Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hitchens's razor


 * 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 keep with no consensus to merge. Daniel (talk) 07:14, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Hitchens's razor

 * – ( View AfD View log )

The concept may not be notable on its own, outside the article for Christopher Hitchens himself, where it should be moved to. As the article states, this is a repetition of Occam's razor. There are several books that use the words "Hitchens' Razor", but the concept is not different enough from other philosophical concepts to warrant its own page, and the very few sources that are not Hitchens himself merely mention that this is a thing that Hitchens likes to say and they do not establish notability. This simply does not meet the significant coverage guideline of Notability. MarshallKe (talk) 20:25, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Logic-related deletion discussions. MarshallKe (talk) 20:25, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Philosophy-related deletion discussions. MarshallKe (talk) 20:25, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. MarshallKe (talk) 20:25, 12 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep. Disagree that this is a pure repetition of Occam's razor. Occam's razor does not, in any way, discuss the "burden of proof" in relation to who is arguing for a claim, that is purely Hitchens' invention, and why this razor is named after him. With a quick google search, I was able to find several other RSes (mostly scholarly) which mention/discuss this concept independent of the references in the article and even largely indpendent of Hitchens himself:       . The Hindu, for example, discusses it in depth and helps establish WP:GNG. All these other uses of it independent of Hitchens as a person demonstrate it has independent notability as a turn-of-phrase and philosophical argument.-- Shibboleth ink  (♔ ♕) 22:19, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment: how is that principle Hitchens' invention if it was well-established in Ancient Roman law and classical philosophy? Ain92 (talk) 12:29, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
 * It's not Hitchens' invention, but like a lot of things, somebody popularized an ancient concept and it got named after themselves. Hitchens really doesn't deserve to even be mentioned in this article, but there's not much Wikipedia can really do about that, I don't think. MarshallKe (talk) 13:44, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Not everything that's said in Latin is actually Roman. This one appears to be one of the maxims in Bouvier's Law Dictionary of 1856. If you have an earlier source, i'm quite curious. . Kleuske (talk)
 * It is attributed to Julius Paulus Prudentissimus who flourished during the Severan dynasty in the Digest of the 6th-century Corpus Juris Civilis, see those articles for details. Ain92 (talk) 16:33, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Kleuske (talk) 18:48, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I expressed a concern some time ago (part of the discussion at Talk:Hitchens's razor/Archive 1) that the term Hitchens's razor might have been coined on Wikipedia. It now appears to have been used more widely though, perhaps by people who'd read this article, and I'm not sure there's anything we can do to correct that circular referencing issue now. Cordless Larry (talk) 07:22, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Given 's newfound sources, I tend to concur with keeping the article. However I will let the discussion run its course rather than revoking the AfD. MarshallKe (talk) 12:28, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Redirect or Merge back to parent article. Artw (talk) 15:35, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep well sourced and notable. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:08, 14 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep per Shibbolethink. If keep is not the consensus, then merge into Occam's Razor. Do not redirect or delete. – Novem Linguae (talk) 06:23, 15 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Merge back to parent article. There does not seem to be sufficient content to justify a stand alone article and there is not likely to be. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 04:29, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Speedy Keep given the references in the article and the references that Shibbolethink has found which easily establish it has met the GNG. GliderMaven (talk) 21:35, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep. Clearly different from Occam's Razor - as the article says, there are echoes of Occam, but the substantive requirement of evidence is different. RomanSpa (talk) 22:42, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep Came here via noms user page, where they state that figuring out what to do about Hitchen's razor is one of their aims. We should keep it -Roxy the grumpy dog . wooF 12:59, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Just so we're on the same page, one of my aims is to bring this article up to WP standards if possible, and not to "do something" about the principle itself, which would 1) be Advocacy and against the rules, and 2) strange considering I'm an atheist who generally likes the principle being discussed. MarshallKe (talk) 14:09, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Stop wasting our time. Also, what on earth do your beliefs have to do with this? -Roxy the grumpy dog . wooF 14:16, 18 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Let me put a different proposal: merge into Burden of proof (philosophy). This is much closer to the topic of the discussed article, a section there would do the job neatly. A mention in Occam's razor is also appropriate. Ain92 (talk) 16:44, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Strong merge to Christopher Hitchens or some other suitable target. I'm not convinced it meets GNG unless there are sources that pre-date the Wikipedia article (2012). The recent usage linked to above looks like WP:Citogenesis to me. Searching Google for "Hitchens's Razor" (or variations) prior to 2012 brings like almost no results and certainly none that are RS. . If you look at the first creation of the article, the only reference supporting the existence of this is Hitchens's own 2007 book. These are tell-tale signs of citogenesis. We should fix this error before it gets worse. Levivich 17:22, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Searching Google books yields plenty of popular sources mentioning the term "Hitchens's razor", but it's indeed telling that one of those sources cites Wikipedia, and that restricting the search to before November 2012 (when our article was created) yields nothing . Now the adage itself does indeed occur in Hitchens 2007, but he never calls it a razor himself (he repeatedly refers to Occam's razor, but not with reference to his own adage). The term does not seem to occur in any pre-2012 source (I've also checked all the sources in the first version of our article), and this indeed looks like a very successful case of citogenesis ( should be able to tell us: is my impression correct that you chose "Hitchens' razor" as an appropriate title because Hitchens liked to refer to Occam's razor and because this seems to be a razor all of his own?). Unless either a pre-2012 source can be found, or significant coverage in post-2012 scholarly sources in relevant fields (e.g., philosophy, theology, discourse analysis, etc.), we should probably stop referring to the adage as "Hitchens's razor". But if the adage has no name of its own, it's probably better to merge and redirect to Christopher Hitchens. If the term sticks despite that, and starts to pop up in the scholarly literature (for a citogenesis case like this, The Hindu won't do, and neither will an obscure paper on Bipolar disorder), it can always be recreated in the future. ☿ Apaugasma  ( talk  ☉) 02:19, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi Apaugasma. To answer your question: no, as far as I know, Hitchens never referred to this phrase as 'Hitchens' razor' (or 'Hitchens's razor'); in fact, he seems not to have invoked the term 'razor' at all, let alone to have referred to Ockham when using it (first in 2003, later in God Is Not Great in 2007). The term 'Hitchens's razor' seems to have been coined by his commentators in 2010, and that's what I based this article on. Note that there are several philosophical razors besides Ockham's razor and Hitchens's razor, such as Hanlon's razor and Alder's razor. The fact that something is called a 'razor' and seems similar to Ockham's razor doesn't mean it's just the same thing under a different name; e.g. there is a clear difference between Ockham's razor and Hanlon's razor. Furthermore, when I translated this page to Dutch as Hitchens' scheermes, I got into a fierce discussion with a Dutch Wikipedian who said that Hitchens didn't invent this razor himself, but merely popularised the Latin scholastic axiom Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur that has been attested since at least the 19th century. Consequently, the Dutch version of this page is titled nl:Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur. It's not clear exactly what Latin phrase Ockham used for his razor, but it's very different from 'Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur', most notably because Ockham urges a person to be self-critical and not use more assumptions than necessary, while the latter urges person B to dismiss the baseless assumptions of person A. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 10:34, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Renaming the article may be an option to consider IMHO. The phrase you quote is attested in GB in exactly the same form in a late 17th-century (printed in 1686) work of an Italian Capuchin friar named Giovenale d'Anagni. BTW, Augustine canon Gabriele Pennotto wrote half a century earlier: Hoc enim gratis asseritur, et gratis negatur, loquendo de applicatione ad actus liberos ordinis naturalis. (I tried to google-translate it but failed, not clear for me if the sense is the same). Ain92 (talk) 13:37, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Interesting. I am afraid that we are straying into original research territory here, we really need secondary sources to confirm this, but it looks like you are right. According to my best Classical Latin, Pennotto wrote 'Indeed, this can be freely asserted, and freely ignored/dismissed/denied, (when) speaking about the application [ablativus absolutus] of the order of nature [genetivus singular] to free actions [accusativus plural].' (In post-Classical Latin, liberos could also mean 'children', but it's not the relevant part of the sentence). The earliest reference the Dutch Wikipedian I could find was in The Classical Journal, Vol. 40 (1829), p. 312, which is arguably a secondary source to explain what the phrase means and in which situations it is used, but a primary source to establish its earliest attested use in the 19th century. (PS: I'm surprised to see that I already referred to The Classical Journal 1829 when I first created this page in November 2012; I don't know how that happened, but I probably got it from the entry at Wikiquote's Latin proverbs).


