ratiocination

The Ratiocinator or,
 more properly, 
The Thinker,
 bronze sculpture

by Auguste Rodin, 1880; in the

Garden of the Rodin Museum, Paris

SpectrumColourLibrary/Heritage-Images

verb

ratiocinate
[RASH-ee-AHS-i-NATE]

verb [ intrans. ] formal

form judgments by a process of logic; reason.—IOAD

—

noun

Ratiocination is reasoning, the process of exact of logical thinking.

[RASH-ee-AHS-i-NAY-shin.]

The primary stress falls on the penultimate — next to the last — syllable, with lighter accents on the first and third syllables: RASH-ee-AHS-i-NAY-shin. 

—Charles Harrington Elster.  There is No Zoo in Zoology and Other Beastly Mispronunciations. New York: Collier Books, 1988, 127.

COGNATES:

—ratiocinate  v.  [RASH-ee-AHS-i-NATE]

—ratiocinative adj.  [RASH-ee-AHS-i-NA-tive]

—ratiocinator n.  [RASH-ee-AHS-i-NAY-tor]—AHD

ORIGIN:

[Latin ratiocinari, ratiocinat-, from ratio, calculation]  —AHD

RATIOCINATION IN USE:

Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes
in Guy Ritchie's film "Sherlock Holmes."

I.

[Sherlock] Holmes's famous ratiocination is now at the service of the man of action. In slow motion, we see the fighting techniques he plans to use against an opponent (he narrates the blows for us, insisting on the logical rightness of each one); then we see his attack again, in lightning-quick flashes.—David Denby, The Current Cinema, "Sherlock Holmes," The New Yorker, Jan. 4 2010, 76.

II.

Obama needs to craft a strong story, and fast, if he expects to be able to accomplish anything in the three years that remain. His opponents are hard at work smithing their stories, and Obama soon might find himself surrounded on all sides by crude powerful tales that no amount of ratiocination will be able to dispel. The President needs to remember his post’s true vocation: that of the Storyteller-in-Chief.—Junot Diaz"One Year: Storyteller-in-Chief," January 20, 2010  (newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk).

III.

For all their vaunted powers of ratiocination, grand masters of chess tend to be a skittery lot. – “People”, Time (clutchmagonline.com)

Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe

nytimes.com/slide show

IV.

mm"These tales of ratiocination," Edgar Allan Poe explained to a correspondent in 1846, "owe most of their popularity to being something in a new key." He was referring to the three stories he wrote in the early 1840s featuring C. Auguste Dupin—"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" (1842-3), and "The Purloined Letter" (1841). The "new key" was, of course, what we have come to call "detective fiction." . . . .

mmBut . . . Poe never conceived of the Dupin stories as belonging to the genre of detective fiction; he never referred to them as such. Rather he used the term "tales of ratiocination" in order to emphasize the delineation of a chain of logical reasoning and analysis. For him, the detective was not the central focus of the story, but a vehicle for tracing a train of thought, and the tale itself a way to analyze, "that moral activity which disentangles" as he writes in his prefatory comments to "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." It was an interest in logic and not in the personality of the fictional detective that led Poe to write his detective fiction. He left it to others, notably Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, to explore the character of the detective, of which his deductive methods would be but one facet.—Stephen Rachman, "Edgar Alan Poe and the Origins of Mystery Fiction (strandmag.com/poe.htm)

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THE HEART OF RATIOCINATION: THE SYLLOGISM


In A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, John Stuart Mills asserted the essential    connection between ratiocination and the syllogism: "There is a [narrow] sense, in which the name reasoning is confined to the form of inference which is termed ratiocination, and of which the syllogism is the general type."

Remember the syllogism in Composition and Rhetoric 101?  If not, read on.

The first one I ever deliberately learned was

mmAll men are mortal.

mmSocrates is a man.

mmTherefore, Socrates is mortal.

The three sentences made simple, obvious sense, and I thought no more about them.  I was then quite surprised, in my undergraduate naivete, to learn that someone actually had to invent such an arrangement of words and sentences, as well as phalanxes of rules to support it.

I learned that each of the statements had a name:

mmMajor premise: All humans are mortal.

mmMinor premise: Socrates is a human.

mmConclusion: Therefore Socrates is mortal.

