Talk:Etiology

Vandalism?

There is a line that seems to have been added, removed and added again to the Mythology section that seems to be a bit of vandalism.

"Secular cults anthropomorphize chance through the Evolution myth, asserting that Chance can cause origins. Their myths of the origin of the universe and the origin of life as a function of a substantial quality, Chance, have been adopted by modern thought and are evidence of the persistence of the myth phenomena." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.45.142.144 (talk) 03:46, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Use of the word

Should 'aetiology' be used to describe the causes of events that are unrelated to the world of psychology or medicine? eg. "The purpose of this part of the report is to explore both the environmental impacts of transport, and as far as is possible, the aetiology of these impacts."

Referring to 'biblical etiology' and giving the Flood as a 'mythic' example is certainly an example of this page's bias. Seeing that the scientific evidence is there for its occurrence, as well as there being the historical record, to label the Flood as myth, is to highlight a prejudice against the Biblical record. Rather steer clear of this sort of personal belief in definitons.

One man's myth is another man's religion. Get over it. Furthermore, not only is the term "myth" not pejorative, but in this article, the term "myth" is used only when referring to ancient pagan theologies (albeit ones that were rehashed for Judeo-Christian stories.) Thus, if anything, it's POV against pagan religions, not whichever religion you seem to have a bias for. 66.229.182.113 02:07, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

This is an excellent example of the LCD aspect of the Wikipedia knowledge acquisition mechanism. In this case, it is in regard to usage of aetiology from Mythology OED reference 1a while disregarding 2a. And so, the LCD is toward the motivation of the poster population, which is decidedly different from the population in general (as a possible LCD). The discussion of aetiology is quite thin on effects based reasoning or other epistemic aspects.

Connotations?

There's a discussion on the "homosexuality" page over the usage of "etiology" in the title of a section on biological causal factors. Apparently that usage is insulting because it implies that homosexuality is a disease, but I've always though the term was used (as in the introduction to this page) as the study of how anything can come about, not just unfavorable things. Any thoughts? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zickx009 (talk • contribs) 05:07, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Choice of phrasing for Pyramus and Thisbe

"Stained red from their forbidden love" is an interesting euphemism for "stained red from the fountain of gushing blood from their double suicide." Also, the berries start out white, not black. Actually, considering that there are two mistakes, I think I'll go ahead and change this myself. 150.135.210.85 (talk) 06:11, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Medicine

Under the heading of 'Medicine', the paragraph begins "The following are examples of intrinsic factors:"

However, there seems to be no explanation of why we are being given examples only of intrinsic factors which might cause disesase, as opposed to examples of both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Nor any explanation for the layman of what the words intrinsic and extrinsic mean in this context, nor of the fact that this is a common classification of causes of disease.

I could change this myself but I am not medically qualified, so if this is incorrect, perhaps someone would let me know. Otherwise I will come back here and add some further explanation.Buyani Nyoni (talk) 19:16, 18 September 2022 (UTC)