Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Postmodern mathematics

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was redirect to Philosophy of mathematics#Social constructivism. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 12:51, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Postmodern mathematics[edit]

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To the extent the article is accurate and unbiased (which is very small), it is not a notable philosophy of mathematics. Note on category choice: I cannot tell whether a legitimate article on postmodernism in mathematics would be "Science and Technology", "Society Topics", or possibly "Fiction". (Much of what is accepted by post-modern journals is fiction.) (changed !vote below) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:10, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, per my comments on the talk page of this article, and the tag {{POV}} that I have added. D.Lazard (talk) 21:42, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Philosophy-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 22:13, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Mathematics-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 22:13, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: Article is almost entirely based on the work of two authors: Paul Ernest and Mohammad Moslehian. This does not really seem to be a major school of thought. WP:NFRINGE probably applies as there isn't much independent coverage of the subject. Also does not seem to pass WP:GNG. — MarkH21 (talk) 05:28, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep/merge per WP:ATD and WP:PRESERVE. If there are two authors then that's already enough to satisfy WP:GNG and it's not difficult to find more substantial sources such as Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty. It may be that's there a better place or title for such analysis of the state of (post) modern mathematics such as Philosophy_of_mathematics#Social_constructivism but that's a matter of ordinary editing, not deletion. Andrew D. (talk) 09:35, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the Article Rescue Squadron's list of content for rescue consideration. Andrew D. (talk) 09:56, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Meets WP:GNG, per the article and sources already there. Zero compliance with WP:Before. Google books and Google scholar are replete with sources. WP:Not paper applies. There is lots of room for these theories and analytical tools. At bottom, this is a content dispute, and not a good reason to WP:AFD. WP:Like or WP:Don't like are not arguments that deserve any weight. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 10:25, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@7&6=thirteen: I took a quick look through the first couple pages of each set of search results, and most of what I see isn't using the term in a way that's related to the subject of the article. I'm not automatically saying there's not enough out there, but just going, "Oh look...search hits!" isn't really enough here. I think in order to make a case for keeping, you need to actually find a chunk of these that are actually related to the topic of the article, and to satisfy WP:NFRINGE, you need to find other sources that discuss this as a field besides just a relative handful of adherents. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 12:23, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The case to be made here is the case for deletion – that is the motion before us. The evidence of the sources is that the topic is sufficiently notable that there are sensible alternatives to deletion and it is our policy to prefer these. Talk of fringe is ridiculous because that's for silly stuff like Paul is dead. The source I presented is a serious book - notable enough to have an article of its own. Andrew D. (talk) 13:47, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Meets WP:GNG Agree with 7&6 comments above. Lubbad85 (talk) 14:05, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment My review of sources reveals, among other things, that there are lots of sources that disagree with the analytical and philsophical model encompassed by Postmodern mathematics. I think they should be further fleshed out in our article.

But their very existence establishes:

the subject is notable but controversial;
this is a content dispute; and
belies that this a ground for WP:AFD.

