User talk:Peter Damian/Free will draft
Guide to professionally reviewed flagship articles
[edit]- The article should be no longer than 8,000 words (= about 70,000 bytes)
- The article should include all the major topics or branches of the subject, weighted according to their current importance. Other tertiary sources can be a useful guide.
- The introduction should be no longer than 500 words. It should broadly summarise all the major claims in the body of the article, proportionately handled, without additional claims.
- Pictures for the introduction should as far as possible be representative of the whole subject or section.
- The history section should follow the introduction, briefly covering all the major developments of the subject
- Avoid over-referencing, i.e. referencing claims that are obvious or uncontentious. There should be no references in the introduction. All other claims should be referenced. To avoid duplicating references, choose the most authoritative and most relevant source.
- There should be no original research. Claims should be fully supported by references. There should be no 'synthesis', i.e. combining material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources, or combining different parts of one source to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by the source. See WP:SYNTH
- The writing style should be consistent with Wikipedia's status as a general reference work (it is not a PhD thesis or scholarly article or undergraduate lecture notes). Avoid obscurity, including technical terminology where possible. Always define key terms in the article itself. Aim at presenting the most difficult material in a clear, simple and preferably elegant way.
- Claims should be presented in logical or temporal order.
History section
[edit]One of the first to define free will is Aristotle, who defines it as 'alternative' (ὁπότερ’) in chapter 9 of On Interpretation
- μηδὲν δὲ ὁπότερ’ ἔτυχεν εἶναι ἐν τοῖς γιγνομένοις, ἀλλὰ πάντα εἶναι καὶ γίγνεσθαι ἐξ ἀνάγκης (there are no real alternatives, but that all that is or takes place is the outcome of necessity). Bu then there would be no need to deliberate or to take trouble, on the supposition that if we should adopt a certain course, a certain result would follow, while, if we did not, the result would not follow. (ὥστε οὔτε βουλεύεσθαι δέοι ἂν οὔτε πραγματεύεσθαι, ὡς ἐὰν μὲν τοδὶ ποιήσωμεν, ἔσται τοδί, ἐὰν δὲ μὴ τοδί, οὐκ ἔσται).