#8 - A leap of faith?

(Continuing on Post #7... There's some good words in the mix, so enjoy)

Now you and your brother are walking down the long road toward Know ledge. You can barely process what's going through your own mind, let alone your brother's.

"You're seriously going to jump off that ledge." You say incredulously.

"Sure, with this nylon rope I got from the garage."

"Stop smiling, this isn't funny anymore."

"It kinda is."

"Why?!"

"Dramatic irony... you think you can know everything by deducing it all. You don't realize that you wouldn't be anywhere if it weren't for five things."

"I know what you're gonna say... the senses, right?"

"Exactly. Just think about a world in which we could not see, hear, taste, smell or feel. It would be a pretty boring world. At least, I think so."

"Sure it would be boring. But the thing is that our senses really can't be trusted. When it comes to knowledge - certain knowledge - we can only trust what we can show deductively."

"Oh really?"

You thought for a second. Then you came up with what was sure to hurt his contention:

"Yeah, I mean, I could reproduce the answer to a question a million times using deduction. But no matter how many times you observe something, you can never guarantee that it will happen the next time, can you? The sun has risen every morning, does it mean that it has to rise tomorrow? Every time you drop something it has fallen. Does that mean it will fall the next time? It certainly doesn't. There is no logical reason why we can assume that past observations will hold in the future. For centuries people thought the Earth was flat. They were so sure because of what they saw. And yet, they were still wrong. The past is easy. It's the future that is hard. How do you know that your observations aren't leading to erroneous conclusions, or resting on incomplete data? How can you rely on what's passed in order to justify what you think will happen? In order to make any sort of general conclusion using induction, you have to make a leap of faith."

"Watch me."

You didn't realize it, but while you were intently arguing your point, you both had

arrived at the ledge. He set his stuff down and intently started to rummage through a bag of various things he had brought. The nylon rope was stretched out along the craggy ledge. A small segment was even hovering over the side.

"What if that leap is in a life or death situation? It's certainly quixotic of you to think that your observations will always lead you to the right conclusions."

"Hey, I never said my observations would always lead me to right conclusions." He said as he began tying the rope around the bottom half of a gigantic boulder near the edge.

"Then how can you risk your life knowing that? And doesn't that show that deduction is better since it can, after all, guarantee the right conclusions?"

Your brother paused. He then finished tying an intricate knot around the rock. He paused again as if in deep thought. You thought he wasn't going to respond. It seemed like he had no response he could give. After all, how could he put so much confidence into something he knew was fallible? He proceeded to tie an extra special knot around his waist. A knot that made you think of Alexander the great and the Gordian Knot that he once boldly cut. 

"This amount of rope seems about right," your brother said, completely ignoring the question posed to him. He took a couple steps out towards the edge of the ledge. You saw the wind intermittently blowing his hair from side to side, as if it were desperately gasping for air, as you almost were. Your brother then said,

"The thing is, you don't see how we all need induction every day. Without it, we wouldn't be able to function at all. If we were all to suddenly question everything we we had ever seen, we would never make progress. What if every morning I checked extensively to make sure their wasn't a bomb in my cereal box. Well, that would certainly slow my morning down quite a bit don't you think? What if I was always thinking about the possibility of something not falling when dropped? I would never be able to make any conclusions at all. Always hinging on something which has never been disproved and has always been shown to be true slows down progress. In many cases, progress grinds to a halt because of it. When you solved that problem about how many meters of rope someone would need when jumping of the ledge, you yourself assumed that the person would in fact fall. We need induction." He took another step forward. The wind picked up. "Induction. Experiment. Experience. This is how we learn." He looked around. He seemed confident, like he was doing calculations in his mind about the impending drop and they were all checking out.

"One thing I don't get though..."

"Yeah?"

"Why do you still choose experience over theory, when-"

"Because" he interrupted you, "as I see it, a theory is no good to us if we can't put it into practice. And also, as philosopher David Hume once said, 'The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation.'"

There was momentary silence, only broken by the pitter-pattering of feet against dirt. He was running for it. Prepared to take the leap, when...

"WAIT!!"

The conclusion is up next. See you soon. (How's that for a cliffhanger?)

Faithfully,

Quentin

#7 - Still on the 'ledge (with a ledger, a pen, and an idea)

Salvete! (Latin for hello [to more than one person])

Let's keep at this and continue on post #6...