So the article should be kept. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 14:34, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Even if the content of the article appears in sources, WP:COMMONSENSE excludes to keep in Wikipedia an article that presents as "figures" of the subject people who have nothing to do with postmodernism, such as Wittgenstein, Popper and Wilkinson. Also, the article presents Popper's criterion of falsifiability as a concept of postmodern mathematics, when it is a criterion for distinguishing science from pseudoscience, which immediately implies that mathematics is a science, while postmodern mathematics is a pseudoscience. Are you serious when asserting that such fallacies must be kept? D.Lazard (talk) 16:28, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, calling Popperian falsificationism "postmodern" is just strange. I get the feeling that this article is at the end of a long chain of oversimplifications. XOR'easter (talk) 16:54, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to Philosophy of mathematics, which is not a great article, but which is better, since it isn't full of WP:OR and excessively broad claims about what postmodernists as a whole believe. The mere existence of sources on a topic does not mean that a given article on that topic is worth keeping, and the problems with this one are too deep to be fixable through ordinary editing. Instead, it would require a top-down rewrite. XOR'easter (talk) 15:50, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Your suggestion to redirect to Philosophy of mathematics (a nice but very long article) would only make that article much longer. Moreover, it ignores the existence of other parallel articles, e.g. Quasi-empiricism in mathematics. Sometimes forks make the articles more digestible. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 16:32, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A redirect would not make philosophy of mathematics longer. I did not suggest a merge, because I do not think this article has content worth merging; as I said, I believe that it would require rewriting from scratch to be acceptable. XOR'easter (talk) 16:50, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment:For the three !votes saying that the article meets WP:GNG due to the two authors' works already in the article, aren't those sources not independent (which GNG requires)? If two people invent a theory, their own articles about the theory do not count as independent reliable sources on their theory. — MarkH21 (talk) 18:05, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Reference 5, which is cited more than any other, is a broken link to a paper in a journal that appears to be Paul Ernest's personal project, and whose website is down. I think it may also be incorrectly attributed; elsewhere it is listed as a single-author publication by Izmirli alone. All sorts of red flags are going up regarding the sourcing of this page. XOR'easter (talk) 18:32, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ernest is just a current researcher of this topic but there are plenty of others who have written about this before. For example, here's a book of 200 pages from 2001: Mathematics and the Roots of Postmodern Thought. That's from the OUP and so is quite respectable. Q.E.D. Andrew D. (talk) 19:02, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As I said earlier, "The mere existence of sources on a topic does not mean that a given article on that topic is worth keeping, and the problems with this one are too deep to be fixable through ordinary editing." So, Q.E. not D. XOR'easter (talk) 19:38, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That book's description says that it "traces the root of postmodern theory to a debate on the foundations of mathematics, early in the 20th century then compares developments in mathematics to what took place in the arts and humanities". This is about how postmodernism arose from a debate about the foundations of mathematics (i.e. Postmodernism#History), not this "postmodern mathematics" construed as postmodernism applied to the philosophy of mathematics. — MarkH21 (talk) 19:44, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it does seem to be doing a different thing than this article is trying to do. XOR'easter (talk) 21:50, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As nominator, change to Redirect (nothing accurate and reliably sourced to merge) to Philosophy of mathematics. Deletion is still possible, as it's more "uncertainty as a mathematical philosophy" (I originally wrote "uncertainty in mathematics", but that would be also a potentially different article) than something called "postmodern mathematics", which I'm not sure exists and is sufficiently notable, even for a redirect. I'm more of a formalist in mathematics, myself, so I do not feel qualified to comment on whether there is a notable field of "postmodern mathematics". I can only assert that this article is not about "postmodern mathematics", and XOR'easter (talk · contribs) points out the main, potentially accurate, relevant reference is misattributed, and he cannot determine whether it is accurately used. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:36, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Changed my reasoning, but still redirect. Nothing here should be in an article on postmodern mathematics, so I'm neutral whether an optimal approach would be Delete and redirect or just redirect. If there is anything accurate here, an article on "uncertainty as a mathematical philosophy" might be recovered. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 06:03, 30 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, redirect or delete and redirect This looks to be another Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of General Caste in Sikhism (2nd nomination) where the mathematics editors all say one thing, and the deletion-focused editors ("deletionists"?) tend to say something else. I don't know anything about this topic, but neither do Andrew or 7&6. Wikipedia will never get better if we allow articles on specialized topics to be controlled by "general interest" editors rather than the ones who actually know what they're talking about. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:33, 30 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Speaking as a math editor, it is not clear to me that the article is/should be about mathematics per se, and therefore not clear to me that math-focused editors are the correct body of experts. (I do not plan to take a position on this AfD.) --JBL (talk) 01:15, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Joel B. Lewis: I'm not sure what your point is. Your being a mathematics editor doesn't actually discredit my argument unless you are arguing to keep the article, since it's still the case that every mathematics editor who has taken a "side" in this discussion has said delete or redirect, and that all the editors who have said keep are general AFD contributors. I'm sure in the above-linked Sikhism case some random editors of Indian topics saw the discussion and decided not to comment because they didn't care either way, but that's basically beside the point. Is your point that the article is more about postmodernism than mathematics? That would be fine, except that no one here gives the impression that they came here from the philosophy deletion list. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:22, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think that is the point he was making (correct me please if incorrect) and I agree, the article seems to be more about the philosophy of mathematics than mathematics. Opinions from editors from the philosophy wikiproject / delsort would certainly be useful here. — MarkH21 (talk) 06:43, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, thanks. --JBL (talk) 16:29, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Well, yes. Hopefully some will be forthcoming. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:46, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

To the extent that the article describes non-mainstream theories of mathematics, it's about uncertainty as a philosophy of mathematics. Is that part of postmodernism? I (and the sources) don't seem to think so. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:19, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to Philosophy of mathematics#Social constructivism. The article is far too unclear and expository, and it is straightforward WP:SYNTH in its efforts to collect various ideas and thinkers into a group they never agreed to join. So, how can we better serve our readers? Thinking in terms of WP:NOPAGE and WP:ATD-R, redirecting to Philosophy of mathematics#Social constructivism keeps the title as a search term but puts the reader in a better position to understand two important pieces of context: 1) where some of the ideas discussed in the current article actually fit in the broader history of philosophy of mathematics, and 2) the distinction between constructivist epistemology (which seems to be the thing that the term "postmodern" is being used to avoid saying in this article) and constructivism as used in the philosophy of mathematics. Bakazaka (talk) 01:49, 3 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.