close
|
contents

Linked to from: n_miscGlossary.php.

scientism


open quotation markRacism (also called racialism) is the belief that humans can be divided into separate and exclusive biological entities called races; that there is a causal link between inherited physical traits and traits of personality, intellect, morality, and other cultural and behavioral features; and that some races are innately superior to others.    Encyclopaedia Britannica, rtvd 14/3/2024.

While all psychological constructs must have biological correlates and all biological constructs must have psychological correlates, neither of these relationships is mechanically fixed. Only by adapting to physical and cultural feedback from the environment during ontogeny can the primordial and individual inheritance of a being meet its drive to survive. Biological structures, by providing adaptive substrate, enable experience to be iteratively processed and recursively stored — mutatis mutandis.

A society, in the language of it's culture, encodes assumptions fundamental to its reasoning. When ideas and actions align with these they then appear self-evident and reasonable to its citizens; when they do not they appear false, inconsequential or amateurish. This elementary mechanism hides fallacies of circular, self-supporting logic while insisting that alternative frameworks are not merely reasonable but beyond doubt — whether or not that doubt is reasonable. Although it is fallacious to hold that racist social analyses prove racist beliefs, within cultures built on racist assumptions racism appears to be reasoned.

Eugenics is part of a fundamentalist faith, racism. While it promotes itself as a science its 'reasoning' is no more than a way of expressing its prejudice. Science, on the other hand, is an elementary practice; an endless rigorous cycle of: observe; theorize; test, that strives to be unprejudiced.

open quotation markThe whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.    Albert Einstein.


from: Physics and Reality, published in the Journal of the Franklin Institute, Vol. 221, Issue 3, March 1936, pp. 349-382.


open quotation markmutatis mutandis — with things changed that should be changed.

Through genetic and epigenetic media, primordial and individual experience is inherited at conception. This then provides the 'base case' for the recursive function that drives the ONTOGENY of BEINGS, during which, biological structures, such as the brain, process the individual's lived EXPERIENCE mutatis mutandis, storing it, through a validation process that amends, corrects, integrates, expands and overwrites prior experience as necessary.


Societies follow an ad hoc route, yet by demanding a fully detailed map before altering their path alternatives are sterilized and their populations increasingly march in step.


Consider, for example, the 'doubts' broadcast about climate change science. Exon/Mobil, for instance, was able to successfully dispute the findings of climate science for years, despite its own scientists having modeled and predicted global warming with 'shocking skill and accuracy' since the 1970s.


Fluency, is generally limited to describing dexterity of verbal expression; however FLUENCY here refers to EXPRESSION in general, and in particular to its aptness, in its environmental FRAME, to the communicative goals of the MEANING that informed it..


MEANING here, refers to that which a BEING PERCEIVES of the EXPRESSIONS of NOUMENA. Developed and encoded through the FRAME of ONTOLOGENY, MEANING is then inheritable.



Inherited and learnt by experience, PERCEPTION is the RECOGNITION by a BEING of MEANING in what their senses can register, that then is incorporated into MEANING.



signs

Aristotle and Plato wrote about signs, and about symbols; signs in the world of nature, and symbols in human culture. Now, symbols are considered to be a type of sign; whether they are iconic or signified through arbitrary conventions rather than through any direct relationship with what is signified — such as numbers, letters, words, etc.

open quotation markWords in their primary or immediate Signification stand for nothing, but the Ideas in the Mind of him that uses them.

Derived from the Greek, semio-, meaning a sign, and its suffix -sis, meaning the equivalent, in English, of -ing, the word, semiosis, is then literally defined as sign-ing, sign-action, or signification; the process of attributing and responding to MEANING.

Anything when RECOGNIZED, becomes a SIGN of whatever is RECOGNIZED. BIOSEMIOSIS is the process which generates that RECOGNITION; ENDOSEMIOSIS, that which takes place within a BEING and EXOSEMIOSIS, a BEING's external EXPRESSION, representing signification in a natural world that also contains human BEINGS.


An icon is an image, or a figurative representation, of an animate, inanimate, or abstract object.


Taken from: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, I.ii.2: 405, John Locke, 1689.


BIOSEMIOSIS is a recursive process, enabling BEINGS to generate MEANING by aligning their PERCEPTION of current SENSATION with what they can RECOGNIZE from MEANING previously EMBODIED in them, either through inheritance or by themselves. ENDOSEMIOSIS refers then to their RECOGNITION of those NOUMENA that they EMBODY, and EXOSEMIOSIS to their communication with their external environment through EXPRESSION and SENSATION.