Let's say that you're sitting down at your desk. You have your eyes closed, a writing implement, and a something to write on (perhaps your trusty 'ledger?) You're thinking about what would happen if you jumped off a cliff... with a nylon rope tied around your waist (phew, you had me worried for a sec). But the cliff is over a pool filled with lots of hungry pirañas [Oh my god, *gulp*, you know how much I hate.... diacritical tildes! Why can't you just spell it 'piranha'?!? Then it will be less scary!] [NO!]. You want to know exactly how long your rope should be (knowing that the nylon rope stretches a bit with respect to a factor that is a quality of the rope) so you can just barely touch the top of the pool. Well, you do all these calculations and you logically deduce that your rope should be x meters long. Hooray! You just gained some knowledge. Not just any knowledge, a priori knowledge.

A priori (pronounced 'ah pre-or-ee') is an awesome word/phrase that describes reasoning or knowledge that proceeds from theoretical deduction as opposed to experience.

A priori comes directly from Latin and literally means, "from what is before."

Then there's you're little brother. While you're slaving away working to logically deduce knowledge and prove things to be true, he's outside doing just any old random thing - observing the stars, throwing objects in the air, digging for a passageway to China. Stupid brother, he's out doing all these things to see how they work, when you could just show him how they work using your pencil and your trusty 'ledger. He also has a 'ledger for some reason. You don't know why he needs it, he's just taking down any old notes, he's not doing any calculations or logical deductions - he's just writing down what he sees. When he observes a phenomenon regularly and repeatedly, he infers from these particular instances a general conclusion. You do have to concede, however, that his methods for observation are pretty scientific. He is quite good at inducing knowledge. Not just any knowledge, a posteriori knowledge.

A posteriori (pronounced "ah poh-steer-ee-or-ee") is another awesome word/phrase that describes reasoning or knowledge that proceeds from observation or experiences - empirical as opposed to theoretical.

A posteriori comes directly from Latin and literally means, "from what comes after." 

So one day you're all fed up with him and his non-deductive ways:

"Hey, little brother! Get over here!"

"Sure...what is it?"

"How can you honestly expect to gain knowledge while you're outside all day?"

"How can YOU honestly expect to gain knowledge while you're inside all day?"

"Hah, I've learned dozens of things in the last half-hour with nothing more than logical deduction!"

"Well, anything you learn from that, I can learn with nothing more than my senses and observations!"

"Oh yeah? Well how about this: I just showed that you would need exactly x meters of nylon rope to jump off that cliff down the road in order to exactly touch the top of the piraña pool! Show that with your precious observation!"

"You mean that ledge? KNOW Ledge?"

"Yeah I do..."

"Well, okay." And he smiles.

"Okay?"

"Okay." And he smiles some more.

Man this is getting interesting! Part 3 coming soon...

Certainly yours,

Quentin

P.S. Recently learned that 'a priori' and 'a posteriori' have alternate pronunciations I did not know about. Listen to them here and here.

#6 - I'm on the 'ledge (STTA)

Hey ally. (typo - that was supposed to be 'all', not 'ally', but you're probably not an enemy of mine... so I'll leave it)

Shira and I sincerely apologize, as the last couple posts haven't been the most uplifting. (Although, I have to admit, 'catacomb' is endlessly fun to say.) I'll try to right this ship.

And yeah, I've been quite busy. But it has all been in the pursuit of KNOWLEDGE! And that is what I want to talk about for a bit, if you'll indulge me to do so, here's a Something To Think About:

Wow, knowledge. Quite a lofty thing to talk about, don't ya think? In fact, no ledge is loftier than knowledge. It's a pretty craggy ledge - not smooth at all - lots of small and sharp rocks with millions of pebbles and grains of thought sprinkled all over it. Of course, the ledge gets windier and rougher as you approach the edge of the ledge. As you go out farther and farther, you have more of an impulse to turn back. This impulse gets intense at a faster and faster rate as you continue. Each step is more arduous than the previous one, and there's always another step to take.

The one weird thing about this ledge is that no one has ever seen the end of the ledge. Some people argue that there isn't an end to it. Others rebut, "Well, it isn't a ledge, then, is it?"

Some people seem to think that there is only one way to make your way out to the edge of the ledge. Of course, this is not true. Very few paths have been mapped out extensively; and only a handful have been identified as possible routes at all. Even these are nothing but prospective routes. Who is to say that a certain route won't lead to a dead end. After all, no one has seen the end or even knows if one exists.

