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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Science in the Age of Enlightenment/archive1

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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 by SandyGeorgia 21:20, June 21, 2008.

Science in the Age of Enlightenment edit

I'm nominating this article for featured article because... Pavlov's Kitten (talk) 16:48, 17 June 2008 (UTC) Nominator[reply]

Comments

  • This article has been nominated by an editor who has not edited the article. Also, another interesting side note: the article only has about a dozen edits in total.
  • There are a few MOS issues, like "195.)" which should remove the ")".
  • "7,103." – add a space after the comma
  • Page ranges must use en dashes per WP:DASH in references.

Gary King (talk) 17:30, 17 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Strong oppose, suggest withdrawal - the prose is in general extremely bad; this needs either several copyedits or an extremely good one. I only checked the lead, but virtually every sentence in the lead has prose problems, and a quick scan of the article reveals the same. Aside from the obvious MOS violations (which I list below), there are countless redundancies, grammar errors, etc.

MOS and other issues
  • Non-breaking space between measurement and unit.
  • Standardize spelling to either British or American, the article has both right now.
  • If you're going to source the lead, source the entire lead.
  • The first sentence talks about the "Age of Reason" while the title says "Age of Enlightenment". Which one is it?
  • You sometimes link centuries, sometimes not. Link them all.
  • "By the eighteenth century, scientific authority began to displace religious authority, and the disciplines of alchemy and astrology lost scientific credibility." - phrased as it is, it's a definite violation of NPOV. Suggest rephrasing, though the statement isn't far off.
  • No categories at bottom.
  • One reference formatted oddly (different from others), I'm sure you know which.
Prose
  • "The scientific history of the Enlightenment traces developments in science and technology during the Age of Reason, when Enlightenment ideas and ideals were being disseminated across Europe and North America." - makes little sense in the present tense. Also, how can the "scientific history" of the Enlightenment "trace" something?
  • "Generally, the period spans from the final days of the sixteenth and seventeenth-century Scientific revolution until roughly the nineteenth century, after the French Revolution (1789) and the Napoleonic era (1799-1815)." - "generally" is either a redundancy or a weasel word depending on the source, and plus how can a time period "generally" span a certain length of time? Additionally, the "the" in "the sixteenth and..." is either incorrect, redundant, or both.
  • "The scientific revolution saw the creation of the first scientific societies, the rise of Copernicanism, and the displacement of Aristotelian natural philosophy and Galen’s ancient medical doctrine." - questionable. The "first scientific societies" part is almost certainly factually incorrect, but besides that, "Copernicanism" is not a word.
  • "While the Enlightenment cannot be pigeonholed into a specific doctrine or set of dogmas, science came to play a leading role in Enlightenment discourse and thought." - seems to change topic in the middle of the sentence. How does one get from the non-existence doctrine or school of thought that characterizes the Age of Enlightenment to the importance of science in it?
  • "Broadly speaking, Enlightenment science greatly valued empiricism and rational thought, and was embedded within the Enlightenment ideal of advancement and progress. As with most Enlightenment views, the benefits of science were not seen universally; Jean-Jacques Rousseau criticized the sciences for distancing man from nature and not operating to make people happier." - "broadly speaking" is a weaselly term - be specific. "Were not seen universally" seems to characterize the benefits of science as fact, while this may be widely accepted, it's POV when mentioning the other school of thought.
  • Many, many redundancies throughout the article - watch for these terms: "some," "a number of," "a variety of".

I didn't have time to proofread the third paragraph, but the prose can't even be described as competent, let alone brilliant. The lead is opaque and seems to contradict itself in places, and I really don't think this is good coverage of the subject. Nousernamesleftcopper, not wood 02:22, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments I also note the lack of editing on the article by the nominator and no notice to the editors of the article that it was going to be nominated. Ealdgyth - Talk 11:54, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment. The account behind the article has about four edits (all of them on this article), which I find a bit odd. Also, the nominator has no other edits. Women in the enlightenment was created very recently as well. Is there some sort of group/class behind these articles?-Wafulz (talk) 15:57, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. This is approaching at the very least GA quality, so we should give it a look. I oppose the article's promotion, however, because the Disciplines section leaves out Biology, Geology and Physics (as well as others, but those are the crucial ones). If those were added, I would be more inclined to be neutral for the time being. Perhaps if I get a chance, I'll go through and fix the more minor/cosmetic MOS and prose errors. --Hemlock Martinis (talk) 19:38, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose for now, per concerns mentioned above - prose (gets off to a very shaky start, as mentioned above), disciplines missing - to which Medicine and the measurement of longtitude & similar issues are other essential omissions in my view - and general newness, and outside nomination. Also, although this may not strictly be an FA issue, the article has only one link to it from a related article, and has not been included in the History of Science template (somehow it appears on the one here, but not on others in the series). Needs polishing and bedding in. I'm not able to comment on the general accuracy, though it seems ok & well-referenced, except to say that this was surely the period when scientific advances really began to have a large economic impact in the West, and this should also be covered. Johnbod (talk) 13:01, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose—were the criteria and instructions read? TONY (talk) 11:28, 21 June 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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