Talk:Antoine Lavoisier
From Academic Kids
Can anyone do something about the excess width of this page? I can't print it properly (unless I go to landscape mode) and this seems to be the only Wikipedia page like that.
- Fixed --maveric149
- Thanks. There turn out to be a few others like that but that one had been the most egregious.
"Mara"?
Recently an anonymously added: "One of his actions that may have sealed his fate was his critisism, a few years earlier, of a scientific paper written by a young lawyer named Mara, who subsequently became a leading revolutionary." I've never heard of this, and have no idea who "Mara" is. Maybe a typo for "Marat"? Does anyone know something about this? Unless someone can say something more substantial or cite a source, I'm inclined to remove this. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:37, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
- Apparently his family name was originally spelled Mara. Here's a reference: [1] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/bax/1900/marat/ch01.htm)
- RodC 00:55, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
- and another one: [2] (http://www.h-france.net/vol2reviews/livesey.html).
- [3] (http://scienceweek.com/2004/rmps-7.htm) seems proof enough, there are more pages with a similar story. However, it should simply become "Marat" I think, no need to get into the name trouble on Lavoisier's page. Renke 01:09, 8 May 2005 (UTC). Note however, that Marat was not a lawyer but a scientist...
Blinking
I've changed the treatment of the severed head story. Lavoisier, according to the story, did an experiment. It's unscientific to reject the results of an experiment because they seem surprising. There is no source given for the assertion attributed to "biologists," and it's actually pretty common for farm animals to continue to do stuff after their heads have been chopped off. Talk to anyone who's had some experience slaughtering chickens, and they'll tell you that they often squawk, and the bodies even run around afterwards. Granted, that could be explained as a reflex, whereas blinking would be a voluntary action, but I think the original treatment was stated way too strongly unless it can be backed up with some kind of reference. In fact, one of the external links concludes by saying that there *is* empirical evidence in favor of the possibility that the head retains consciousness. --Bcrowell 19:33, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