Many more people seem to think that they must follow paths that have already been marked and mapped out. This is, of course, completely false. There's no guarantee that you will end up where you want to go by following a path, whether it is marked or unmarked. In fact, think of the first person to traverse the path you're on. Did that person follow any marked path? No, they certainly did not. They followed their own path; they stepped in to uncharted waters. You need to find the way down to the edge of the ledge that's yours and yours alone. After all, we have only explored a small subset of the possible paths.

On that introductory note (heh), I want to talk about how we come to know and the words (yes, words! hooray for a blog post that talks about words!) that describe them.

Philosophers tend to agree that we gain knowledge through three fundamental operations of the mind: intuition, deduction, and induction.

Intuition is when we see directly that something is the case or that an immediate thought is absolutely necessarily true. Intuition does not require reasoning.

Deduction is when we move through a series of intuitions to obtain a conclusion that is necessitated (albeit indirectly) by our base intuition. Deduction is reasoning.

Induction is when we take a specific example of something and infer a general conclusion from it. This is also reasoning.

It is interesting to think about when you are deducing knowledge and when you are inducing knowledge...

You know, I was going to continue and give some examples, but I have quite a bit more to say; and I think this is enough to chew on for a bit. Think about it for a while and look for part 2 soon.

Yours by mathematical induction - today, the next day, and the day after that, on to ∞,

Quentin

#5- A Grave Misunderstanding (CW)

We might get back to the bare bones on this one.

Hey, Shira here. Quentin and I are both SUPER BUSY. It is not even funny. The only way we could be busier is if we were faithful to the etymologist's code, which dictates that we battle octopus aliens with laser whips while searching Atlantean catacombs for new and exciting words and word history. (We are not quite busy up to standards because instead of laser whips, we use bats and sticks. Lasers are more expensive than you'd expect.) So here I present to you a cop-out, which I guess is pretty lame. My apologies.

So! Cool words. Nice. Okay. So I decided to choose a series of cool-sounding words that all center around a final resting place. "Shira," you say, "that is eXtremely morbid and not just a little creepy! What is up with you? Did your dog die?" To which I reply: "Reader, my dog did not die. I just think that for something so ubiquitous, there are a lot of cool words that mean 'tomb'. So this time we will deal."

Crypt- No, it's not Unix. A crypt is defined as a stone vault beneath the ground of a church. A crypt can be a reliquary, where relics such as bones of saints can be stored. From the Greek kryptos, meaning hidden. Hey, it's like Kryptonite is the hidden material... I totally just understood that! Hooray!

Mausoleum- the plural of mausoleum is mausolea! (I get very happy when words end with -um and pluralize to -a.) Mausolea are above-ground buildings that store the tomb of the deceased within. They are, as a rule, pretty fancy looking. They are usually crafted from marble or some other stone, but can have all sorts of decorations, like... tapestries. The word mausoleum comes from the first recorded mausoleum-haver, who was a Persian governor named Mausolus.

Catacomb- an underground maze with niches for graves. But hey, you knew what a catabomb is, right? There are catacombs free to view in Rome and Paris. The one in Paris has skulls everywhere you look. It is a unique experience to walk through subterranean halls lines with skulls, other bones, and inscriptions in Latin that have been mostly worn away by the elements.

Cinerarium- this word refers to a place where ash remains are kept. So an urn is a cinerarium, from cinis in Latin meaning ashes.

Ossuary- you can probably break it down. An ossuary is a place where bones (and bones alone!) are kept. This is a really good Scrabble word, because people always challenge it and it is pretty easy to form. On the flip side, its components are not very high-pointing, so balance.

Sepulcher is my absolute favorite of these words. It comes from ancient Jewish traditions, where they would be carved into rock faces. ABSWANTSAM, just so you know- the English spell this word as sepulchre, which I find is quite a lot more classy. On a side note, Sepulchre is a common French last name. (Why do I keep talking about France? Quentin is rubbing off.) It kind of worries me. I met a Pierrick Sepulchre, and he had no clue as to the macabre origins of his surname. WhooOOOoo! Ghostly noises!

Okay, so I think I am just about done for now. Shira out!

#4- It (kinda) all makes sense now! (CW/EE)

Yo! Quentin is here and is actually pretty busy at the moment (and all surrounding moments), but I had to take a sec and mention a word that is endlessly interesting to me: denouement. 

I would normally give you my take on this very cool word, but instead here is a great description of the word that I would like to share. It is from the twelfth book in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, titled The Penultimate Peril. I'm keeping it free of spoilers for anyone interested in reading or in the process of reading this fantastic series. Enjoy!

