Disputatio:Gens humana

This article needs to be cleaned up and expanded. The Latin is, well, pretty bad. Can't we aim for something a little more classical? Iacomus 22:03, 6 Februarii 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree. It also has several headers for nonexistent sections. Considering what an important article this is(or should be), it's rather lacking in just about everything. I'll start working on expanding and fixing it a bit when I can, but I can't do it all. I've also noticed something else... Why does it list Hobbit as a relevant subject? Hobbits, while hominid and in many ways similar to Homo Sapiens, are fictional and aren't an actual species. Maybe a better article for that purpose would be the one on human evolution. Sparkstarthunderhawk 20:33, 13 Iunii 2009 (UTC)

Better still, just delete the link. Be bold. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 21:27, 13 Iunii 2009 (UTC)

Maybe Hobbit refers to en:Homo Floresiensis? Sed est alia species.--Rafaelgarcia 00:36, 14 Iunii 2009 (UTC)

... et hic Latine scribimus: hobbit non est nomen Latinum pro Homo floresiensis. Si quis velit nexum ad Homo floresiensis includere, sane licet! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 09:39, 14 Iunii 2009 (UTC)

Ratiocinatus

refer articulum Sacri Ordines hinc Ratiocinatus ob longitudinem verbi

Homo vs. Homo sapiens?

I see that d:Q5, "human," links to en:Human, "humans as a species," which is distinct from en:Homo sapiens, "H. sapiens as a taxonomic classification." Today someone at Wikidata went through and removed links to Homo sapiens from the Wikidata page -- they now link to d:Q15978631, "Homo sapiens." Which is fine, I suppose, except for the thousand pages list, which uses d:Q5, "human." In other words, we're now apparently missing a page. Do we actually want a page on "humans as a species," presumably "what sociology is about" or the like? I'm about to re-run the statistics for the month. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 18:05, 9 Octobris 2015 (UTC)

Let's pause for a moment and contemplate how poorly most people conceptualize the living world and therefore misunderstand the principles of taxonomy and its orthography. The authors of en:Wookiee, for example, regard a Wookiee as an individual of a species, but then they capitalize the epithet as if it were a genus. It might pay to wait & see how this settles out. ¶ Since all items in the 1K list are in the 10K list, what's happening on the 10K pages? IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:15, 9 Octobris 2015 (UTC)

No respectable scientific encyclopedia would lack an article on the genus Homo. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:33, 9 Octobris 2015 (UTC)

I think I agree with Iacobus: wait and see. "Humans as a species" is really the same topic as "Homo sapiens", and speakers of other languages will think so too. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 20:39, 9 Octobris 2015 (UTC)

Of course we need an article on the genus Homo (which we have: Homo (genus)) A. Mahoney (disputatio) 21:26, 9 Octobris 2015 (UTC)

Yes, but the trick here is that our [[Homo]] is currently a redirect to [[Homo sapiens]]. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 14:24, 10 Octobris 2015 (UTC)

Redirects don't influence the 1000 and 10000 counts; but, never mind that, you can change the target of the redirect (or turn it into a discretiva page) if you want. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 15:49, 10 Octobris 2015 (UTC)

-- but I was using homo in the non-technical Latin sense. What we don't have is an article on "human being" or "person" corresponding to en:Human. I have not looked through the two articles in :en very carefully but it sort of seems like en:Homo sapiens is biological anthropology and en:Human is sociology, very roughly. Is it useful for us to have two such articles? Which of the two belongs in the 1000-page list? As for the 10K list, I haven't looked at that lately; in principle everything in the 1000 is supposed to be in that list, but in practice it's not always the case. I know there have been changes and I'd like to get our mirror lists and epitome table updated; this might happen next week. Committees, you know, and first-year advisees coming in distraught about their mid-term grades.... A. Mahoney (disputatio) 21:26, 9 Octobris 2015 (UTC)

