ONT Re: Inquiry Into Inquiry
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Howard Pattee wrote (HP):
Stan Salthe wrote (SS):
Jon Awbrey wrote (JA):
SS: The -ism is a handy shortcut to referring to whole books.
There just ain't time for it.
JA: What my store of knowledge on the-isms tells me is that any ism worth its
salt probably reflects some interesting and useful facet of what is, but
by no means exhausts the core solidity of what is and stays in question.
HP: By your statement, aren't all words and symbols ism-isms?
JA: Can you tell me what you mean by this?
HP: I mean, don't all words reflect some interesting and useful facet of what is,
but by no means exhaust what is? If a word (without ending in "ism") also
satisfies your condition, it is itself an "ism" so words as a class would
be called an "ism-isms"?
HP: Never mind. My only point was that I don't see that words ending in "ism"
are really different than words ending in "ic" or "ous" or any noun except
proper names. They all appear to meet your condition.
Hm^3. No, I don't think so -- not really. I did not define an "ism" to
be "that which reflects some interesting and useful facet of what is" --
I merely observed that the subset of isms that are "worth their salt" are
likely to fall under this description, precisely because that is how they
likely got liked for their seasonings of sagacity, salience, and sapience
on the mind's tongue in the first place. And all that I have done here is
to report my further observations, my all too informal but long-continued
observations, as to the effects of these sundry orthographic radicals on
the humane brine-vat, the differential toxicities of the chronic ab-use
of substantives bearing such radicals as "-ian", "-ic", "-ism", "-ous",
et alia. If others say that they have not made congruent observations,
then I may express a little surprise, but my report remains the same.
Jon Awbrey
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