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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted 04:58, 11 May 2008.

James Clerk Maxwell

[edit]

previous FAC

Nominated by an anon here

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.154.166.238 (talk • contribs) 15:09, May 5, 2008

  • Comment - This is a very good article and the nominator is right to be impressed with it. Although clearly not ready for FA, (which I'm sure the major contributors realise), hopefully this FAC will stimulate further work on this potential treasure. GrahamColmTalk 16:16, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose this is a long way from FA status: I was surprised to learn that someone had nominated it here. I have been working on the article for a while, albeit painfully slowly. There is however much to do in terms of content alone, besides reviewing for writing quality, sourcing and everything else that makes for a successful FAC. I'd welcome people's suggestions for improvement now or at any time, though. — BillC talk 22:13, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments:
This external link doesn't work.
The accessdate on ref #51 needs to be fixed.
"The greatest work of Maxwell's life was devoted to electricity." sounds a bit off
"Maxwell's most important contribution" to...?
Obviously there are two sections which could do with expansion
I think the 'Legacy' list should be converted to prose
I think the begining of the 'colour analysis' section ("Maxwell also made") sounds a bit odd as it's the first time some of his contributions are listed.. perhaps it should be moved to come after the electricity section if you're going to say 'also'?
As the 'personality' section deals with poetry it should probably be retitled as such
There are a few minor typos/errors throughout, for example "King's college London" not having 'college' capitalised.
Woe betide any mortal suggesting what Sandy should do; but I suggest she close this nomination and encourage us to get on with it. Graham. GrahamColmTalk 23:01, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If anyone's interested in collaborating on this, please join in on Talk:James Clerk Maxwell. — BillC talk 21:11, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: Contrary to the comments above, I think this article is an excellent basis for a fast-track to FA. there are lots of comments about it not being FA quality above, but few specifics of any gravity. Capitalization and a few word changes? Ok, let's just do it. The only FA-rejectable "offence" I can find is "many stub sections", but this actually turns out to be "two", and I don't consider either of them to require expansion. That is especially true for control theory, which is a minor historical point, and might be safely removed entirely. Let's get specific, put up the problems, fix it, and FA it. Maury (talk) 03:50, 8 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    A few paragraphs are also unreferenced. Also, there are a few cleanup tags, especially those focused on article expansion. I can't personally say if the article needs expansion or not since I don't know much about Maxwell (even though I did take Physics during Twelfth grade in high school), but it seems like it's lacking information. If not, then perhaps a few of the shorter sections could be merged together. Gary King (talk) 04:19, 8 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional support. There is in fact only one real stub, the sentence on control theory, which can be solved simply enough by moving it to its place in chronological sequence and removing the header. (That is the condition; I would do it myself but may have to leave without notice.) Beyond that, there are no non-trivial actionable complaints. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:04, 8 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have completed a number of changes to this section, increased detail level, and added additional references. If there are remaining issues, please let me know. Maury (talk) 18:33, 8 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose for now based on some citation issues. I am impressed that the article is able to explain some of the mathematical concepts so that a layman can understand them, but I believe the article needs a copyedit to eliminate redundancies and awkward phrasing. I've provided a very few examples of some of these prose issues.

