Re: reification

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@SFU.CA>]

> Reification... neologize... extant...
>
> I learn about as many new words on this list as I learn physics.
> Fortunately I have an on-line dictionary... otherwise I might wear out
> the pages of my paper copy.
>
> Just curious Leigh, are these words part of your everyday vocabulary,
> or do you look them up and then use them just for fun?

I take that as a rhetorical question, but I think I would
like to answer it anyway, because the subject of language
is very dear to me.

The word "reification" is one I added to my vocabulary upon
reading it in a book by Bill Burke, "Spacetime, Geometry,
Cosmology". His caveat bears repeating, with the forbearance
of several in the group who have seen it before:

   The goal of abstraction is to find common structure in
   different concrete situations, and then to discuss this
   structure independently of the specific situations. Done
   properly, this increases one's knowledge by pooling
   information from diverse situations. But be careful.
   Excessive abstraction is a very common error. Keep the
   references to concrete instances in mind, but do not
   give the abstract structures an existence of their own.
   Treating ideas as things (reification), done to excess
   in politics and religion, has no doubt murdered more
   people than any other cognitive error.
                                               -Bill Burke

"Neologize" is a word I have used, but in this case it was
used first by someone else - Joel, I think - in that thread.
Is it in the dictionary? I'd no idea. I've neologized myself
in the past, my favorite contribution being "empiry", a term
I use for the combination of experimental and observational
scientific results, as opposed to "theory". I find the word
very useful, well worth defining when it is needed in a
discussion.

"Extant"? What's the big deal? Surely that word is in the
tenth grade vocabulary.

If you'll look back at the drivel I've been dishing out here
since the cretaceous era you will find that these words are
part of my everyday vocabulary. I'm glad you've got an on-
line dictionary and that you use it. I use paper dictionaries
and I love language. I think using English with a somewhat
greater dynamic range than that found in "USA Today" is both
uplifting and refreshing. I do have to exhort my students to
"Look it up!" from time to time, something I learned from
Julius Sumner Miller of which I heartily approve. I think it
is good for science students to open a book once in a while.

My students also know that I will gladly stop and define any
word they don't understand while I am lecturing, though they
have not done so this semester in either of my classes. I
firmly believe that in university, even teaching science
students, I ought to be using the English language at more
than the tenth grade level. They pay money for these courses;
they deserve the real thing. Many of us may not realize that
students of the arts are assumed to be improving their
vocabularies; why should science students not also improve
theirs?

Leigh