On second reading, the English article is fairly well written with regard to point we're discussing, though the topic seems slippery at first. The first sentence tells us the topic is "Homo sapiens, primarily ssp. Homo sapiens sapiens"—and for the last topic, it sends us through a link to the article "Anatomically modern human." But we're not exactly dealing with Homo sapiens either, because that taxon has its own article too. The section on etymology and definition says "In common usage, the word 'human' generally refers to the only extant species of the genus Homo." So at the most practical level, this text will be dealing with the genus; but that taxon, too, has its own article. The bulk of the article, as announced at the beginning, and as Anne has rightly observed, then restricts itself pretty much to Homo sapiens sapiens in sociocultural senses. ¶ So we have a series of biologically based articles (Homo (genus), Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens sapiens) and now a socioculturally based one (Homo sapiens sapiens (non taxon)). This plan is reasonably workable, whatever Vicipaedia's lemma for "Human" turns out to be, and it won't be a surprise that I'd say the best procedure is to follow it, duplicating Wikipedia's structure, and not least for an oft-cited reason: hundreds or perhaps thousands of earnest contributors have thought about the topic over there, and though a handful over here may be able to generate a plan that would serve readers better, that's not the way to bet. If one does come to light, however, of course it should deserve reasonable consideration. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 14:24, 10 Octobris 2015 (UTC)

On this point, Wikipedia may be initially confusing in that it uses the same boxed photograph—with different captions!—to illustrate the articles under discussion. For "Human," it shows "An adult human male (left) and female (right) from Thailand," but for "Homo sapiens sapiens," it shows "Adult H. s. sapiens male (left) and female (right) from Thailand." The initial confusion lifts if we accept that that "human" is equivalent to Homo sapiens sapiens, and the concept of human therefore pertains to our subspecies and no other. That seems to be Wikipedia's underlying position. Of course philosophers, theologians, and others may have something to say about that. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 14:39, 10 Octobris 2015 (UTC)

A way of distinguishing an article on humans (socioculturally considered) and an article on Homo sapiens sapiens (biologically considered) would be to use unclothed pictures of humans in the latter article. Clothing, which covers nearly the whole bodies of the humans depicted in the photo, is cultural, not biological. (And yes, of course, the minimization or absence of clothing can be a cultural trait too.) IacobusAmor (disputatio) 16:37, 10 Octobris 2015 (UTC)

An equivalent of en:Human is still missing here, and has just cost Vicipaedia 0.04 points in the scoring system, but Wikidata now defines human as 'common name of Homo sapiens'. Vicipaedia correctly has Homo (genus) and Homo sapiens, but now needs another article, something sociologically/psychologically equivalent to en:Human. How about calling it Genus humanum 'humankind, the human race'? Either that, or plain old Humanus (which at the moment is a redirect to Homo sapiens), or Homo sapiens sapiens. :/ IacobusAmor (disputatio) 22:15, 6 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

You're way more expert in this area than I am: Genus humanum sounds fine to me. Do whatever you conclude is the right thing -- I won't complain! A. Mahoney (disputatio) 23:07, 6 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

I won't either, but bear in mind that for us "genus" is a current technical term in a closely related field (unlike the "kind" of "humankind") and we would be giving it a different meaning. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 09:29, 7 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

Yes, many would read it as meaning 'the human genus', and that would be a problem. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:28, 7 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

You might perhaps consider just "humanum", the adjective turned into a noun. No problem understanding this usage if it recalls to the reader's mind "Nihil humanum a me alienum puto".

Whatever you decide, the neuter (already used in your suggestion of "genus humanum", and also the proper gender to use if adopting an adjective as the name of a concept in "humanum") will please everybody who doesn't want the title of this article to come down on either side of the male/female frontier. We can make that grammatically explicit in a way that English speakers can't. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 09:29, 7 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

Well, but Vicipaedia's way of lemmatizing the colors is to use the masculine adjective, plain & simple; e.g., caeruleus. So that may be the established pattern. Do any noncolors already serve as adjectival lemmata? and if so, what form do they take? IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:28, 7 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

I guess there's often an implied noun. With the colours you might say it's color. In this case it might be gens or species, suggesting "humana", or indeed genus, giving "humanum". Thinking further about it, Gens humana seems a good Ciceronian and Horatian possibility anyway: "Gens humana ruit per vetitum", as they say on Google. How about that? Very classical. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 14:32, 7 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

