The IndoEuropean root from which the word “science” eventually descends is SEK, or in an extended form SKEI, meaning to cut. In Greek σχίζειν meant to split or rend, giving […]
Jeff Aronson’s Words
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Art
Ancient physicians considered medicine to be an art, typified by an aphorism of Hippocrates: Plato repeatedly referred to medicine as an art, for example in the Gorgias and the Symposium, […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Judgement or algorithm? Head or formula?
As I discussed last week, Paul Meehl showed, in 1954, in a book called Clinical Versus Statistical Prediction: A Theoretical Analysis and a Review of the Evidence, that various algorithms […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Algorithms
Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī (ca 780-850; picture) was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, and geographer who lived during the Caliphate of the Abbasids, a dynasty that ruled in Baghdad from 750 […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Hippopotamonstrosequipedaliophilia
Earlier this week, the media delightedly reported that Jacob Rees-Moggs had referred to floccinaucinihilipilification in a parliamentary speech. It comes from Latin: floccus, a wisp of wool, naucum, a trifle, […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Once and for all . . .
… NHS England has recognised that it should not fund homoeopathic remedies. First, consider the highly versatile IndoEuropean root, SM, meaning one or as one. In Latin, semel meant once […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Interconnectedness
As I discussed last week, the physicist Alan Sokal has pointed out that “ . . . well tested theories in the mature sciences are supported in general by a […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Parodies of resistential postmodernism
The IndoEuropean root WED, with its o-grade form WOD, meant to speak. Hence the Greek word for a song or lyric poem, an ode, ᾠδή, and derivatives such as odeon, […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Resistentialism
“Resistentialism is a philosophy of tragic grandeur. It … derives its name from its central thesis that Things (res) resist (résister) men. Philosophers have become excited at various times, says […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Multiculturalism: science, discourse, humanities
To recap. After C P Snow’s 1959 Rede Lecture “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution”, the Cambridge literary critic, F R Leavis, in his 1962 Richmond Lecture, “The Two […]