Talk:Celestial spheres/GA1

GA Review[edit]

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Reviewer: James McBride (talk · contribs) 18:26, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Content improvements:

I think the article could use a little coverage of why the planets and stars were all set in celestial spheres in the first place. The article goes in to great detail about the some of the mechanisms of how the celestial spheres of various models operate, but does not provide much explanation, even generally, about what these models were trying to do. For instance, the article mentions that some historians consider Eudoxus's model to be purely mathematical, but others argue that he considered it to be physically real. Some general discussion of this mathematical vs. physically real topic before getting in to model details would be good, if possible. Discussion of the predictive power of models would also be good.
- Working on this; I've given a start on the influence of these models for establishing the distance of the planets.SteveMcCluskey (talk) 16:24, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Is there any possibility of images for more of the models? I had a very difficult time visualizing many of the descriptions.
- I can't find any public domain images of the earlier models. I, too, wish there was a good image of Eudoxus's model (there's a not very helpful diagram of his model on the Russian Wikipedia).SteveMcCluskey (talk) 16:24, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like the article on Dynamic of the celestial spheres includes coverage on pre-Middle Ages topics, yet it is included as a sub-section of Middle Ages in this article. Some reorganization may be needed.
- For the moment, I've moved it to an independent sub-section in the history section (still located between Middle Ages and Renaissance). Three other options would be to:
  - Move it to the end of the history section.
  - Make it as an independent section after the history section (but it would be an awfully small section.)
  - Make a more radical change and restore the Dynamics of the Celestial Spheres article as a major section of this article. I think such a large change would not be a good idea. SteveMcCluskey (talk) 21:10, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    - I agree that restoring the Dynamics of the Celestial Spheres article is not the best idea. I guess where it is now is better. James McBride (talk) 05:19, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      - OK, I'll leave it there.SteveMcCluskey (talk) 16:24, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        It seems to now be a sub-subsection of "Philosophical and ideological discussions", itself a sub-section of "Middle Ages". Since the discussion of dynamics almost seems to run parallel to the many of the other topics discussed in the article, maybe it just should not have a section at all. Instead, the very top of the history section could link to the dynamics article, and a sentence on dynamics could be part of the relevant subsections of the history section. In fact, some of that discussion already happens. I'm not really sure what to do, but with the other re-writing and re-organization you have done, the dynamics section once again feels out of place. James McBride (talk) 23:32, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        I've taken your advice, put a new hatnote, integrated the text into the medieval philosophical section and removed allusions to renaissance dynamics. There's already a brief discussion of Ancient Aristorelian dynamics. SteveMcCluskey (talk) 16:17, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
How important were these celestial sphere models? Are they something that only astronomers were concerned with? Or were Greeks (and later groups) generally aware of and interested in the models?
- Touched on this briefly in the context of the size of the planetary spheres; probably a wrap-up belongs in the lede.SteveMcCluskey (talk) 16:24, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The content in the lead does not seem totally representative of the content in the body. For example, the lead includes a calculation that made use of the spheres, but no mention of this is made in the body, nor is there discussion of how accurate the models are. The lead would also be a good place to include some of the more general elements of the models that I mentioned above (the purposes they had, their level of importance), but I do not think it should necessarily get in to a detailed discussion of the order of the planets in spheres in different models.
- Thanks for drawing attention to the role of these models for determining the distances of the planetary spheres. I've made a start of adding these to the narrative and begun to deal with the question of accuracy in computing planetary positions. General comments of the accuracy (or lack of it) of the various versions of these models still need to be added. SteveMcCluskey (talk) 02:42, 7 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  - I've tidied up the lede somewhat by moving the discussion of the emergence of the concept of celestial spheres to the historical section. I then broke the ancient section into two parts (before and after Eudoxus's spherical model.SteveMcCluskey (talk) 16:24, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    - Now that you have introduced more discussion of distances, it is probably worth contrasting this briefly with modern, accepted values. That is, mentioning that the stars are in fact not all on a sphere, and have a wide range of distances, all much greater than that estimated by the celestial sphere models. For instance, the sentence in the lead "scholars calculated what become generally accepted values for the distance to the edge of the universe ranging from 65 to 75 million miles" does not make clear who these values were accepted by, and noting that the models converged on that value, but that it was a wild underestimate of the true distance to stars, is worth saying. James McBride (talk) 23:32, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      - Added brief mention of modern distances, citing appropriate historical discussions.SteveMcCluskey (talk) 16:17, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Minor points:

The description of one of the models in terms of the space station in 2001 should be modified. That does not mean anything to me, and I would assume the same is true of others who might read this article.
- Deleted the 2001 passage; the author shows his age. SteveMcCluskey (talk) 20:20, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The capitalization of Moon and Sun is not entirely consistent.
- Upper cased them consistently. SteveMcCluskey (talk) 20:31, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure what is going on in the sentence: "However instead of bands Plato's student Eudoxus then developed a planetary model using concentric spheres for all the planets, with three spheres each for his models of the Moon and the Sun and four each for the models of the other five planets, thus making 27 spheres in all ' " — is this just a formatting error?
- Quite right -- the correct number is 26. SteveMcCluskey (talk) 20:20, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
There is still a citation needed tag that needs to be resolved.
- Fixed. SteveMcCluskey (talk) 16:24, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
"Since Grant has been unable..." briefly confused me, before remembering there was a scholar named Edward Grant mentioned once before. He should be reintroduced here.
- Revised. SteveMcCluskey (talk) 16:24, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think the following sentence may need a citation: "Anaximenes may have been the first to distinguish the planets from the fixed stars in respect of their irregular movements."
- It seems to be from Heath, but it's also off topic, so I've deleted the sentence. SteveMcCluskey (talk) 16:17, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Overall:

Pass/Fail:

I think this can reach GA status, but it could take a moderate amount of work. It is well sourced and does not have any major problems, but I do not think it quite meets the standard of broad coverage yet, for the reasons outlined in the points above. James McBride (talk) 18:26, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the good comments; I'll attack them as time allows. I'll start with the easy ones while I think over the more substantive issues. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 20:31, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Overall, this is looking pretty good. I responded to a couple of your changes with further suggestions, and added one sentence that I think could use citation. This is now very close to GA status, I think. James McBride (talk) 23:32, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the effort of looking this over; glad you like it. SteveMcCluskey (talk) 16:17, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I gave the article one more thorough read through. I'm going to go ahead and pass the article, as I think it meets the standards for a good article. If you are interested in improving the article further, I think there areas where the prose could still be made clearer. In particular, there are some sentences in model descriptions that are probably a bit too long. The sections describing the models of Anaximander and Adud al-Din al-Iji are good examples of this. Nevertheless, this seems to be of high enough overall quality to meet the criteria. James McBride (talk) 07:21, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]