Английская Википедия:Ignotum per ignotius
Шаблон:Short description Шаблон:Italic title Ignotum per ignotius (Latin for "the unknown by the more unknown") describes an explanation that is less familiar than the concept it would explain.
An example would be: "The oven felt hot because of Fourier's Law." It is unlikely that a person unfamiliar with the hotness of ovens would be enlightened by a reference to a fundamental law of physics. Another example would be referencing Rayleigh scattering as an explanation for why the sky is blue, when a more apt explanation would be simply that air is blue.
That said, since these explanations could enlighten people in theory, ignotum per ignotius is not strictly a logical fallacy; it is just a criticism of an argument on rhetorical grounds, stating that such an argument is not useful in a particular context.
Ignotum per æque ignotum
Ignotum per æque ignotum, meaning "the unknown by the equally unknown", is a related form of fallacy in which one attempts to prove something unknown by deducing it from something else that is also not known to be true.[1]
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