BIOSEMIOSIS is a recursive process, enabling BEINGS to generate MEANING by aligning their PERCEPTION of current SENSATION with what they can RECOGNIZE from MEANING previously EMBODIED in them, either through inheritance or by themselves. ENDOSEMIOSIS refers then to their RECOGNITION of those NOUMENA that they EMBODY, and EXOSEMIOSIS to their communication with their external environment through EXPRESSION and SENSATION.


The 'definition', implied here for embodiment, varies from some used elsewhere, but could be considered to be inclusive of them.

Noumenon, is a Greek word meaning "that which is perceived", and the word that Kant then used to identify the thing-in-itself — the underlying reality that may then be RECOGNIZED as a SIGN.

NOUMENA include energies as well as objects. They may function as SIGNS of themselves, as rocks, or heat, or holes, or hands; or as qualities they may be associated with, food, green, danger, etc. NOUMENA may also SIGN things distinct from themselves — a woman may SIGNIFY a mother; a sound may SIGNIFY a river, a phoneme, or "Mum!" A mark may SIGNIFY a word, a smudge, or a symbol, like pi; or a photograph or a drawing a a pipe, or a pie.

Clouds may frown, girls might tease. Red skies at night may mean delight, or a swallow a summer of love.

Kant referred to recognition of the thing-in-itself as perception, but here, PERCEPTION, is used to label one of the four processes of BIOSEMIOSIS.



Painting by Rene Magritte, Ceci n'est pas une pipe., 1929.


The entire sequence of events involved in the development of an individual BEING over its lifespan.

after the Collins English Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged, 12th Ed. HarperCollins Publishers.

open quotation mark...ontological (is) the best adverbial or adjectival derivative of being.. ...ontological security the basic existential position from which [a BEING] encounters all the hazards of life from a centrally firm place of their own and other's reality and identity.

open quotation mark...ontological (is) the best adverbial or adjectival derivative of being.. ..Ontological security.. is the basic existential position from which a person encounters all the hazards of life, social, ethical, spiritual, biological, from a centrally firm place of his own and other people's reality and identity.
open quotation markIf experience is denied, our awareness of what we are is restricted, we are estranged from our actualities. We are in a state of ontological insecurity, unable to take our being in the world for granted.
Extracts from, The Divided Self, R.D Laing, 1960, The Tavistock Institute, London.

science

open quotation markThe whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.    Albert Einstein.

Science is an elementary practice. Scientism is a belief. Eugenics and the Holocaust it drove are among the brutal consequences and stark reminders of not recognizing this distinction.



from: Physics and Reality, published in the Journal of the Franklin Institute, Vol. 221, Issue 3, March 1936, pp. 349-382.


Hormone, from the Greek, hormon, meaning 'that which sets in motion'.


from the Greek, akrasia, meaning 'loss of free will', acrasins are signalling molecules, providing the functions hormones have, for instance in humans.


from the poem The Stare's Nest by My Window, published in Meditations In Time Of Civil War (1922-23), by William Butler Yeats — on the Irish Civil War.


corporative —

  of a state organized into and governed by corporations of individuals involved in any given profession, industry, etc. — Collins English Dictionary.

  of or relating to a government or political system in which the principal economic functions, such as banking, industry, labor, and government, are organized as corporate entities. — American Heritage Dictionary.

  of or pertaining to a political system under which the principal economic functions, such as banking, industry, and labor, are organized as corporate entities. — Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary.

corporatism —

  the organization of a state on a corporative basis. — Collins English Dictionary.

  the principles, doctrine, or system of corporative organization of a political unit, as a city or state. [1885-90] corporatist. — Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary.

  the control of a state or organization by large interest groups; "individualism is in danger of being swamped by a kind of corporatism" — TFD Thesaurus, Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection.




biopsychosocial

open quotation markAfter nine years of international revision efforts coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Health Assembly on May 22, 2001, approved the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health and its abbreviation of "ICF." This classification was first created in 1980 ...to provide a unifying framework for classifying the consequences of disease... ...Functioning and disability are viewed as a complex interaction between the health condition of the individual and the contextual factors of the environment as well as personal factors. The picture produced by this combination of factors and dimensions is of "the person in his or her world." The classification treats these dimensions as interactive and dynamic rather than linear or static. It allows for an assessment of the degree of disability, although it is not a measurement instrument. It is applicable to all people, whatever their health condition. The language of the ICF is neutral as to etiology, placing the emphasis on function rather than condition or disease. It also is carefully designed to be relevant across cultures as well as age groups and genders, making it highly appropriate for heterogeneous populations.
The above quote is taken from the publication on the CDC website, of the announcement of ICD-9 (the International Classification of Diseases) by the WHO on the ICF website.

