User talk:Silence/ID

IDCAD, part 3: Origins of the concept

The "origins of the concept" section was the first part of the page where significant changes were required just for a first-run copyedit. The beginning of the section suffered from bloat due to accumulation of trivia; the end of the section was completely unrelated to the rest of the section, summarizing specific ID beliefs without any information at all on the history or origins of the ID concept; and some of the middle, dealing with natural theology's relationship with modern creationism, required moving around to fix some poor organization and flow of ideas.

There are still a fair number of evident problems with this section even after my copyedit. For example, the characterization of intelligent design as just "a modern reframing of natural theology" smacks of potential original research to me, and will probably require a reference of some sort to give this segue solid ground to stand on. In the sentence in the middle of the section which I moved, there seemed to be a subtle pro-theistic evolution advocacy leaning that had developed (similar to what happens at the end of the "Controversy" section further down the article), which I tried to dull down a bit. There's also not much information on the modern "origins of the concept" of ID, which are surely more directly significant and clearly relevant than quoting Cicero or Heraclitus, and what little there is needs a bit of work: the paragraph on the "earliest known modern version of intelligent design" is short and consists almost entirely of a single quotation from Forrest, even though rephrasing is generally preferable to direct quotations when describing a factual event rather than a personal opinion. (Sometime after we're done going through my initial copyedits to the article, I have some useful supplemental references that may be able to help in this respect.)

Still, the edits here will remedy most of the simple, obvious problems that are evident in a read-through of the section, and should provide us with a very valuable starting point in terms of tidying this section up and making it more consistent with the rest of the article's quality and tightness.

Changes 1-4

These changes deal with the beginning of the first paragraph:

1. Change "[[Ancient Greece|Greek]] philosophy" to "[[Greek philosophy]]".
2. Replace scare quotes with italics for new/foreign term "Logos".
3. Remove tangential biographical details from "is typically credited to Heraclitus ~~(c. 535–c.475 BCE), a Pre-Socratic philosopher~~, and". It is completely unnecessary to provide estimated birth and death dates on the Intelligent design article for a philosopher who was not even a part of the ID movement; providing a link to his article is completely sufficient, as anyone interested can visit that page. Likewise, "Pre-Socratic philosopher" is a distinction that will be meaningless to those of our readers who are unfamiliar with Western philosophy historiological terms, and one that is not relevant here, especially since we don't mention Socrates anywhere (because he isn't directly relevant to early ID-like concepts). Several people have complained that this article is already too long; trivial biographical factoids like these are a part of the reason why, and in any case will bore the heck out of readers who just came here to learn about ID, not to get a crash course on the history of Western philosophy. Only the relevant information should be included.
4. For the same reason as Heraclitus, remove "(c. 427–c. 347 BCE)" after Plato's name is mentioned.

-Silence 20:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Changes 5-8

These changes deal with the end of the first paragraph:

5. For the same reason as Heraclitus, remove "(c. 384–322 BCE)" after Aristotle's name is mentioned.
6. Add quotation marks to translated title, "de Natura Deorum ("On the Nature of the Gods")".
7. For the same reason as Heraclitus, remove "(c. 106–c. 43 BCE)" after Cicero's name is mentioned.
8. From what I can tell, Cicero's quotation is not a full sentence in the original text, but one clause of a much larger statement. As such, it should not be treated here as a complete sentence: replace "stated," with "stated that", ""The" with ""the", and "nature."" with "nature".".

-Silence 20:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Changes 9-12

These changes deal with the beginning of the second paragraph:

9. For the same reason as Heraclitus, Remove "(thirteenth century)," from after Aquinas' ref, and then move the comma to before the ref: "in his ''[[Summa Theologiae]]'',<ref>".
10. Add "by" before "William Paley" for grammatical consistency.
11. Remove "(1802)" after Natural Theology. Though book dates are much more reasonable and relevant than years of date and birth for the writers, they still aren't necessary for non-ID publications. What matters in this section is the explanation of where various ID-related ideas were popularized or originated, not what specific years they happened to be published in.
12. After the mentioning of the watchmaker analogy, clarify and tidy up the wording of "which is still used in intelligent design arguments." to "an argument still used by intelligent design proponents today."

