Novitam, argumentum ad 117(Their newness did not stop them brutalizing the landscape of cities
or the lives of their tenants.)Some people are surprised to find that both newness and
oldness can be used fallaciously in support of a contention. In fact
they appeal to contradictory traits in all of us. We like the security
of the traditional, and we like to be fashionable and up-to-date.
Either of these can be used as fallacies if we try to make them
support claims which should stand or fall on their merits. The ad
novitam, like its antiquitam counterpart, introduces the irrelevant
fact of the age of the proposition as a means of influencing its
acceptance. Because the newness does not, in fact, contribute to
its Tightness, a fallacy is committed by appealing to it.
There was a time when the ad novitam found as welcome a
home with progressive reformers as its sibling, ad antiquitam, did
with conservatives. Those were the days of constructing a brave
new world. Times change, however, and the ad novitam now
builds its nest amongst conservatives. It settles down comfort-
ably amid calls for the rejection of 'the old ways which have
failed' and for 'looking truly fit for the twenty-first century'.
Meanwhile the argumentum ad antiquitam stirs uneasily as it sees
progressives looking back to the good old days of social reform.
Advertisers have used the word 'new' as a reflex appeal to the
ad novitam for many years. Assuming that the public equated
new products with new progress, everything from washing-
powder to toothpaste has been 'new, improved'. Breakfast cer-
eals were forever new, with the main innovation being the
increasing resemblance of the contents to the cardboard of the
packet. Great were the shock-waves in the advertising world
when cereals started to appear which were positively old in style.
In faded brown packets, they promised old-fashioned goodness,
and rapidly gained sales. The bold attack of the ad antiquitam
sent the ad novitams back on the ropes. All kinds of products
came out with old-fashioned presentation, 'just as it used to be'