Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Renaissance men


 * 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   delete. However I have userfied this to my own userspace - it's one of those articles that you think just has to be salveagable. Its at User:Black Kite/List of Renaissance men if anyone wants to edit it. Black Kite (talk) 18:49, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

List of Renaissance men

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

The criteria for inclusion on this list according to a hidden comment is "people whose names are accompanied by a citation, from a source meeting Wikipedia's reliable source guidelines, which uses the word "polymath" to describe them." As has been amply discussed during the deletion debate for List of people who have been called a polymath, there are no reliable sources for subjective opinions as to whether someone is a polymath or not. This article is even less defendable than List of people who have been called a polymath as it does not require entries to be described as a "Renaissance men" (or "Renaissance women" -- there is a single female entry), but merely as the approximate synonym "polymath". BabelStone (talk) 08:31, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Comment - The entries in this list are far better documented than the matching entries in "Muslim doctors", so if this is to go, at least the Hakim, the Islamic physicians, should be merged with that list to improve it substantially; very likely other properly cited descriptions could be merged with other existing lists. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:15, 29 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete. I've attempted to rescue this article from itself in the past, and I'm grateful to BabelStone for coming to grips with why this article is unsalvageable. The fundamental flaw is that it is utterly subjective. Even if a "called a renaissance man or woman" criteria were included, we'd be getting entries for people who are the "renaissance man of real estate" and the "renaissance man of ecommerce," to name just two plucked from Google. We'd get James Franco and Viggo Mortensen, who made a Buzzfeed list. Coretheapple (talk) 13:16, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 22:56, 29 May 2013 (UTC)


 * comment I was expecting this nomination. I think it would be good to have a list of people like this, but there can be no substantive inclusion criteria, which is why this article will be deleted. It is bad for wikipedia that this and the list of polymath articles are being deleted, but that is a result of wikipedia policy, a policy that general works, but is wrong in this case. Perhaps we should also look at List of films considered the best a list that has had no proper inclusion criteria, but has been snow kept four times. I would suggest a WP:IAR keep, but cannot justify it under current policy.Martin 4 5 1  (talk) 23:09, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
 * That's an interesting analogy. I suspect that the reason the film article is kept is that one doesn't tend to get goofy situations, to which this article is vulnerable, as well as obscure types who are mentioned as "renaissance men" in passing, so they get plugged into this article alongside Leonardo. Coretheapple (talk) 23:16, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
 * The crux of the matter is whether we can write proper inclusion criteria (for any list). The real 'Renaissance men' were (of course) of that time, educated, male, and few. As soon as we open it up by analogy ('modern "Renaissance men"', etc) then we get a much bigger, looser list; we have lost a key criterion (of Renaissance time) so it weakens disastrously to polymath; and we get Recentism. 'Films considered the best' could be reliably measured, e.g. by a panel at Cannes or wherever, and arguably it needs to be. 'Mediaeval Islamic physicians' (included in the Renaissance men, should they be?) is a far better defined set than 'Muslim doctors' which shows signs of including every medical person of that faith now alive and collapse through recentism and weak inclusion criteria.


 * So: can we tighten the criteria? Suggest at least 1) Lived in the Renaissance period; 2) Described in Reliable Sources as polymathic; and arguably 3) Described in Reliable Sources as Renaissance men. That would include Galileo, Leonardo and Michelangelo, but would exclude Imhotep, Cicero, and all the recent accretions (not of the period). Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:20, 30 May 2013 (UTC)


 * But you see, the reason for the definition at the top of the page is that "renaissance man" is defined as "polymath." Note that Renaissance man redirects to Polymaths. That article then gives a broad definition, including people who did not live in the Renaissance. I assume that whoever put that definition at the top of the article was making a good-faith effort to deal with that issue. So while I agree that narrowing the criteria makes sense, we do still have that lingering issue. Coretheapple (talk) 14:03, 30 May 2013 (UTC)


 * And that definition and the redirection is wrong. Renaissance man is (at least) a polymath of the renaissance period (I think we could tighten it still further, as mere polymathic knowledge is not the whole story), so we must correct the definition and remove the list members which don't fit. Then the issue will linger no longer and we'll have the core of a decent list. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:47, 30 May 2013 (UTC)


 * The "renaissance men" section of Polymath is a mess. I tagged it for original research a while back but it really needs to be gutted. Coretheapple (talk) 15:55, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Given what I've said, I don't find that a surprise. I hope gutted means 'cleaned out, cited and improved'. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:16, 30 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep - sorry if above is TL:DR. "Renaissance Men" is sharply definable as men, literally of the Renaissance, and named in Reliable Sources as "Renaissance Men". I've edited the article accordingly, maybe can be pruned further. Article has good refs and is well-defined. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:10, 30 May 2013 (UTC)


 * You've done some good work with that article. It's a shame you weren't participating in the article during the bizarre disputes that plagued it some weeks ago. However, I'm not altogether clear that all of the people on this list fit the narrow definition you mention. If it ever reaches that point it would be a rather short list, and then we would be better off merging this to Polymath. Coretheapple (talk) 22:46, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I've only had a quick look. There are certainly other good candidates for the list but that's a matter for slow time. I'd oppose a merge to Polymath (which is restricted to intellectual abilities), though a Renaissance man article would be an option. Chiswick Chap (talk) 06:44, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

The following was placed on the article's talk page by an IP editor, and is copied here:
 * Dont Delete This page is a great reference, ( and is a wonderful reason on why wikipedia is a fantastic reference ) ..... Articles like ..List of Renaissance men..  this is what wikipedia GREAT 186.66.71.60 (talk) 16:48, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete. Chiswick Chap makes an excellent point for the inclusion of the article--if he were right about "renaissance man" exclusively referring to people who were alive during the Renaissance. I do not believe that he is. Merriam-Webster defines the term as simply "a person who has wide interests and is expert in several areas" with no mention of having been alive during the actual Renaissance. The citation in the list itself, from Encarta, defines a Renaissance man as "somebody with wide-ranging knowledge: somebody with knowledge of many subjects", again with no mention of having been alive during the Renaissance. This certainly squares with my personal experience of the term: I've only ever seen it used to refer to a person who "embodies the Renaissance ideal of being a well-rounded person" or some such, rather than a person literally alive during the Renaissance. Are there any reliable sources that define the term "Renaissance man" as only referring to those alive during the Renaissance? If not, then I feel that this article should be deleted, for the same reasons that the list of people who were called polymaths was. Writ Keeper &#9863;&#9812; 17:40, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
 * No. "Wide interests and is expert in several areas" is right as far as it goes, but totally fails to take into account the central difference between RM - whether limited to the actual period or not - and the much weaker term Polymath, which is that RM refers to abilities of all kinds, not only intellectual. Thus the Renaissance ideal of being an all-rounder, good at everything from fencing to music, is key to RM. It is not a synonym for polymath. Therefore Writ Keeper's delete vote is missing the point. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:21, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I never said it was a synonym for polymath (though, incidentally, the list itself currently does, as the Encarta definition cited in the lede is a definition for "polymath"). What I said was that, given that it's not restricted to "men who lived during the Renaissance", the subject of the list is far too vague for any kind of encyclopedic meaning or criteria for inclusion, just as the list of the people who are called "polymath" was, and it's subject to the same COI/fluff sourcing concerns. If it were restricted to people who lived in the Renaissance, then we have a much more sharply defined set of people to work with, but it's not. Even if they don't mean the same thing, the two lists are in similar positions with similar problems, and I think that both should be deleted. Writ Keeper &#9863;&#9812; 19:37, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I didn't invent it, and the terms are not synonyms. The immediate source is NYT: Bruce Boucher, citing Leon Battista Alberti's maxim "men can do all things if they will". This RS is in the article, BTW. There is no suggestion here of limitation to the intellectual domain (polymath). Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:46, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I didn't say either that you invented it or that they're synonyms. I don't care whether "Renaissance man" and "polymath" are actual synonyms or not; that's not my point. My point is that the "List of Renaissance men" is subject to the exact same problems that "List of people who have been called a polymath" was, including but not limited to: vague definition of purpose, unclear criteria for inclusion (by whose word are we going on this?), sourcing problems (if we go by who has been called a "Renaissance man" in a reliable source, what then is a reliable source for that, and if we're not, how can we write anything verifiably?), etc. "Polymath is a synonym for Renaissance man" is not and hasn't been the basis of my argument; I'm not saying they're the same list, I'm saying they're subject to the same problems, and in both cases, I think they problems warrant deletion. Writ Keeper &#9863;&#9812; 19:52, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
 * If we have, as we do, RS that state that a person was a "Renaissance Man", we are entitled to take it that that person was such, and further that there is a class of people who can be called that, which is all that the list asserts. That makes this list well-formed. As you imply, we have to trust our RS or we'd have no Wikipedia. Let's leave polymath out of this, it isn't relevant. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:01, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
 * But what do we consider a reliable source for calling someone a Renaissance man? That's the key point. Who is qualified to declare someone a Renaissance man or not? The definition of "Renaissance man" is inherently subjective: how many fields must one be expert in to be considered a Renaissance man? How expert is "expert"? How varied do the fields have to be (e.g. is being a popular author of non-scientific, non-technical stories about one's neurology patients sufficiently different from being a neurologist to qualify Oliver Sacks? Reasonable people will differ, and there will be no one reliable answer)? These are questions to which there are no "right" answers, because it will vary from person to person.  So, who then is a reliable source on whether someone is a Renaissance man, since everyone will have different definitions of what a Renaissance man is? Whose definition do we consider reliable enough to use? It's a matter of opinion, and there are no reliable sources on matters of opinion. Writ Keeper &#9863;&#9812; 20:17, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
 * That statement is far too powerful and would sweep away a large percentage of our Wikipedia articles, which contain countless millions of statements by ordinary men and women about how they believe the world is. If we say that Bewick is great that's OR; if we cite Wordsworth or Ruskin or Carlyle saying the same, that's an RS. Even in matters of "hard fact", maths or science, all we have to go on is that a mathematician or a scientist wrote that such a thing is proven or tested - "a proof is an experiment in the mind of a mathematician", after all. No, we must trust our sources, we have nothing else at all to go on, other than our own experience which is forbidden to us here. Wikipedia goes on what the sources say, that's all. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:27, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
 * No, if we cite Wordsworth of Ruskin or Carlyle saying that Bewick is great, then we have a reliable source that they said that. We don't have a reliable source that it's true, and we can't then use Wikipedia's voice to say " Bewick is great ". What we do is say: "Wordsworth said that Bewick is great " . The difference between this and the realms of a mathematician or scientist is that a mathematician or scientist can be proven wrong if another, more reliable study comes along. (Another is that we don't go by just one scientist or mathematician; we go by the consensus of many mathematicians or scientists.) You can't prove "I think this guy is a Renaissance man" wrong, because it's a pure opinion; there is no "more reliable" in a matter of opinion. I mean, I see where you're coming from; we do take people's opinions on faith in many places. But we do that because we believe that they're experts in their fields and others have checked the work that leads them to their conclusion.  There are no experts in the field of "deciding whether someone is a Renaissance man", and there can never be any.  The problem here is that this list inherently wants to use Wikipedia's voice to say whether people are Renaissance men, but we do not have any sources reliable enough to say that (because they can't exist). We have to trust the reliable sources, yes, but that doesn't mean we can't think critically about whether a source is reliable or not. Writ Keeper &#9863;&#9812; 20:40, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree with Writ Keeper. While I believe that Chiswick Chap has done a good job of cutting back the article (even though he removed a person or two that I added to it) ultimately the same problem is going to rear its head because Writ Keeper is correct. One can't just restrict the article to Renaissance figures. So we're ultimately going to go back to the old slog of fans of this CEO or that celebrity adding their favorite guy, based upon the subjective opinions of reliable sources that can be as flimsy as Gawker. Ultimately this list comes down not to objective criteria but to the opinions of reliable sources, and that is subject to abuse and indeed there has been abuse in this and in the list of polymaths article. That is actually how I became interested in this or the other article (I forget which) when I saw one of the endless squabbles over an entry materializing on a noticeboard. Coretheapple (talk) 20:53, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I can certainly agree there have been abuses. I don't agree at all that we can't have articles on humanistic matters which are IMO always matters of opinion, despite Writ Keeper's valiant attempts to the contrary (and we have to take math and science opinions, too, because WP editors aren't allowed recourse to experiment, so all we can do is rely on yet more sources, just as with humanities, so thanks for the grudging agreement). Also, it is clear that lists are far better cruft-magnets than articles, because inclusion criteria are always difficult. However, it may be that 'Renaissance Man' would be better off as an article than as a list - if only because there will be a very short list of highly defensible examples to put in it. I do understand the difficulty with the list; though again, if we deleted every article that attracted cruft, we'd have quite a small encyclopedia. Good night. Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:18, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I think you're right that this could make a good article, and that a short list of unquestioned, easily-defended Renaissance men (da Vinci, et al.) would definitely have a place in it. Just the etymology of the phrase would make it enough to separate it from Polymath (its current redirect target), I should think.  It would definitely be a lot less problematic than a straight-up list. Writ Keeper &#9863;&#9812; 21:54, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think that whatever happens to this article there should definitely be an independent article on Renaissance men, especially since the current small section in Polymath is so terrible. It would have to be "men," political correctness notwithstanding, as that was the reality of use of the term regarding Renaissance figures. There is potential for abuse in such an article too, but far less. (I can just see a "contemporary renaissance men" section being added.) Coretheapple (talk) 16:46, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Sure enough, the article now contains Alexander Weygers, who someone once called the "modern Leonardo DaVinci." Coretheapple (talk) 17:58, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
 * And it is still unclear whether this addition is within scope of the article or not. The lede says [t]he following people represent prime examples of "Renaissance Men", and in one editor's opinion Alexander Weygers is indeed a prime example of a "Renaissance Men".  Defining who should or should not be included in this list is like herding cats. BabelStone (talk) 18:09, 6 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete Nomination pretty much sums it up. There is no objective place to put the bar and the term is way too lightly thrown about.  "Heroes of country X" articles have the same problems.  If there's an official award of some sort, sure, document that.  But Wikipedia shouldn't be in the business of handing out awards. - Richfife (talk) 18:47, 7 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Google news search - Richfife (talk) 18:50, 7 June 2013 (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.