-Silence 20:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Changes 13-16

These changes deal with the end of the second paragraph:

13. Add comma after "In the early 19th century".
14. Uncapitalize "Natural theology" to "natural theology".
15. Replace bizarre word choice "search" with "way" or "means" in " the study of biology as a search to understand".
16. Replace "[[Charles Darwin|Darwin's]]" with "[[Charles Darwin]]'s"; there's no reason not to state his full name here, after we've stated the full names (as they're used in their Wikipedia article, anyway) of the other people mentioned in the history, like William Paley.

-Silence 20:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Changes 17-20

These changes deal with the end of the second paragraph and beginning of the third, including a sentence moved from the former to the latter for the sake of topical relevance, coherency, and fluidity:

17. Remove "theory of the origin of species". First, this is simply inaccurate; The Origin of Species is a book, not a theory. Second, it is misleading: going into so much detail on what Darwin did will prompt uninformed readers to think that Darwin's book is being mentioned for the same reason Haley's and Cicero's and Aquinas's and so on were: because it was a significant precursor to ID. In reality, exactly the opposite is the case. Third, it is unnecessary and extraneous: there is no special relevance to this book in the context of intelligent design. It is only significant insomuch as everything in the history of evolutionary thought is significant to an anti-evolutionary movement, and that's not what the scope of this section of the article is. And its mentioning detracts from the significance of mentioning Charles Darwin here, and dilutes the quality of the writing; simply replacing it with "own research" or similar is more than sufficient.
18. Move the last sentence of this paragraph, "Similar reasoning...", to the next paragraph, and have it immediately follow the first sentence there. Ending the previous paragraph on Darwin is a good idea, and the last sentence is properly, content-wise, more similar to the third paragraph (which discusses modern creationist ideas) than to the second (which lists various significant people in the history of pre-ID ideas from the Middle Ages to the 19th century) by an order of magnitude. The next three or four edits will deal with various changes to this sentence in order to fit it effectively and smoothly into the new paragraph. Although all of these changes will be dealt with individually, if you want to compare the final version to the original version, see this:

Original version (end of 2nd para, start of 3rd)

New version (end of 2nd para, start of 3rd)

This movement fueled the passion for collecting fossils and other biological specimens that ultimately led to Darwin's theory of the origin of species. Similar reasoning postulating a divine designer is embraced today by many believers in theistic evolution, who consider modern science and the theory of evolution to be fully compatible with the concept of a supernatural designer.

Intelligent design in the late 20th century can be seen as a modern reframing of natural theology seeking to change the basis of science and undermine evolution theory.

This movement fueled the passion for collecting fossils and other biological specimens that ultimately led to Charles Darwin's own research.

Intelligent design can be seen as a modern reframing of natural theology. Although some creationists, such as many believers in theistic evolution, consider modern science and the theory of evolution to be largely or fully compatible with the concept of a supernatural designer, intelligent design seeks to change the basis of science and undermine evolutionary theory.

19. At the start of the moved sentence, replace "Similar reasoning postulating a divine designer is embraced today by many" with "Although some creationists, such as". The former was misleading (as it implied that Darwin was a believer in or founder of theistic evolution) and not really accurate even when properly understood. In context, the new beginning makes the sentence flow very well with the overall paragraph. Also, remove "who" before "consider modern science".
20. Change "to be fully compatible" to "to be largely or fully compatible"; not all believers in theistic evolution believe that evolutionary theory is fully compatible with theism; indeed, many reject one or more aspects of evolutionary biology in order to better accomodate their supernatural belief.

-Silence 20:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Changes 21-24

These changes deal with the beginning of the third paragraph:

21. Replace the period after "supernatural designer" with a comma, and begin what was originally the second sentence of the paragraph afterwards, with "seeking" replaced by "intelligent design seeks".
22. Replace "evolution theory" with "evolutionary theory", to be more consistent with the terminology used elsewhere.
23. At the start of this paragraph, remove the "in the late 20th century" qualifier from "Intelligent design in the late 20th century can be seen"; first, as of 2006, this applies to intelligent design both in the late 20th and early 21st century. Second, this qualifier has the unfortunate consequence of implying that the intelligent design movement is older than "the late 20th century", which is not true.
24. In "As evolutionary theory has expanded to explain more phenomena,", replace "evolutionary theory" with "evolutionary biology". The theory has not "expanded" per se, it's been updated and revised. The field of evolutionary biology, on the other hand, can be argued to have "expanded" to deal with more and more types of phenomena.