 * In any case, I am open also to renaming, but then we do need to establish a consensus here on what the title should be. I reached a consensus with that Dutch Wikipedian on Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur, and so I renamed it there, but English Wikipedia needs to figure out its own position. E.g. I see that you proposed Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat ('The burden of proof rests on who asserts, not on who denies') as another alternative. It has some merit, although I think it's better to link that principle with Richard Dawkins' February 2002 quote (23:15): "The onus is on you to say why, the onus is not on the rest of us to say why not." Both quotes make the observation/claim that the asserter has the burden of proof, not the critic, while Hitchens's razor and Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur observes/claims that the critic can dismiss the assertion if the asserter does not meet the burden of proof. There is a slight difference between the two, and I would say that Ei incumbit/Dawkins 2002 is the first step and Hitchens's razor/Quod gratis is the second step in the same thought process. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 14:23, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Hey, thanks for coming here to comment! You seem to have misunderstood my query: what I wanted to know is whether you coined the term "Hitchens's razor" back in 2012 when you created the article, or whether it was already in use in the secondary literature, and if the latter, where? You mention commentators from 2010, but there's no 2010 source in the article as you wrote it in 2012. It would be very helpful if you could locate that 2010 source for us, since that would establish that we're not dealing with a case of wp:citogenesis here. If not, then that's perfectly okay too, but then we probably need to deal with it as citogenesis and stop using the term "Hitchens's razor" at all for a while. Since that would be a pity (the term actually is a good one to describe the adage), I'd much prefer if you could find the 2010 source you were drawing on back in 2012. Thanks, ☿ Apaugasma  ( talk  ☉) 15:23, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi Apaugasma, ah, sorry for the misunderstanding. No, I didn't coin the term myself; it was already in circulation on the Internet by November 2012. At the time, I thought Hitchens first used the phrase 'What can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence' in his 20 October 2003 Slate article 'Mommie Dearest', but strangely it does not appear to be there in its current form (and Slate claims this is 'Hitchens’ original essay'). In September 2014, when I translated the Wikipedia page to Dutch, I was challenged by that Dutch Wikipedian, and set out to find the actual coinage of the term as well as Hitchens's first use of the phrase. The oldest usage of the term can be found on a personal blog by Rixaeton on 1 December 2010, named "Hitchens' Razor". (Interestingly, Rixaeton also claimed that 'This phrase is found in a Christopher Hitchens Slate article on Mother Teresa.' with an URL to the same 20 October 2003 Slate article 'Mommie Dearest'. For some strange reason, both Rixaeton in 2010 and I in 2012 believed the phrase could be found there, even though it's not there now). This and especially the follow-up post of 2 January 2012 named "Correcting Hitchens' Razor to Hitchens's Razor" seem to strongly indicate that Rixaeton coined the term 'Hitchens' razor', and he also popularised the correction 'Hitchens's razor' with the extra s. Evolutionary biologist and atheist activist Jerry Coyne also attributed the coinage to Rixaeton in this 25 December 2011 blog post "Readers’ tributes to Hitchens: The final day, with music.", and argued that the term 'Hitchens’ Razor' should be popularised: 'And finally, reader Rixaeton coins a new phrase (introduced on his website), which I think we should all adopt and use. (...) I have conducted extensive research (ie: Googled for it) and have not found the phrase used anywhere as an official razor, but would it be nice if it came to be?'. The oldest usage of the phrase itself by Hitchens in writing that can still be verified today is in his 2007 book God Is Not Great, page 150; both you and Levivich have confirmed that. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 16:47, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Wow, thanks for that; this is extremely helpful. I don't think that these two blogs would have met WP:GNG at the time (they're either not authoritative or not independent enough), and I cannot help but feel that we inadvertently turned Coyne's wish for it to become an 'official razor' into reality. Should we correct that mistake by avoiding its use now? I tend to think we should at least try that for a while and see whether its use persists without us using the term. If we do decide to keep on using the term, however, I think we should also keep the article as is, and add to it the info on its coinage which you've just given us above. ☿ Apaugasma  ( talk  ☉) 18:46, 19 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep - it's not the same as Occam's, and is notable by way of coverage. In a meta way, it's actually a useful razor for use at AFD. Bearian (talk) 20:56, 19 August 2021 (UTC)


 * 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.