IUBio

Mentifex to History of Neuroscience

mentifex at scn.org mentifex at scn.org
Fri Jan 23 15:03:09 EST 1998


As an independent scholar in neuroscience with a B.A. in Latin
and Greek (University of Washington, Seattle, 1968) I question
whether "propriocepsis" is a legitimate term in the vocabulary.

Action-nouns taken from Greek verbs typically end in "-sis" as
in the case of "thesis" or "epiphysis" or "thanatopsis," but
a word starting with the Latin root "proprio-" should continue
only with similarly Latin stems such as "-ceptive" or "-ception"
or even "-spinal," but not a forced Grecification like "cepsis."
If "cepsis" were a Greek word, the result would be "autocepsis."

Not only do I advise histneur scholars to shun bad compound words,
but I alert you to the fact that your field of neuroscience is
ripe for a sudden merge with artificial intelligence and robotics.

http://victoria.tc.ca/~uj797/ is a Latin site on "De Re Mentifica"
or "On the issue of mind-making" -- a borrowing from the founding
document of modern metallurgy, "De Re Metallica" (1556) by Agricola.

http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/ is the website of a Theory of Mind:

  Hearing    Vision    Concepts Volition Emotion   Motor Output
 /iiiiiii\  /!i!i!i!\                             /YYYYYYYYYYYY\
| ||||||| || ||||||| |   T                       | |||||||||||| |
| ||||||| || | ___ | |   +                       | |||||||||||| |
| ||||||| ||  /   \  |   +                       | |S|||||||||| |
| ||||||| || (image)-|---+_                      | |H|||||||||| |
| ||||||| ||  \___/  |  /  \                     | |A|||||||||| |
| ||||||| ||         | (idea)               __   | |K|||||||||| |
| | ||||| ||         |  \__/---------------/  \  | |E|||R|||||| |
| |d------||---------|---+        ____    (fear)-|--*|||U|||||| |
| ||||o|| ||         |   +-------/    \----\__/  | |||||N|||P|| |
| ||g|||| ||         |   +      / de-  \---------|------*|||E|| |
| || |||| ||         |   +     (  ci-   )        | |||||||||T|| |
| ||||||| ||         |   +      \ sion /---------|----------*|| |
| ||||||| ||         |   +       \____/          | |||||||||||| |
--
Arthur T. Murray mentifex at scn.org POB 31326 Seattle WA 98103-1326




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