Talk:Murray Gell-Mann

Seeger and Alain Aspect

Is it true that, in his book "the Quark and the Jaguar" Murray Gell-Mann "settles his account" with singer Pete Seeger and mention the experiment of Alain Aspect without naming him ?

Possible items for inclusion?

I'm new to Wikipedia, and stumbled across this article. I noticed that the 'Talk' page here has several mentions of controversies -- in the field of linguistics, apparently? -- in which Gell-Mann was involved late in his life, after the Nobel Prize. About a year ago, there was a comment by an IP editor that "There is actually a reference to Murray's linguistic ideas in the current version of this article" -- yet reading the article now and I can't find anything. Was this earlier reference scrubbed, and should it be reinstated? Besides a statement that "Gell-Mann has interests in... historical linguistics," there's nothing in the article as far as I can tell that would indicate his 'extracurricular' work. I don't know anything in particular about either the man or the apparent controversy, so pardon me for not writing more specifics.
The other item I would propose would be for the article to include a brief reference to the "Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect," coined by Michael Crichton in a 2002 speech to the International Leadership Forum. It's entirely unrelated to Gell-Mann himself -- Crichton himself admitted it was entirely tongue-in-cheek ("I refer to it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.") So I'm not sure what the right wording would be, but considering that this article is one of the first results from the search string, it would seem fitting to include here. I'd propose to make it a disambiguation, but frankly I'm not convinced Crichton's term is WP:Notable enough for a page on its own. PublicolaMinor (talk) 08:51, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi PublicolaMinor— Gell-Mann's involvement with linguistics is typical of polymaths getting involved with various fields of science. If there's significant discussion around his contributions to the field, then it is worth including. My own five-minute quick search shows that most discussion easily findable by a guy sitting at home (i.e. I haven't checked the journals) seems to be meta-discussion about his interest rather than his core contributions. Yet to be honest, I did go to linguistics school and I did hear his name but that's because I attended an institution that he taught at. So happy researching! To your second point, I enjoy early Crichton as much as the next editor but unless his namedropping has generated some significant secondary discussion, it's probably best to leave it out. Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 05:04, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

V–A

It strikes me that V–A should use an NDASH (if the V and the A represent elements of equal weight, and one doesn't modify the other) but I see that V MINUS_SIGN A has been used here. It could perhaps designate a formula so I left it alone. Many web sites use V HYPHEN_MINUS A (probably for convenience), but a couple of formally typeset physics books on the second page of Google results use V NDASH A. There's also a redirect from V-A which should be brought into line with the final determination. — MaxEnt 04:27, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

While there has been a lot of blood shed across Wikipedia with regard to em dashes vs. en dashes vs. hyphens, the general guideline is to reflect what the preponderance of reliable sources use. Although this can be tricky for typographical minutiae like this, it's unlikely to be controversial as long as you're not proposing a huge change across many articles and the sources for this topic are respected. Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 04:45, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Request for Comments

There is an RfC on the question of using "Religion: None" vs. "Religion: None (atheist)" in the infobox on this and other similar pages.

The RfC is at Template talk:Infobox person#RfC: Religion infobox entries for individuals that have no religion.

Please help us determine consensus on this issue. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:05, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Doctor's Appointment at the Smithsonian Institute

Perhaps mention of the doctor's appointment as citizen regent of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, for two 6 year terms, 1974-1988; perhaps in the category of awards and honors? Public Law 93-401, August 30, 1974 refers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.183.224.2 (talk) 22:35, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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