  • Per WP:ITALICS, don't italicize quotations
  • Per WP:MOSQUOTE, quotations of under 4 lines should not be broken out from the text.
  • There's a lot of awkward phrasing in the article (Examples only: " and themselves to become notable scholars", "included some highly regarded names" - names, not professors?, "In October 1850, already an accomplished mathematician,"). I'd recommend a thorough copyedit.
  • Watch for redundant phrasing as well ("earning himself " instead of "Earning", etc)
  • I'm a bit confused by this sentence "responsibilities as head of department, devising the syllabus and preparing the lectures" - did he devise syllabi and prepare lectures for other people, or for his own classes? If those were his own classes, then that reflects his responsibilities as a professor, in addition to his head of dept responsibilities.
  • Is there a citation for "In 1871, he became the first Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge."
  • Is there a citation for "He supervised every step of the progress of the building and of the purchase of the very valuable collection of apparatus paid for by "
  • Occasionally he's referred to as "Clerk Maxwell" instead of "Maxwell". Please be consistent.
  • Any critical analysis of his poems? Any information on how popular the collection was?
  • Need a citation for this " his quantitative connection between light and electromagnetism is considered one of the great triumphs of 19th century physics."
  • Need a citation for "It was considered the final word on the issue"
  • Need a citation for "instruments which he devised for these investigations were simple and convenient in use" (simple and convenient can be personal preference adjectives, so let's see who said this)
  • There are no citations in the kinetic theory section. I think it needs at least one.
  • I'd prefer to see the legacy section converted to prose instead of a list. If it remains as a list, please remove full stops at the end as these are not complete sentences for the most part
  • Is thepeerage.com a reliable source?

Karanacs (talk) 16:07, 9 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Other sources look good. Ealdgyth - Talk 23:09, 9 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The article makes only cursory use of the most recent scholarly biography, Harman's The Natural Philosophy. I'm not super familiar with the state of Maxwell scholarship, but in the areas I am familiar with the article falls well short. I suspect that an article based mainly on Harman's work would mean serious changes throughout the article.
The discussion of religion in this article is totally inadequate; the one-paragraph section seems focused on historiographical issues rather than actually explaining the evolution of Maxwell's religious views and the role they played in his scientific work. As Crosbie Smith has argued in The Science of Energy (1998), "Maxwell's deeply Christian perspective on nature and society became inseparable from his central commitment to the science of energy" (p. 211); this is something that ought to play a role in the discussion of his scientific work throughout the article. Another grave (and related) omission is the lack of broader intellectual context for the scientific work. Dividing that discussion into cut-and-dry sections on Maxwell's "Contributions" to different fields neglects the main scientific (and socio-political) agenda his work was a part of...the recasting of physics into the language of energy (see Smith's Science of Energy).
The discussion of aether/ether theory (which is unreferenced) is particularly out of step with current historical thought on that issue. Maxwell had a complex mathematical ether theory that needs to be explained in relationship to his electromagnetic and kinetic theory work, and in relation to other thought on ether around the same time. The current discussion is the physics textbook version of history. Einstein and Michelson-Morley have little relevance to Maxwell's ether work of 4 decades earlier. (And indeed, Michelson-Morley played little if any role in the genesis of Einstein's special relativity.)--ragesoss (talk) 22:29, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Michelson-Morley played little if any role in the genesis of Einstein's special relativity. Really now? If ragesoss means only the genesis of SR as part of Einstein's own intellectual history, as distinct from the rest of physics, this would be exaggerated; as a general statement, I should like to see a source, any source. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:56, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I was referring to Einstein's own intellectual history. "If any" was hedging, since I didn't remember the precise details offhand..."little role" is fair assessment of how recent historical work has characterized it, I think. The MM experiment was invoked by Einstein afterwards, but does not seem to have been central in any way to Einstein's formulation of special relativity. Einstein had primarily theoretical (and perhaps practical) as opposed to experimental reasons for rejecting ether. See Peter Galison's Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps (2003), among other sources: "To Einstein [Michelson's work] was just one more suggestive piece of evidence that the very idea of the ether was 'superfluous.'" (p. 204) This is in contrast to Lorentz and Poincaré, who viewed ether drift experiments as crucial and interpreted Michelson's interferometer experiments in terms of ether theory and the contraction of matter (i.e., the interferometer's arms) as it moved through the ether. It was not until after special relativity that the Michelson-Morley experiment was seen as a decisive disproof of the ether. Even then, a number of experimenters continued to pursue similar experiments; the Michelson–Morley experiment article lists ones continuing until 1930. I don't know the source for it, but that article even states that "As late as 1920, Einstein himself still spoke of a type of ether...". In any case, the idea of ether is a moving target, and one that moved quite a long ways from Maxwell to Michelson-Morley to special relativity.--ragesoss (talk) 01:05, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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