"Denouement" comes from the French, who use the word to describe the act of untying a knot, and it refers to the unraveling of a confusing or mysterious story, such as the lives of the Baudelaire orphans, or anyone else you know whose life is filled with unanswered questions. The denouement is the moment when all the knots of a story are untied, and all the threads are unraveled, and everything is laid out clearly for the world to see. But the denouement should not be confused with the end of a story. The denouement of "Snow White," for instance, occurs at the moment when Ms. White wakes up from her enchanted sleep, and decides to leave the dwarves behind and marry the handsome prince, and the mysterious old woman who gave her an apple has been exposed as the treacherous queen, but the end of "Snow White" occurs many years later, when a horseback riding accident plunges Ms. White into a fever from which she never recovers. The denouement of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" occurs at the moment when the bears return home to find Goldilocks napping on their private property, and either chase her away from the premises, or eat her, depending on which version you have in your library, but the end of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" occurs when a troop of young scouts neglect to extinguish their campfire and even the efforts of a volunteer fire department cannot save most of the wildlife from certain death. There are some stories in which the denouement and the end occur simultaneously, such as La Forza del Destino, in which the characters recognize and destroy one another over the course of a single song, but usually the denouement of a story is not the last event in the heroes' lives, or the last trouble that befalls them. It is often the second-to-last event, or the penultimate peril.

The series is full of wonderful passages like that one, dealing with words, phrases, and idioms as such. And even though it is advertised mostly as a children's series, as you can see, it can be full of delightfully dark humor and packs a literary punch to just about anyone.

Conclusions: read! words are fun! (did you notice the denouement of this post came right before the end?)

Have a great week,

Quentin

#3- Why the Long Phrase? (MV)

(Shira says hello! She's also trying something she doesn't do very well with HTML, so can you mouse over and then click the little 'comic' text you see below? She will get the hang of this eventually...)

Hey, it's Shira. Undeniably, liquorice is a hard snack to follow. At this time, Quentin is probably occupied with eXtremely important Quentannic activities. I'll bare my grandiloquent heart and soul to you, and discuss just what goes into making words words.

So what is Manifest Vocabulary? The truth is, I just made up a cool phrase to define a phenomenon that already exists- the coining of neologisms. My lifestyle is eXtreme enough to require new and exciting phrases- I'm always just surviving explosions, leaping off of buildings, and kicking away tribal natives on my way to fantastic ancient treasures in sealed temples and/or crypts.

Neologism breaks down easily (new, word) so you know that is means any new word created to describe a concept or invention which no term currently in use can define. But when Quentin or I do it, we will be manifesting vocabulary. Hardcore vocabulary. Vocabulary the likes of which the world has never before experienced. You use a lot of neologisms all the time, especially if you go on the computer, or watch the telly, or use appliances. Look around you, and you will probably see at least five objects for which there were no words two centuries ago.

Manifested vocabulary comes most frequently in some of these forms:
Portmanteau/Blending- creating blog from web log. This is not to be confused with compunding, which gives us words like blogosphere.
Derivation- creating blogger by agglutination, the addition of suffixes.
Zero Derivation- creating the verb to blog in order to describe the action of blog posting.
Alteration of the Lemma- enough screwing around in speech or message boards can change the core word into something like blag.

I think we can get to backronyms, retronyms, and back-formation in a bit.

My favorite form of manifest vocabulary, however, is Word Theft. This is when we take a word from another language and twist it to fit our own insidious needs. This can occur through calques, loanwords, or hybrid words, which are special and scientifically engineered in super-secret underground labs. German in particular, with its extremely sexy philisophical nature, is a big victim of word purloinment. We get really long and unpronouncable words that existentialism majors like to use, such as Weltanschauung, and also words that find their way more easily into conversation, like kindergarten or sauerkraut. On the other hand, we calqued in the word pineapple from wallflower dialect Dutch, which just goes to show that there is no accounting for taste. (I think?)

My deity! I just can't stop talking! Before I crush everyone with the wall of words (perhaps it is too late), let's dish up today's piping hot Manifest Vocabulary.

nookish (adj) prn nʊkɪʃ. Nookish, not to be confused with bookish or nookie, describes the state of chips or crackers if you leave them out for a couple of hours and they lose all their crispy-crunchiness. It is as if they have become air soggy. As if, in fact, they have become nookish.

"Wait!" you cry out. "That was far too mundane for such an exotic lead-in!" Mundane the word may be, but it fills a slot previously vacant. If you ever leave corn chips open and come back in three hours or so, you now have the perfect thing to say!