The biopsychosocial overview of wellness and illness, which the WHO describes, is taught today in medical schools; however, despite the publication of the ICF, and the ICD (International Classification of Diseases), its significance still seems relatively unrecognized and its impact on social organization and its institutions relatively minimal — on account, perhaps, of shadow political lobbying.



The focus of the adjective, biopsychosocial, is intentionally on human beings. To allow a universal focus, on BEINGS generally, and explicitly avoid anthropocentrism, here the neologism, ONTOLOGENY, is used.



Anthropocentrism, is the belief that our species is "the central fact and final aim of a universe that must therefore be understood in terms of human experience, needs, and values."


open quotation markHuman beings are spatially and temporally limited parts of the whole that we call "universe"; yet we experience ourselves and our feelings as separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness.

footnotes of n_Einstein_Translation.php included in entryNote.php, e_Einstein_HumanDelusion.php, and e_personalMeta.php.

open quotation markEin Mensch ist ein räumlich und zeitlich beschränktes Stück des Ganzen, was wir „Universum“ nennen. Er erlebt sich und sein Fühlen als abgetrennt gegenüber dem Rest, eine optische Täuschung seines Bewusstseins. Das Streben nach Befreiung von dieser Täuschung ist der einzige Gegenstand wirklicher Religion. Nicht das Nähren der Illusion sondern nur ihre Überwindung gibt uns das erreichbare Maß inneren Friedens.    Albert Einstein, 1950.

Einstein wrote the above (bold emphasis added), in ink, in a note now held in the Albert Einstein Archives, Jerusalem. The edit I have made is of the translation, written in another hand, that appears underneath them.

There were several reasons for editing that translation — to reflect the gender neutrality of the German more consistently; to echo Einstein's use of the words, delusion, and, illusion; and to better reflect the certitude of the note's opening argument, carried in the brevity of the German yet somehow absent in the translation on the note itself. In the end, the edit below, supported by translations by Google on 6 March 2024, is only a minor edit of it:

open quotation markHuman beings are spatially and temporally limited parts of the whole that we call "universe"; yet we experience ourselves and our feelings as separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness. The striving to be free of this delusion is the only object of real religion. It is not nurturing the illusion but only overcoming it which gives that measure of inner peace which is attainable.    Albert Einstein, 1950.


The translation, in pencil on the original note, became the text of the condolence letter sent from Einstein to Dr. Marcus on 12 February 1950. The first two sentences of it were then used to open the letter of condolence sent on the 4 March 1950 to Norman Salt.

open quotation markA human being is a part of a whole, called by us "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of pure religion, not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.


delusions and illusions


Einstein spoke the refined German of the Bildungsbürgertum, a language characterized by its precision. It might the be reasonable to assume, as an inspection of Einstein's note also suggests, that his use of the word Täuschung (delusion) twice and Illusion once, was considered not careless.

Tauschung.
 The German word Täuschung in the original note, meaning 'delusion' (JPG opens in a new tab).

Etymologically the word delusion implies an action, a deceiving, referring here to that suffered by human beings through our consciousness, through which we perceive a deceptive appearance, the illusion of being "separated from the rest".

open quotation markTechnically, delusion is a belief that, though false, has been surrendered to and accepted by the whole mind as a truth; illusion is an impression that, though false, is entertained on the recommendation of the senses or the imagination. Illusion (n.), developed in Church Latin from the late 14c. onwards to mean: a "deceptive appearance".
On delusion, and illusion; from the Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved: 4 October 2022.


Although I believe that translations I have found are faithful to the originals, stripped of their context, quotations can lose much of their quality. Transliteration of punctuation, for instance, can result in an English that makes their authors sound coarse or uneducated; and 'grammatical transliterations' may substitute gender bias for the gender neutrality in an original.

Where I have edited translations it has been only in order to address issues of punctuation, prosody, and inference, that I found detracted from the content of the originals. The edits have been made with due diligence, and although I am not a professional translator or writer, I believe they are faithful, and required to make the fluency, erudition, and sensibility of the originals explicit — original texts are provided so readers may draw their own conclusions.