For 'mankind, the human race', Cassell's has both hominum genus and gens humana. The latter does avoid the problem with genus. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 15:34, 7 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

For reference: on which page here is en:Human listed? I'm not finding it. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 14:32, 8 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

It's under Mammalia, the 127th entry -- but the page isn't up to date, so it still shows a link to Homo sapiens. I have not had much time this semester. Use the page in Meta, m:List of articles every Wikipedia should have/Expanded, as the main reference. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 17:08, 9 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

On further reflection, I think our existing Homo sapiens really belongs with en:Human, and what we don't have is a page about "H. sapiens as a taxonomic classification," which is what en:Homo sapiens claims to be. So perhaps create Homo sapiens (species) or the like? Or, rename Homo sapiens to Gens humana and create a new page under the original name about what the name means and how it comes to be? I really don't see why English WP has two articles, but there it is; a look at Wikidata shows that the following WP versions have both articles -- bg, bh, bs, cy, en, fa, he, ia, ja, ru, simple, sr, uk, ur. Unfortunately I can't really read any of those except English (simple or complicated), though a quick look at Welsh suggests that they've got biological and cultural information under "Homo sapiens" and just a quick definition under "Human" (with info about the earliest humans in the British Isles, I think); this is the opposite of what's in English. Can we get this tidied up in time for the February standings? A. Mahoney (disputatio) 14:10, 29 Ianuarii 2016 (UTC)

If we agree two articles are a good idea, I'm for "Gens humana", classical Latin and not ambiguous, alongside "Homo sapiens", a technical Latin term duly defined by Linnaeus in 1758. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 14:20, 29 Ianuarii 2016 (UTC)

I'm fine with that solution. I just redirected Homo to Homo (discretiva), which makes more sense to me, but people should change it if they think otherwise. Lesgles (disputatio) 05:06, 30 Ianuarii 2016 (UTC)

Done. The existing good page is now Gens humana, linked to d:Q5 and giving us points in both the 1000 Pages and the 10,000 Pages; there is a new Homo sapiens linked to d:Q15978631 (and awaiting refinements, which it won't get from me today). I think we're square. A. Mahoney (disputatio) 19:56, 30 Ianuarii 2016 (UTC)

Individual

Which raises another point: what's to be done with the noun 'individual'? Cassell's and Traupman give homo, but you see the problem there. In both dictionaries, 'individuals' are homines singuli, so is singularis going to be OK for (just one) 'individual'? And then what of individualism?! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 15:34, 7 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

Direct descendant of "singularis" is French sanglier "wild boar": he tends to be an individualist. No help I'm afraid :) Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 15:56, 7 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

'Individual' is of course individuum but, unlike English and perhaps most modern languages, individuum doesn't have the connotation 'person'. Let's say that, in this respect, Latin cuts the world differently. Individuum (sc. corpus), by which Cicero translated Greek ἄτομος, may be defined as a thing which possesses properties and relations peculiar to itself. Like corpus, it may be either live or non-live, human or non-human. Neander (disputatio) 20:22, 7 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

Would individuus (scil. homo) then be OK? IacobusAmor (disputatio) 21:55, 7 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

That would be nice, indeed, but I don't think so. The associative tie between individuum and corpus being very tight, individuum is, in principle, applicable to referring to persons only insofar as corpus can be used to refer to persons. And it can — witness e.g. "postero die libera corpora dictator sub corona vendidit" (Liv. 5.22.1) — though perhaps marginally so. As far as individuum is concerned, human reference can scarcely be attested philologically, but I don't see why it couldn't be taken as a virtual possibility. (After all, philological data relating to the noun individuum is utterly scarce.) Anyhow, I expect that individuum, even if referring to a person, would best thrive in philosophical and scientific contexts. When it comes to more mundane situations, it's better to use persona and, in plural, singuli in referring to human individuals. Neander (disputatio) 09:46, 8 Novembris 2015 (UTC)