Thanks for reading. That was quite an eyeful, wasn't it? Many apologies. Hope you enjoy and keep reading us! Shira shalom.

#2 - For Those with a Sweet Tooth (EE)

Hey y'all. Quentin here with my first post on the Atlas. Let's jump right into some eXtreme etymology! Why? So we can talk about candy and words! A delectable combination!

The word licorice originates from Middle English, originally coming from the Greek roots glukus (sweet) and rhiza (root). As a result, when a true etymologist would like to get a taste from the licorice tray, he politely asks his butler, "Could I trouble you for bit of sweet root?"

Actually, I'm lying...... licorice doesn't come in trays. It comes in brightly colored bags!! (It also apparently comes in the different colors of the rainbow.) *shrugs*

I imagine a conversation such as this one:

"Here's your sweet root, sir, at your command."

"Thank you Jeeves, but I am sorry to point out that there are no indigo licorices here."

"This one is purple, sir; it's just about indigo."

"NO IT'S NOT! I wasn't even going to point out the lack of violet twists, but now I'll have to. And purple isn't even in the rainbow!"

Then he runs into his conservatory and cries all over his boomerang collection... good times.

Oh those etymologists...

Anyway, here's the rough idea of the different metamorphoses the word licorice has undergone:

glukurrhiza (Greek)

liquiritia (Latin)

licoresse (Old French)

licorice (now)

Also, this is an exciting day because it is the first of a new segment that will occasionally show up in the blog! Introducing Awesome British Spellings Which Are Not The Same As Mine! (Acronym: ABSWANTSAM, pronounced Abs Want Sam)

ABSWANTSAM:

Licorice is spelled liquorice in the United Kingdom, as our UK friends enjoy their words best when they are truest to their Latin roots. Their spelling is much cooler and makes a lot more sense than ours here in the US. I'm jealous.

C U Around,

Quentin

#1 - A Goodbye Hello (EE)

(Shira in.)

So maybe I'll say hello with goodbye. This is eXtreme etymology, coming at you. Since it's my first venture into the world of Bloggy McBloggerson, though, don't expect razor wit just yet.

The word 'goodbye' in English comes from an Middle English phrase, namely "God be with ye[you]". While that has become truncated into the meaningless "goodbye" and even further to "bye," the word in other languages retains its original form. Spanish-- adios, literally "to God". French, for a final farewell-- adieu. Portuguese-- adeus. You can see where this is going. So why did English crunch up its heavenly farewell? I can't seem to imagine, although English has a tendency of abbreviating where possible. The great thing about this is that if you ask Spanish speakers about adios, they don't realize it's two words smashed into one. Then again, we English speakers mostly have no inkling of the conception of goodbye, so maybe I should apologize.

Also, if they play Hello Goodbye for that Target advert one more time, I might choke someone.

(Shira out.)

Post Number Zero

Both Quentin and Shira are here talking to you... now.

*S So we decided to make a blog about words because they are pretty awesome. Wouldn't you agree? I like the idea of Manifest Vocabulary- the practice- nay, art- of inventing new words to suit phenomena as they arise. These new words can be portmanteaux of existing words, e.g. Apple Laptop --> Apptop (isn't it cool that portmanteau pluralizes with an x) or just new words entirely.

*Q Shira, don't forget that some words that already exist can be pretty awesome too, e.g. dragoman - an Arabic interpreter or guide. I mean, just look at it.... DRAGOMAN!! It's so cool!

*S I also like the ways words have come about- like extreme etymology. Etymology so extreme, in fact, that the extreme is spelled eXtreme. (Henceforth, all appearances of the word eXtreme will be spelled so.)

*Q Thanks for that, Shira.

*S While Quentin is being a branch in the swamp, I think we've pretty much wrapped it up for the exciting introduction. Have your eyeballs melted yet?

*Q Yes... yes they have. Also, sorry for making you seem hyper, Shira, and I will join you in christening this very eXtreme blog. I hope all of you (if any) out there will join us in our endeavor to understand, play with, stretch, and squash the English language. Please, if you wish to make a comment, make said comment immediately. We promise we won't make fun of you and give you a silly hat to wear in the corner of the room while everyone around you points and laughs and says, "My, that is a silly hat."

*S Well, now they're not going to. Way to go, Captain Gymshorts.

*Q Bye for now, but see you soon. Also, that is only my name on Wednesday evenings after 9.

Au Revoir Mes Amis,

Q&S