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Talk:James Dwight Dana

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Moved from article[edit]

I moved the following paragraph from the article to here. What does this have to do with Dana?

"Both Biblical scholars and Christian scientists sought to harmonize the Bible with the most recent scientific developments. John O. Mears was one of such scholars who proposed several models which varied from a creation-gap (a gap of millions of year, followed by a creation of 24 hour periods, or a mixture thereof) to the day-age creationism theory where a day would not last 24 hours but have some indefinite time frame. Mears chose for the latter theory and quickly received support from Dana who also wanted to harmonize science with the Bible. He published a number of manuscripts on the topic between 1856 and 1857 and which are called Science and the Bible".

Aleta 00:33, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The last two sentences mention that Dana published on the subject. The Farlang reference is to support this - needed a citation link. Without the above paragraph the remaining paragraph of the section is rather devoid of mention of Dana. So I've removed the section and added a sentence at the end of publications for it. Vsmith 01:06, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The removed section, Dana and the Theory of Evolution, was a bit over-done with very little about Dana. Yes, Dana was a product of his time, and like many of his contemporaries, pondered and wrote about the problems of reconciling religion with the scientific discoveries and ideas of the day. I don't think a major section (~1/4 of the article) discussing the topic is warrented. Focus instead on his science - for which he is most notable. Vsmith 01:29, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I misread it initially to say that Mears wrote Science and the Bible, leaving only Dana's support as reference to him. Nevertheless, I agree with the rest of your analysis is valid. Aleta 02:16, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I can live with it... I wasn't really sure how to implement it, and it was quite a different side to him than the literature for which he is best know: mineralogy. Hence my inclusion but wasn't really sure how to phrase it. Obviously it was a vitally important discussion at the time, (and you may wonder if the discussion ever ended..). Anyway the final result is a nice summary of what he has done and I can live with that.

Gem-fanat 18:08, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]