Footnote {delusion01a} of n_Einstein_Translation.php.

open quotation mark..as free-spirited and anti-bourgeois as Einstein may have appeared to be all his life, his language remained the refined German of the Bildungsbürgertum of his time, a language he mastered with virtuosity.
from a 2008 essay by Barbara Wolff, Albert Einstein Archives, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.



Ribeiroia in herons, the fungi on beetles, and the staph in our guts, win minds and hearts over to serve different gods. Outside our mirrored reason, flocking crows, and wheeling horses, otters, gorillas, chimps and geese, play follow the leader. What makes us so special, or more so than our dogs.


quoteleftI'd like people to reconceptualize cancer as a biological event that triggers stress responses affecting how the disease progresses... Managing those stress responses by adopting healthy eating and exercise habits, getting a good night's sleep, and finding good emotional and social support, should be regarded as much a part of cancer treatment as chemotherapy or radiation.
David Spiegel, MD, Stanford University Medical Center. Stanford research builds link between sleep, cancer progression, Stanford Medicine News Center, 2003.


The article from which the quote was taken, although accessible in 2024 — at https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2003/10/stanford-research-builds-link-between-sleep-cancer-progression.html — has now been taken down. The new article, (at Stanford research builds link between sleep, cancer progression), while still referring to Spiegal's work carries an expurgated quote that seems, intentionally or otherwise, to downplay the research and to distance Stanford from Spiegal and the opinion he expressed.



bio-psycho-physical

19 Nov 2024, edit 31 Oct 2026.
open quotation markThe human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one?     Albert Einstein.

If it is unavoidable that descriptions of the ineffable, in some manner, are metaphorical; and if anthropocentric conceptions of the soul are set aside; then BEINGS can be defined as 'vehicles' of life, and LIFE inferred recursively.

Every BIOPHYSICAL construct requires a psychological correlate in order to survive, and any psychological construct requires a BIOPHYSICAL correlate in order to exist. In actuality, psychology is then the METABIOPHYSICAL account that is SIGNIFIED by a BEING.

BEINGS are the BIOPHYSICAL EXPRESSION of their ENDOSEMIOTIC systems, interpreting and driving change in their selves and their environments, and generating their ONTOLOGENIC sensibility of self and other that informs and motivates them..



From Cosmic Religion: with Other Opinions and Aphorisms, 1931, Covici-Friede, quoted in The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press; 2nd edition (May 30, 2000); Page 208.

ontology, [onto- an individual, a BEING, -logy an account, to tell or speak], refers here not to ego or mind but to the superordinate emergent quality of self and other that is the foundation of LIFE, learning and survival; the METABIOLOGY that then FRAMES a BEING.

You must know
what you're looking for
to RECOGNIZE
that you've found it.


context is king

5 Mar 2026, edit: 18 Jul 2026.

A FRAME refers here to a frame of reference, a reference frame, or category. They are LANGUAGES, meta-LANGUAGES, that by contextualizing and defining the SIGNS that they contain and refer to, give them their meaning.

CULTURES are environmental FRAMES, meta-LANGUAGES that aggregate a community's PERCEPTION and EXPRESSION. Reflecting the wisdom, fears, and strategies that have been learned and passed on, their histories of families, communities, and peoples, are histories of privilege and trauma as varied, intransigent, and challenging to unravel as those of any individual are.

The differences between CULTURES provide opportunities for learning and development, but contextualizing and defining the LANGUAGES that evolve with them, and informing the interpretation of those that have not, they also construct semantic FALSE-FRIENDS.


open quotation mark..a structure of concepts, values, customs, or views by means of which an individual or group perceives or evaluates data, communicates ideas, and regulates behavior.

This definition of the term, frames of reference, taken from the Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, aligns with the broader application of it here for FRAMES.

category mistakes

In the seventeenth century, Thomas Hobbes referred to the category errors that philosophers make. Three hundred years later, Gilbert Ryle coined the term category mistake, in The Concept Of Mind, illustrating it with several examples, one concerning a misunderstanding about universities.

open quotation markA foreigner visiting Oxford or Cambridge for the first time is shown a number of colleges, libraries, playing fields, museums, scientific departments and administrative offices. He then asks "But where is the University? I have seen where the members of the Colleges live, where the Registrar works, where the scientists experiment and the rest. But I have not yet seen the University in which reside and work the members of your University." It has then to be explained to him that the University is not another collateral institution, some ulterior counterpart to the colleges, laboratories and offices which he has seen. The University is just the way in which all that he has already seen is organized. When they are seen and when their co-ordination is understood, the University has been seen. His mistake lay in his innocent assumption that it was correct to speak of Christ Church, the Bodleian Library, the Ashmolean Museum and the University, to speak, that is, as if "the University" stood for an extra member of the class of which these other units are members. He was mistakenly allocating the University to the same category as that to which the other institutions belong.
Gilbert Ryle, in The Concept Of Mind, 1949 Hutchinson (2009 republication, Routledge, p.6-7).

