Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Natural 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 Delete -- JForget 00:43, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Natural mathematics

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Looks a lot like WP:OR crackpottery, a very similar text possibly by the same author was given a withering review at. Salix alba (talk) 19:49, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment. Penny Maddy and her work in the philosophy of mathematics are certainly notable. But I'm not convinced that this article accurately and fairly represents her position — from the preface of her cited book, she is discussing the issue of how certain sets of axioms can be seen as natural, but not straying from the axiomatic deductive framework of mathematics, very far from the claim in the natural mathematics article here that "arguments striving for internal consistency inherently lead to paradox". So I think we should separate the two issues: is naturality an important issue in mathematics (yes), and is the current article a good unbiased non-fringe discussion of naturality in mathematics (I suspect not). —David Eppstein (talk) 20:12, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete. First, I suspect that notability issues may be confused by other topics being discussed under the same name. There's a concept in children's mathematics education which goes by the same name, but is unrelated to what this article talks about (as far as I can understand what this article is talking about).  Second, with regard to David Eppstein's point, I believe the best way to address the notable and legitimate philosophical topic of "naturality" would be to de-rezz this article and start from scratch.  Anville (talk) 21:23, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete crackpot nonsense without prejudice toward re-creation as a reasonable article about math education, natural concepts in mathematics, or some kind of disambig page. CRGreathouse (t | c) 23:31, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete Comptely incoherent. To nonsensical to even determine if there's an underlying core worth keeping. If it's a legit topic, it can be recreated in an understandable manner. --Icarus (Hi!) 06:07, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete without prejudice toward re-creation as per CRGreathouse. I don't know if this can be called crackpottery; usually, that kind of writing makes some (twisted) sense, but this is so utterly incoherent that it defies classification. --Lambiam 10:32, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete - incoherent nonsense. Gandalf61 (talk) 11:16, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
 * This is one of those unusual occasions where one doesn't say "per the nominator", but "per the web log posting", where it is stated:"A quick Google search turns up that the term is used most commonly in teaching: mathematics is best taught by instructing children by using 'natural' problems, not abstract mathematical ones. I'm guessing that's not the one we're supposed to be interested in! Almost every other reference to 'natural mathematics' is written by John Ryskamp, himself. There is a wikipedia entry, but it is poorly referenced and probably written by Ryskamp as well." Yes, this article is badly referenced. Yes, it's a fair assumption that  is John Ryskamp.  Yes, as also noted by Anville, there's a concept in children's mathematics eduction that goes by this name but has nothing to do with this.  Yes, my searches too simply turn up a number of papers written by Ryskamp and submitted to every self-submission web site that xe can find.  Several of them are copies and pastes of where xe added xyr ideas to Wikibooks and abused it as a free hosting service for working the formulation of xyr idea into shape.  Yes, xe has copied and pasted the Wikibooks' version into many Usenet and WWW discussion fora postings.  No, no-one else has acknowledged this idea and it has not become a part of the general corpus of human knowledge.  It has yet to escape its voluminous creator. Perhaps the most bizarre of these self-submissions is one paper  where Ryskamp documents an exchange of messages between xyrself and Vaughn Pratt where Pratt comments on the "continuing absence of any technical content" from Ryskamp, the lack of any substance whatsoever in xyr arguments, and the fact that the people that xe cites in the exposition of xyr idea don't actually say what xe says they do. It seems clear that this is canonical original research, that is forbidden by project policy, and an abuse of both Wikipedia and Wikibooks as support mechanisms for a massive self-publicity campaign. Wikipedia is not a soapbox.  Wikibooks is not, either.  Delete. Uncle G (talk) 13:16, 17 December 2007 (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.