Talk:Great Hippocampus Question

A fact from Great Hippocampus Question appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 25 November 2009 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Charles Kingsley's Great Hippocampus Question satirised debate on ape origins following Charles Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species (satirical image pictured) ?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2009/November.

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File name of skull image

The file name is nigger-gorilla.png The file name probably should be changed. Does the image contribute to the article? Jim1138 (talk) 05:41, 25 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The file appropriately shows one of Owen's illustrations of the brains of The Gorilla and the Negro, so there should be no objection to its name being changed to match the book title more accurately. Not sure how to do that on Commons. The image contributes to describing a significant part of the debate. . . dave souza, talk 16:50, 27 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Saved image and uploaded as Brain-Negro-Gorilla.png, added duplicate tag per [COM:FAQ#MOVE] Jim1138 (talk) 06:30, 28 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Misc comments

The significance of Owen's blunder became apparent to Thomas Henry Huxley, who reads oddly, because at that point in the narrative, we don't knwo its a blunder. I presume when I read on it will become clear.

Also, all of "In 1564 a prominent feature on the floor of the Lateral ventricles of the brain was named the hippocampus by Aranzi as its curved shape on each side supposedly reminded him of a seahorse, the Hippocampus (apart from a spell after Mayer mistakenly used the term hippopotamus in 1779, and was followed by others until 1829). At that same time a ridge on the posterior horn of lateral ventricle was named the calcar avis, but in 1786 this was renamed the hippocampus minor." feels like it ought to go into parentheses, or into a footnote, since it is an aside to the flow at this point.

William M. Connolley (talk) 21:29, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Grr, good points. Have rearranged the section to overcome these issues, thanks for the comments. . . dave souza, talk 21:51, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Pubmed source

Since this article was put together, a new source has been published. I don't have access to it, but will add it to further reading for those with access:
Owen, C.; Howard, A.; Binder, D. (2009). "Hippocampus minor, calcar avis, and the Huxley-Owen debate". Neurosurgery. 65 (6): 1098–1104, discussion 1104–5. doi:10.1227/01.NEU.0000359535.84445.0B. PMID 19934969.
dave souza, talk 10:24, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Should this really be two separate articles? or the lead made less confusing?

The title and lead of this article would lead you to believe that it is about the satirical literary work by Kingsley, when in fact the bulk of the article discusses the scientific controversy between Owen and Huxley and the treatment goes far beyond what you would normally have as background in an article about a literary work. In my opinion the confusion goes beyond the lead into the article itself. This creates problems for articles like history of evolutionary thought that would like to reference the scientific debate, but not particularly Kingsley's literary works. I would suggest one of the following two solutions. Either split the article into two, one about the scientific debate (perhaps titled The great hippocampus debate, and one about the literary works, that reference one another, or reword the lead to be something like the following:

The Great Hippocampus Question was a scientific controversy about ape anatomy and human uniqueness between Thomas Henry Huxley and Richard Owen that became central to the scientific debate on human evolution that followed Charles Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species. The name comes from the title of a satire written by the Reverend Charles Kingsley about the dispute, which in modified form appeared as "the great hippopotamus test" in Kingsley's book for children, The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby, and which together with other humorous skits helped to spread and popularise Darwin's ideas on evolution.

I think that would more correctly reflect the current contents of the article, which is really much more about the overall scientific debate than it is about a specific satirical work. Rusty Cashman (talk) 21:38, 9 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A very good point, and that reads much better than the lead as was. Have implemented a modified version of this proposal, which of course is open to further improvement. Many thanks, dave souza, talk 00:06, 10 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Italic Sections of Article

It appears there has been a text encoding mistake down about halfway through the page. All of the text is appearing in italics, and as my Wikipedia editing ability is practically nil, I cannot figure out how to correct this. Just making sure that everyone is aware. Cheers! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.171.22.203 (talk) 00:44, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, don't know how that worked but a stray cite tag "Apes Angels And Victorians"> was causing italics to a ppear so have removed it and things seem better. Much appreciated, dave souza, talk 05:02, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]