-Silence 20:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Changes 25-28

These changes deal with the middle of the third paragraph:

25. Change "the examples that are held up as evidence of design" to "the examples that are held up by design advocates as evidence of design" for clarification. Only IDers (and other design-asserting creationists) hold them up as "evidence of design".
26. Change "changed. But" to "changed, but". No reason to end the sentence here.
27. Change "complex systems imply a designer" to "complex systems—what intelligent design advocates would call "irreducibly complex systems"—imply a designer" for added informational value, and to avoid having to use the awkward, out-of-context "see also" link to irreducible complexity at the paragraph's end ("(see irreducible complexity)"), when it is less useful and informative.
28. Remove "(optical system)" after "eye" as unnecessary.

-Silence 20:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Changes 29-32

These changes deal with the end of the third paragraph:

29. Replace unlinked "eye" with piped link "[[evolution of the eye|eye]]" in case readers are curious about the specific creationist arguments regarding the eye, and the scientific evidence which contradicts them. This probably wasn't linked to before because evolution of the eye is a new, underlinked article. (Speaking of which, we don't even have a specific article for the anatomical "wing" yet, much less for theories about the wing's evolution. Someone'll probably have to get on that someday.)
30. Either unlink "biochemical" or make it a piped link to biochemistry. Either way, doesn't seem a very valuable link in this context.
31. Replace simple colon after "biochemical" with ", often relating to" in order to avoid the misconception that the three examples given are the only examples of supposed irreducible complexity any modern IDer has proposed.
32. Replace unlinked "flagella" with piped link "[[evolution of flagella|flagella]]" for the same reason as "eye". (Though this is a very old article, dating back to 4 years ago, so it's obviously not unlinked for the same reason "eye" is; it's just not a very mainstream article. For some reason its link in flagellum is subtle and well-hidden, and doesn't have its own section; odd.)

-Silence 20:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Changes 33-36

These changes deal with the fourth and fifth paragraphs:

33. Replace "began" with "originated" in first sentence of next paragraph.
34. Replace "[[Barbara Forrest|Dr Barbara Forrest]]" with the much simpler "[[Barbara Forrest]]". As a rule, Wikipedia does not use honorifics: see Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(biographies)#Honorific_prefixes.
35. In the last paragraph, replace "[[intelligent designer|agent of creation]]" with "agent of creation, or [[intelligent designer]]" to avoid any possible ambiguity and to clarify that they are one and the same for later references in the article.
36. Replace "–" (ndash) with "—" (mdash), and remove the unnecessary spaces from either side. See the dash article: the en dash is for indicating a closed range (e.g., "1–2 cm"), whereas the em dash is used to indicate a break in thought, as it is used here.

-Silence 20:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Changes 37-40

These changes deal with the fifth paragraph:

37. Elaborate "Whether this was a genuine feature" to "Whether the deliberate ambiguity over the designer's origin is a genuine feature" to avoid ambiguity. Just because we're describing a deliberate ambiguity doesn't mean we can't be clear about it ourselves. :)
38. Add comma after "concept" to indicate a pause and clearly delineate the two parts of the sentence, and another comma before "has been a matter of" to properly and smoothly enclose the thought.
39. Replace misused (and connotationally loaded) "posture" with correctly-used (and neutral) "position".
40. Replace incorrect statement "to avoid alienating those who would separate religion from science-teaching" with more accurate "to avoid alienating those who might object to more explicitly religious forms of creationism,".

-Silence 20:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Changes 41-43

These changes deal with the fifth paragraph, and with moving it to a section where it is actually relevant and topically consistent ("Overview"). They also address the problem of a misplaced reference in the "Overview" section, and one possible simple solution (though there are other possibilities, like adding entirely new text to attach the reference to that actually addresses the reference's contents):

41. Italicize court case name, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.
42. Move this paragraph, the last one in the "Origins of the concept" section, up to being the last paragraph of the "Overview" section. Everything it discusses is 100% irrelevant to the origins of the ID concept; what it is relevant to is the description of IDer beliefs and practices which the top Overview section delves into.
43. Move the Barbara Forrest expert witness testimony reference from the beginning of the second paragraph to the end of the last (the one that was just moved), where it's actually relevant and helps provide a citation to an uncited section (we already have another citation, from Debski, to back up the second paragraph). It is a complete non sequitur in its current context, so regardless of where it's moved, it clearly needs to be moved somewhere away from its placement after "stated", and this seems as good a place as any.

-Silence 20:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]