Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wholeness axiom


 * 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.  So Why  15:16, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Wholeness axiom

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Very obscure mathematics topic. I appreciate that different notability criteria may apply in this area but does this article establish notability? &mdash; RHaworth (talk · contribs) 14:56, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Mathematics-related deletion discussions. (t)  Josve05a  (c) 15:03, 15 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Weak delete there are a few offhand references to this axiom, but mostly it's just Corazza's papers and a few papers by Hamkins. There might be more that generic searches aren't turning up (Web of Science etc) but from a "general knowledge" standpoint it doesn't look to meet notability guidelines. Primefac (talk) 18:27, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Updates show a few more references from different authors. I'm not fully convinced this needs to be kept, but I'm not going to advocate it be deleted. Primefac (talk) 12:54, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep. I think most topics in science are notable unless they are new or failed to gain wide use. I'm no specialist in this area, this topic doesn't seem to suffer from that issue. Note some specialized concepts in scientific subjects might be technical and obscure but that doesn't mean they are not notable. I know it's hard to prove the negative, there might also be a possibility that google is just not reflective of the literature; not everything is online. -- Taku (talk) 23:11, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment I don't have the ability to investigate this adequately. It is an important function of an encyclopedia to teach us about things we don't know about, not merely to confirm our existing knowledge. In this respect I am entirely unsympathetic to the nomination – obscure topics should be particularly welcome. However, I wonder whether this article as written teaches anyone anything very much at all. It is also important that an encyclopedia does not give misleading information and, as written, I don't know and am not led into a position to form a judgement. Thincat (talk) 08:36, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete without prejudice to possible recreation at a later date once more sources become available (if they ever do). My review of the literature on this subject only seems to show the term existing in citations (rather that as a subject of actual discussion), and those are all to the original publication by the person who apparently coined the term (i.e., P. Corazza, who is given here as the only source for this article and who is therefore a WP:PRIMARY source and not suitable for establishing notability). I was unable to identify any non-trivial coverage of the term.  As a WP:NEOLOGISM (?), it doesn't look like it warrants inclusion here until people other than the person who devised it start writing about it.  That doesn't appear to have happened yet (and, of course, might never happen).  Also, let me echo Thincat above: what this article DOES say is utterly opaque.  I have put in a word to a mathematician I know to see what his thoughts are as well, will get back with that soon.  KDS4444 (talk) 19:57, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
 * The mathematician got back to me, saying, "Yes, it is a thing", but that he was not at all familiar with its use and sending me a PDF of an article by Paul Corazza discussing it— which is once again a primary source unsuitable for establishing notability. If the mathematician (an associate professor at the University of Indiana in Bloomington) can only come up with the same person as a reference for the term that I did, then I will have to stand by my support for deletion. KDS4444 (talk)


 * Move to &mdash; well, there's the rub. Not sure where to move it.  Maybe Reinhardt cardinal?  I don't think wholeness axiom is the standard name. --Trovatore (talk) 22:13, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Oh, that came up blue. OK, changing my !vote.  Merge to Reinhardt cardinal . --Trovatore (talk) 22:14, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Whoops. I looked at the Cantor's-attic link, and this is apparently not quite the same thing.  Rather than dropping AC, the proposal is to keep all of ZFC, but only for the language of set theory without a symbol for j, and keep careful control over what instances of separation and replacement you allow in a language with a symbol for j.  That's a bit subtle.  It might still be reasonable to treat it in the Reinhardt-cardinal article for now, as a variation, but the case is not so clear.  I guess I would say keep and improve or merge are both viable options. --Trovatore (talk) 23:55, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Update I just did a search for this term on JSTOR— it had five hits: one was the same article by Corazza; another was a the record of a meeting of mathematicians in which Corazza presented this article as a paper; the third had a sentence "urging readers to consult Corrazza" for a discussion of the term, which it did not discuss but did use; in the two remaining articles, the axiom is applied to formulae and constructs of super huge cardinals but is itself never the subject of any specific meaningful discussion. Any of these could be used to fill in an article whose notability had been established by other means; I am not convinced that any of them works to actually establish that notability.  KDS4444 (talk) 09:20, 17 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep. Besides the initial work of Corrazza, this has been studied by Hamkins and Apter  and is well-known enough in its subdiscipline that, in a review of one of Corrazza's paper, reviewer Bernhard A. König can write "The author has long been interested in an axiom called the Wholeness Axiom" . That meets my (very low) standards for WP:GNG for a research contribution (it has been the subject of reliably published works by multiple independent researchers or groups of researchers). In addition, I'm inclined to trust the judgement of article creator  on whether this is actually significant. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:32, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Lean toward delete or move to draft, without prejudice toward recreating it when we can say something. Large cardinals aren't exactly my field, but it's close enough that I should be able to understand an article about it.  This article doesn't really say what it is.  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 19:11, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Other deletion or "move without redirect" reasons include the question of whether this is the most significant "wholeness axiom", whether it has importance in the field (I would expect a 2000 concept which is important to have about 20 published papers by now), and whether those other papers might use a different name. This suggests a possible working name as Corrazza's Wholeness Axiom.  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 19:26, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Comment. I expanded the article a little, and in doing so found another source, a section in the Holmes et al survey (see article for full ref) that claims to be about the same theory. I am unaware of any work on "wholeness axioms" that are unrelated to Corrazza's, and the other publications I have found just call it the wholeness axiom, so I don't see any justification for 's proposed rename. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:50, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   18:15, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Weak keep - based on the clarifications to the article by David Eppstein, this seems to be ok as a stub. Smmurphy(Talk) 23:54, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep. I'm kind of embarrassed we didn't have this already.  I added article to our Category:Axioms of set theory. -- do  ncr  am  04:58, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment. Changed to neutral; the article now provides additional sources and a statement describing what the axiom is.  My source (who also has a Wikipedia article) doesn't recall any other "wholeness axiom" (at least in set theory), but isn't sure about significance. — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 05:15, 3 March 2017 (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.