Talk:H. Allen Orr

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Way forward with reviews

I suggest: (a)we put Orr's: "Good science demands two things: that you ask the right questions and that you get the right answers. Although science education focuses almost exclusively on the second task, a good case can be made that the first is both the harder and the more important. Getting Mendel's laws from Mendel's data may not be easy, but surely the hardest part is daring to ask Mendel's question: Despite all appearances to the contrary, might heredity obey simple laws?" (which comes from his Science review) into the main article. It puts a well-established point very well. (b) With regard to the other reviews, there is a clear precedent here in the reviews of The God Delusion which have been basically stable for some months and reflect a hard-won consenus. What do people think? NBeale 20:05, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Hi, and thanks for these suggestions. We do indeed need a way forward - and I am aware that what I am about to say may look a little negative! On (a), yes, it's a good point about science, and well expressed, but I'm not quite clear why it is worth including in an article about Orr. It's something of a truism that the secret of successful science is to ask the right questions, and I do not see how this relates specifically to Orr's work. I assume the focus of this article is Orr himself, and his work. More to the point would be to say more about what he has done, rather than about what he has said. Please convince me, however! On (b), I think there is a critical difference between the articles on The God Delusion and H. Allen Orr, and I don't think it's fair to claim the former as a precedent for the latter. The first is an article about a book, and reviews of that book are clearly germane to the subject. The second is an article about a scientist/thinker/writer, and it is more problematic including reviews he has written unless they tell us something about the man himself and/or his work. By their very nature, the book reviews he writes are likely to cover a range of subjects, many of which might not be very central to Orr himself - so including them runs the risk of looking like an exercise in dragging in irrelevances. The danger is compounded when the reviews are quoted selectively, and suspicions of POV-pushing creep in. A book review is often (again, almost by definition) an exercise in making clever remarks, and it's all too easy to produce a skewed interpretation by picking "good quotes" to include in a summary. I'm afraid my conclusion (for the moment) is that, given that this is an article about a person, not about a book, it is best to stay away from including quotes from his book reviews. Snalwibma 21:40, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well it's clear from his writing that Orr is something of a philosopher as well, and indeed it turns out that his first degree is in biology and philosophy. This help explain why his reviews are so emphaised in his CVs and citations - one of them has even been re-published by the Royal Institute of Philosophy. So I think it is only right to cite his philosophical work as well and not to restrict ourselves entirely to his science. FWIW ("H Allen Orr" Philosophy) gets 11.5k ghits vs 22k for ("H Allen Orr" Science) - I know this is a crude measure but it suggests that a 2:1 ratio might be about the right balance. NBeale 06:52, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep working on the persuasion! But let's see if anyone else has anything to say here before jumping in. I note from one of your edit summaries that you "don't wholly agree with" his review of Rocks of Ages! Dare I remind you that that is entirely irrelevant? By contrast, I agree almost completely with what Orr says about TGD, but I still think it's dangerous to start quoting from the review here. As for those ghits measures - well... utter rubbish, of course. Someone who is principally a scientist may write about "philosophy", but would be much less likely to write about "science", preferring such terms as "adaptation of DNA sequences". Snalwibma 07:34, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well better ratio is that ("H Allen Orr") gets 33k ghits, so on the web about 1/3rd of his notability seems to be related to "philosophy". Of course my view is entirely irrelevant - that's want I meant by "who cares". NBeale 10:02, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm supposed to be on a Wikibreak, but a quick comment won't hurt :) First, thank you both for moving forward, I will now archive the above discussions. In any case, while the google query numbers don't mean anything to me, the rest of NBeale's reasoning is convincing and Orr is playing a very important role in the science and religion debate. However, on the other points, I fully agree with Snalwibma, or I would go even further as I don't like the God Delusion precedent at all, the structure of that article was a compromise, and it's a bad one, featured articles on books don't look like that. So at least here, I think, we should draw on these reviews to describe his views, but not in the form of a synopsis of each review. I will try a rough outline for a real biography page, tell me what you think. --Merzul 10:31, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Other concerns...

Some more problems that we shouldn't forget

  1. There are some extensive quotations and possible copyright violations. This is not difficult to fix, just requires people with good English skills to rephrase and simplify material.
  2. Biographical information is hard to find about him. I couldn't even find his birth date. His CV can be found on google cache, as the official website seems down.
  3. We would really benefit from some third party sources outlining his work. His book has been reviewed in many places, these perhaps outline some of his other research as well.

Ok, that's all, I will now continue enjoying my so-called wikibreak :) --Merzul 10:48, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Philosophy, Science and Religion

It's better to characterise Orr's work outside the narrowly scientific as Philosophy, Science and Religion. Although some of his reviews (eg of TGD or Rocks of Ages) are in Science & Religion, really it seems to be the philosophical aspects that interest him at least as much. No time to do the editing now, but directionally I think that's how we should go. Something like "Orr considers that <sourced statements about science and philosophy>. He is critical of Gould's NOMA ... He denounces <intelligent design ....>. But he is also critical of <Dawkins, Pinker, Dennett...>" NBeale 23:21, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I like this general idea, but I thought he liked NOMA, I have to read the Gould review, because now I really want to know, what is he not critical of? --Merzul 23:42, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
lol ... apparently anyone can be a critic ... as I have clearly demonstrated on this article!!! Vast improvements have been made here. Less in your face with the anti-Dawkins; I would offer help; but I have no access to his actual science publications (assuming I would even understand them) and he has limited references on the web (other than books reviews). Maybe someone will stumble upon this and expand it with more direct knowledge of the man. --Random Replicator 06:01, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've just read this article and I still don't know what are his beliefs and philosophy. It seems that he is against everybody and everything on these topics. -- 200.234.115.67 (talk) 10:31, 8 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well I've had a go at this - please edit and improve. As you see I have stayed off his specific criticisms of Dawkins - partly because they are covered elsewhere and I don't want to confound Orr's overall views with his specific concerns on a controversial book. NBeale 17:38, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for keeping it much less polemical, but I would still like to trim it down a bit, but let's see what other people think. --Merzul 23:39, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Orr's Boston Review review of Dennett can be found here:

http://bostonreview.net/BR21.3/Orr.html

In fact, I have just noticed this is referenced in the article!

Rosa Lichtenstein (talk) 15:19, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I know this is late, but I'd like to add that this occurs on ANY scientist's page that even only briefly mentions the Science and Religion debate (if you can even call it a debate, more like a spitting contest). Anyways, I think it's crucial that we find things OTHER than that tired debate to add to the article. Maybe toning down the article a bit would help. 98.198.83.12 (talk) 15:43, 8 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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