What it is
Rejecting an idea because it belongs to an earlier era.
In the wild
That was believed in the past, so it is wrong.
How to answer it
Ask what specifically was shown to be false, and by what evidence.
Values and premises
Chronological snobbery
Also called Appeal to the modern
In depth
Origin and naming
The phrase was coined by C. S. Lewis and Owen Barfield and first appeared in print in Lewis's 1955 autobiography Surprised by Joy, where he defined it as 'the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age, and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.' Lewis credited Barfield with curing him of it.
More places it shows up
Asked why the board ignores a fifty-year-old management text, the consultant shrugs: 'Nobody reads Drucker seriously anymore — we've moved past that.'
A developer dismisses the design patterns book from 1994 in favor of a thread posted last week, because 'software moves fast' and old advice must be stale.
A student skips the philosophy reading because it predates the internet: 'How could anyone before smartphones understand attention?'
On a podcast the host waves off supply-side economics as 'eighties thinking' without touching what the theory actually claims.
How to spot it
- The objection names a decade when it should name a counter-argument.
- The shelf-life framing: the idea is 'dated' rather than 'wrong', and nobody can say which experiment disproved it.
- Ask what specifically was shown false, and the room goes quiet — only the calendar was consulted.