IUBio

Trolling for languages

Mentifex mentifex at scn.org
Fri Jul 3 04:29:01 EST 1998


Dr. F. Frank LeFever "flefever at ix.netcom.com" on 3.jul.1998: [...]
   
> Just to steer this OUTRAGEOUSLY OFF-TOPIC thread back a bit closer to
> neuroscience: a smattering of Greek and Latin makes neuroanatomical
> terms into something more than arbitrary "nonsense words" or "codes"
> and thereby easier to remember.

  ...and makes many disciplines diaphanous to the inspecting eye
  of a strong intellect schooled in Latin and Greek, whereas often
  the jargon and termini technici of a field serve to intimidate
  those who would fain enter but soon abandon all hope in fear of...

> For ex., antidromic, saltatory, thalamus, hypothalamus, epithalamus,
> hippocampus, cornu Ammonis, indusium griseum, fasciculus retroflexus,
> cortex, corpus callosum, etc., etc., etc...

...beautiful words instantly grokkable to the classics scholar, who
  enjoys a "virtual IQ" jump of several standard deviations by dint
  of "dead" languages and who dares troll for the superintelligent
  to retrace the pathways of "Eureka!" and to hark unto Shakespeare:

           There is a tide in the affairs of men,
           Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
           Omitted, all the voyage of their life
           Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

> F. Frank LeFever, Ph.D.
> NYNG (also, Linguistics Section, NY Academy of Sciences)

<PRE>
  /^^^^^^^^^^^\ The Architecture of a Robot Brain /^^^^^^^^^^^\
 /visual memory\           semantic ________     /  auditory   \
|      /--------|-------\  memory  / syntax \   |episodic memory|
|      |  recog-|nition |          \________/---|-------------\ |
|   ___|___     |       |  flush-vector|        |    _______  | |
|  /image  \    |     __|___        ___V___     |   /stored \ | |
| / percept \   |    /deep  \------/lexical\----|--/ phonemes\| |
| \ engrams /---|---/concepts\----/concepts \---|--\ of words/  |
|  \_______/    |   \________/    \_________/   |   \_______/ </PRE>




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