to use this nicely written article on the CDs we plan to release. Thanks, Walkerma 08:28, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Propose merge of precoses and altrices

I'm in over my head... a biologist (or someone who is more familiar with the subject) is needed. Please look at the articles for Precocial and Altricial. There had until recently also been articles for Precoces and Altrices, but they were redundant with the other two, so I merged them. But the two remaining articles are pretty much redundant with each other. Could someone with an understanding of these terms please think about creating a new article called "Altrices and precoces" (or perhaps "Precoces and altrices?") which would subsume the others? I had thought that perhaps the whole thing would be subsumed by "Developmental biology," but that article doesn't even mention these words. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks! Epastore 16:57, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Biology vs Physics

An anonymous editor has been attempting to add this line to the opening paragraph:

All biology is ultimately and uselfully reducible to an expression of the laws of thermodynamics and conservation of mass.

While biology obeys physical laws, not all study of plants and animals (biology) is usefully reducable to thermodynamics and conservation of mass. I previously gave the example of ecology, which looks at dynamics between groups of animals. Another example might be the study of animal behaviour, which, while having physical aspects (neurobiology is more popular than psychology these days), does not require a physical or chemical explanation. A more specific example is the study of the meaning of whale song, which, while having a physical aspect (the sound waves), has little relevant use of physics. Animal morphology is another example, which can use physical sciences, but does not require it. Taxonomy, another branch of biology, has bugger all to do with physics. Please stop re-inserting this crud. You might as well write that a bicycle is ultimately reducable to an expression of laws of thermodynamics and conservation of mass. This is reductio ad absurdum. —Pengo 05:34, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Biology vs Physics

Answer::

The LOTD and CM can explain usefully the even the existance of a bycycle. You need to follow your propsitions through, you are halting before you do a full analysis. Lets examine your example.

Why does a bycycle exist/persist?, becuase humans find that it conferes some energetic advantage as agaisnt other froms of transport. That is less entropy occurs when using a bycycle than say walking over certain terrains, so bi-cycles are still produced, even given that it takes a quantam of energy to do so. Another related example is why the horse and carraige not longer exist in many countries becuase, the enrtopy produced and using using such a device is higher, than alternatives.

The whale song, will exist so long as it can confer an ergetic (read created less entropy) than some alternative form of action or inaction in that given ecology/environment.

Morphology of an animal has everythign to do with LOTD, every morphological form will conffer a specific entropic advantage. Lets take a simple example. A healthy animal of prey, say a chetah, who's that the phenotype makes it more likey to catch prey will on odds be more succesful than a morphological phenoype of a chetah that by unhelpful mutation and so has only 3 legs and so is hobled.

The study of morphology is a description of the material structures that are predicitve of the enrgertic effects of metabilism, eg cost of movement, predation, digestion etc the "orgranism".

This is not as you posit reductio ad absurdum, but the actual basis that the "sheens" of biological nomelaculture/semiotics rely on. So we call part the devices for aquiring energy to the body in many mammels, the alimentry cannel/tract, and its efficency may be predicated by differentiation into stomach, mouth, esophagus, large small intestine, large intestine, rectum, with requisite ducts pylori, spynicters surface areas, villi, micro vili, ph level, peyers patches, etc. At each stage we are using words to describe structures that exist to do one thing, usefully extract energy and use full mass out of food material (or post pyloric chyme). In the case of peyers patches they aid in maintaing the extraction system in a working form, as does other lymph, immune tissue.

Or as an ecology/population example you may say that animals that have herd immunity have more successful outcomes against certain diseases. What this is saying is that the immune systems of the animlas in the herd, present less oppotunity for transmissions, that is there is less opporunity for the "disease" to aquire a hosts energy (and mass) for its own energetic arrangment, thus the energry reposed by the creatures own structre and form has a better chance of staying that way

I see what you mean, but I don't see why it was necessary to change my edit, which read as follows:

"All concepts in biology are subject to the same laws that other branches of science obey, such as the laws of thermodynamics and conservation of mass."

This seems to be a good compromise between your opinions and those of others who do not see everything in biology as being expressible mathematically in a meaningful and/or useful way. Pengo gave the example of taxonomy as having nothing to do with physics. I am not arguing that organisms do not behave according to the laws of thermodynamics, rather I feel that this behavior is often difficult or impossible to measure and quantify, and even then it is usually not useful to biologists. I too put great importance on physical laws, such as those dealing with entropy, but I don't see why it is useful for biologists to attempt to express biology in such an extensive and precise manner when to be honest, they have better things to do.

Anyways, welcome to Wikipedia. Please register an account, or, if you already have, sign your posts with four tildes (~). Gary 17:55, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

embryology

would sympathtic editors consider a positive vote here? [5]Slrubenstein | Talk 15:19, 23 August 2006 (UTC)