Talk:Charles Bonnet

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 03:50, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

This article gives Bonnet's year of birth as 1720. Other sources, including Dinsmore C.E. (1996) Int. J. Dev. Biol. 40: 621-627, give it as 1729. Can anyone state authoritatively which is correct? Many thanks. NitramFortune (talk) 15:58, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Citizenship status

@Sapphorain: Checking my understanding here...Canton of Geneva#Republic of Geneva (1534/1541–1798, 1813–1815) says (citing François Walter) there are four levels of membership to the Republic: habitant, natifs, burgeois, and citoyens. It also says that the only one eligible to be on the Council of Two Hundred is bourgeois. Therefore, it would follow that Charles Bonnet, being a member of the Council of Two Hundred, was one of the bourgeois, not citoyens, for at least part of his life. He might also have been a citoyens if he was the child of one of the bourgeois, for a different part of his life, but so far I'm not aware of any citations that support that. Am I missing something?

I'm also worried a bit about violating WP:SYNTH. It's unclear that the Council rules didn't change over time or have occasional exceptions, so I'm not sure it's safe to make a citizenship assertion without explicitly seeing that in a source, and also I'm not sure that sort of inference is allowed (as opposed to simply paraphrasing what the sources say without inferences). -- Beland (talk) 03:16, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

As indicated in the HDS his father Pierre was himself a councillor, thus at least a bourgeois. This means Charles was a citizen. --Sapphorain (talk) 07:48, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

I found another article on the topic, Bourgeoisie of Geneva, which says that in addition to the Council of Two Hundred, there was a Grand Council, consisting of bourgois and citizens. (The HDS also has an article about grand councils.) It's unclear from [1] which council Pierre Bonnet was on.

What do you make of the WP:SYNTH concerns? -- Beland (talk) 13:52, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

As explained in the HDS article the Grand Council originated from an enlargement of the Small Council, and comprised a fluctuating numbers of members (according to period of times or to cities), but which was often close to 200, and thus became sometimes known as the Council of Two Hundred. It was not another council. Pierre Bonnet was in any case a member of it. He was maybe even a member of its « core », the Small Council, but this is irrelevant in the present issue, since in any case he must have been at least a burger. And so his son was a citizen. What do I make of WP:SYNTH concerns? Not much in this case, there shouldn’t be any concerns. Prohibiting the use of elementary logic cannot be amongst its purposes.--Sapphorain (talk) 22:17, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

I was reading machine translations from the German and French, and perhaps I confused the terminology, as there are 3 different G-words floating around. The machine translation from German says the Great/Grand Council "included" the Council of Two Hundred, but the machine translation from French seems to say they were the same thing in Geneva. The HDS article on Great/Grand Council mentions a General Council, and Bourgeoisie of Geneva says the General Council of at most 1500 appointed the Council of Two Hundred. It's still unclear to me which of those Pierre Bonnet was on.

There seems to be a supermajority on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Infoboxes#Birthplace as proxy for citizenship and nationality in favor of explaining Republic of Geneva membership status levels in the body, not the infobox. So we'll need to change that, but I'll ask for a third opinion to help determine what we should write in the body. -- Beland (talk) 01:30, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

(I think the point of WP:SYNTH is in fact to prohibit inferences that might seem logically unassailable but in practice aren't, making an exception for simple arithmetic. -- Beland (talk) 01:34, 8 June 2024 (UTC))

3O Response: Don't mention the citizenship if the sources don't mention it. Setting SYNTH aside, deciding citizenship status is even relevant for inclusion at all without a source mentioning it in the context of Charles Bonnet is OR. Snowmanonahoe (talk · contribs · typos) 01:59, 8 June 2024 (UTC)