The philosophical error had also been identified, by professor Heinrich Hertz, in respect of physics.

open quotation markOur confused wish finds expression in the confused question as to the nature of force and electricity. But the answer which we want is not really an answer to this question. It is not by finding out more and fresh relations and connections that it can be answered; but by removing the contradictions existing between those already known, and thus perhaps by reducing their number. When these painful contradictions are removed, the question as to the nature of force will not have been answered; but our minds, no longer vexed, will cease to ask illegitimate questions.
Heinrich Hertz, Prof. Physics, Bonn University. In Principles of Mechanics, Heinrich Hertz, Macmillan & Co.Ltd London 1899), pp 7-8.

The term BEING, applies here to all forms of LIFE, whether multicellular (humans, ants, plants, etc.); unicellular (bacteria, archaea, algae, etc.); or MODULAR.



MEANING does not refer here to the output or conclusion of a cognitive function or human mind, but to motivation, founded by learning and LIFE.

open quotation markAs little as a ball on a billiard table can move before receiving an impact, so little can a man get up from his chair before being drawn or driven by a motive. But then his getting up is as necessary and inevitable as the rolling of a ball after the impact. And to expect that anyone will do something to which absolutely no interest impels them is the same as to expect that a piece of wood shall move toward me without being pulled by a string.
On the Freedom of the Will, Chapter III, Arthur Schopenhauer, 1839; an esaay included in his work Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik (The Two Basic Problems of Ethics), presented to the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences as a response to their question: "Is it possible to demonstrate human free will from self-consciousness?".

being — defined recursively.

10 Mar 2025, edit 22 Jul 2026.

Life is the condition of being.

Being is the condition of BEINGS.

A BEING is a descendant of BEINGS.

I am a BEING.



A metatransition is a metasystem transition to either a more complex or a simpler structure, ultimately leading to a transitory or permanent evolutionary transition in individuality.

NB. The labels, 'more complex', 'simpler', 'transitory' and 'permanent', refer here to relative positions on subjectively defined axis, not to any objective measure.


Here, metasystem refers to a general, rather than to a restricted, controlling or organizational system that maintains the HOMEOSTASIS necessary for the functioning of a system and subsystems.



Meta-language — a language used to describe or contextualize another language.



The prefix "meta-" is used here in the same manner as it is used in the term meta-language — a language that describes or contextualizes a language.



Language: a system of arbitrary signals, symbols or signs, used to communicate information.

to communicate: to convey information through a system of arbitrary signals.

Semantic: of or relating to meaning.

Meaning: the sense or reference of an EXPRESSION.

to recognize: to know something as the same as, or belonging to the same class as, something known before.


The definitions for meaning and to recognize, are after those in the Collins English Dictionary. The remainder are after those of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.


quoteleftHydrozoa show great diversity of lifestyle; some species maintain the polyp form for their entire life and do not form medusae at all.
quoteleftPolyps of some species propagate vegetatively, forming colonies.. polymorphism occurs in colonies of some species of hydrozoans and anthozoans, the polyps being specialized for functions such as feeding, defense, and sexual reproduction.


Ruppert, Edward E.; Fox, Richard, S.; Barnes, Robert D. (2004). Invertebrate Zoology, 7th edition. Cengage Learning. pp. 148-174; cited in Jellyfish, Taxonomy (list item: Staurozoa), Wikipedia..



Fautin, Daphne G. and Sandra L. Romano. 1997. Cnidaria. Sea anemones, corals, jellyfish, sea pens, hydra. Version 24 April 1997. http://tolweb.org/Cnidaria/2461/1997.04.24 in The Tree of Life Web Project, http://tolweb.org/.



Emphasizing the whole and the interdependence of its parts.

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, fifth edition, 2016, Houghton Miffin Harcourt Publishers.

The WATERSHED here, refers to the transitional period between the Powell Memorandum, of 1971 (Greenpeace.org), and the full commercialization of the internet in 1995, from which sprang what some historians call, a second Gilded Age.



comment: *

subject: *

name: *

email: