A Lexicon of
Neologisms. Mikhail Epstein (Emory University)
cerebrity n
(Lat cerebrum, brain; cf. celebrity)
– a famous,
well-publicized intellectual; a brainy,
cerebral person who is emotionally dry or egocentric.
I
try to avoid meetings with such cerebrities.
Everything they have to say is already in their books.
I
used to imagine Hegel as a cerebrity who had little to do with human passions, and I was surprised to
learn that he fathered an illegitimate son.
* * *
gnawledge
n (word-portmanteau: gnaw + suffix -ledge; cf. knowledge) -
mechanical knowledge that is obtained by "gnawing" facts rather than
by conceptually and creatively interpreting them.
Gnawledge and knowledge are homophones (differ only in spelling).
When Bacon said "knowledge is power,"
he meant knowledge, not gnawledge.
* * *
ignorement n (ignore + suffix ment; cf. treatment, excitement) - a noun that signifies ignoring
something or somebody, corresponding to the verb ignore, but different from ignorance (which is derived from ignore, but has a different meaning, "lack of
knowledge").
I
hoped to receive forgiveness but instead was met with suspicion and ignorement.
Your
son's continuous ignorement
of his civil duties needs to be noticed and reprimanded.
The
government shows the same ignorement towards human lives as towards human rights.
* * *
inventure n
(invention+adventure) – an adventure of mind, creative and
engaging intellectual action.
inventurer n –
an adventurer in the field of ideas and inventions.
This book is about the invention of radio, but
it reads like a thriller, with one inventure piled upon another.
By cutting reason down to size and establishing
its “proper” limits, Kant encouraged subsequent inventures, a never-ending quest to reach beyond the limits of rational
thought.
Inventurers know how much there is that they don’t
know; like Socrates and Kant, they start their journey with a confessed “ignorance.”
* * *
noocracy n (Gr noos, mind, and Gr -kratia, power or rule) – a system of world government based of
the integrated mind of civilization and its transpersonal decisions; syntellect as a ruling principle of the future society.
As thinking matter increases its mass in nature,
and the geo- and biospheres evolve into noosphere, the future of humanity can
be envisioned as noocracy--that
is, the power of the collective brain,
rather than separate individuals, representing certain social groups or
society as whole.
* * *
Paleonoic era adj (Gr palaios, ancient + Gr noos, mind; cf. Paleozoic era, from Gr zoe,
life) – the current epoch of ancient mind, of the first
intelligent machines; the era that in the history of consciousness occupies a similar place to that of the
Paleozoic era in the history of life.
Looking at ourselves from the perspective of a
distant future, we appear to be people of the Paleonoic era, when the first non-biological forms of
mind were just emerging, when the forces of thinking were first released from the prison of the cranium with the
creation of computers and other self-organising forms of artificial intelligence.
* * *
syntellect n (Gr
syn, with, together +
intellect) – the
unified mind of civilization that integrates all individual minds, both natural
and artificial, through the cumulative effects of informational networks.
Intellectual network--inteLnet--will connect all
thinking beings into one communicational network that gradually will develop
into a new form of consciousness--syntellect.
The syntellect will
absorb and condense the potentials of all thinking beings and will operate on
both biological and quantum levels.
PreDictionary. A Lexicon of Neologisms