Argument from silence

Marco Polo's travel journals are silent on the Great Wall of China, which some believe (against the historical consensus) is evidence of him never visiting the country, or rather exemplifies his gift in diplomatic mindfulness.[1]

To make an argument from silence (Latin: argumentum ex silentio) is to express a conclusion that is based on the absence of statements in historical documents, rather than their presence.[2][3] In the field of classical studies, it often refers to the assertion that an author is ignorant of a subject, based on the lack of references to it in the author's available writings.[3] Thus, in historical analysis with an argument from silence, the absence of a reference to an event or a document is used to cast doubt on the event not mentioned.[4] While most historical approaches rely on what an author's works contain, an argument from silence relies on what the book or document does not contain.[4] This approach thus uses what an author "should have said" rather than what is available in the author's extant writings.[4][5]

An argument from silence may apply to a document only if the author was expected to have the information, was intending to give a complete account of the situation, and the item was important enough and interesting enough to deserve to be mentioned at the time.[6][7] Arguments from silence, based on a writer's failure to mention an event, are distinct from arguments from ignorance which rely on a total "absence of evidence" and are widely considered unreliable; however arguments from silence themselves are also generally viewed as rather weak in many cases; or considered as fallacies.[1][8]

  1. ^ a b The Routledge Companion to Epistemology by Sven Bernecker and Duncan Pritchard (2010) ISBN 0-415-96219-6 Routledge pp. 64–65 "arguments from silence are, as a rule, quite weak; there are many examples where reasoning from silence would lead us astray."
  2. ^ "argumentum e silentio noun phrase" The Oxford Essential Dictionary of Foreign Terms in English. Ed. Jennifer Speake. Berkley Books, 1999.
  3. ^ a b John Lange, "The Argument from Silence", History and Theory, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1966), pp. 288–301.
  4. ^ a b c Seven Pillories of Wisdom by David R. Hall 1991 ISBN 0-86554-369-0 pp. 55–56.
  5. ^ Historical evidence and argument by David P. Henige (2005) ISBN 978-0-299-21410-4 p. 176.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference Howe73 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference Magna56 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference Duncan83 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).