I learned how the syllogism could be rendered symbolically using the alphabet, like this

a = b

\

c = a

c = b

and how critical it was that the a's, b's, and c's  all appear in the order presented here,  the two a's aligned in crosswise position, making it possible to equate c with b.

I then wondered who it was that had invented such a powerful design for reason.

Before long, I learned that "[t]he oldest surviving writing to explicitly consider the rules by which reason operates," as Wikipedia recounts it,

are the works of the Greek philosopher Aristotle, especially Prior Analysis and Posterior Analysis. Although the Ancient Greeks had no separate word for logic as distinct from language and reason, Aristotle's newly coined word "syllogism" (syllogismos) identified logic clearly for the first time as a distinct field of study. When Aristotle referred to "the logical" (hê logikê), he was referring more broadly to rational thought,

or ratiocination.

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In closing, I offer this syllogism of my own making in homage to the form's brilliant inventor:

The inventor of the syllogism can rightly be called the Founder of Ratiocination.

Aristotle invented the syllogism.

Therefore, Aristotle can rightly be called the Founder of Ratiocination.

Ratiocinator in Chief:
Aristotle. A detail from the fresco
The School of Athens by Raphael.
gap-systems.org

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feckless, feck

  Arianna Huffington's

 book about becoming

 a political liberal.

hachettebookgroup.com  

A conservative

critic's mocking 

  response to 

Huffington's 

 book. 
SaberPoint stogiechomper@gmail.com  

[FEK-less]  adj.


feckless

   

1. (of a person) lacking in efficiency or vitality : a feckless mama's boy.

2. unthinking and irresponsible : the feckless exploitation of the world's natural resources.—NOAD

IN USE

"Our professorial president is no feckless W., biking through Katrina."—Maureen Dowd, NYTimes,  OP-ED, "Captain Obvious Learns the Limits of Cool," Jan. 9, 2010.

"Yet if presidents have accrued too much power, if the Congress is feckless, if the national security bureaucracy is irretrievably broken, the American people have only themselves to blame."—Daniel Johnson, America:a nation of "Damned Fools,"  Salem news.com, Jan. 1, 2010.

RELATED WORDS

fecklessly (FEK-lis-lee) adverb; fecklessness (FEK-lis-nis) noun.

ORIGIN

Eugene Ehrlick in The Highly Selective Dictionary of Golden Adjectives for the Extraordinarily Literate narrates the following etymology for feckless:

From Scottish and northern English feck, meaning "effect," + -less, an adjectival suffix meaning "without," thus "without effect."

Which makes one wonder whether there is also a feckful and, as it turns out, there once was a feckful in Scottish and in the English spoken in England's north. It meant "efficient, powerful."  Apparently, nothing beats being full of feck." (New York: HarperCollins, 2002.)

MEANWHILE, IN IRELAND . . . 
During recent years the Irish have been not at all feckless in their open use of the exclamatory phrase "feck off," which, of course, sounds very much like the expletive "f*ck off."  There is no semantic connection  between feckless and feck, other than the words' obvious shared syllable, "feck." In point of fact, the Irish imperative feck  derives from the expletive f*ck,  which, the OED tells us "remains (and has been for centuries) one of the English words most avoided as taboo."


After I learned about a recent dust-up in Ireland over public use of feck — as in "feck off," "you feck," and "feckin' 'ell"— I just could not resist sharing with you the following account.


I discovered that the Irish have collectively created a quasi-benign meaning for feck and during recent years have supported its rising incidence in print and speech.


Feck in this snarly sense bloomed in popularity on the Irish isles during the past decade largely because of its repeated use by the characters of a popular UK television situation comedy  named "Father Ted," which enjoyed a three year run in the late 1990s.

 

 Father Ted as portrayed

 by actor Dermot Morgan  

Eventually, the exclamatory phrase "feck off" appeared on an advertising poster for Mangers Irish Cider, upsetting a group of parents who wanted to protect their children from needless encounters with the word. The group filed a complaint with the UK's Advertising Standards Authority.

Following is the outcome of that complaint as described by The Daily Record on Dec. 10, 2008:

Headline: 'Feck' is not swearing, say advertising watchdogs

IT'S OK to use the word "feck" in conversation - thanks to Father Ted. Watchdogs have decided it is not a swearword after probing complaints about its use on a poster for cider.

The Advertising Standards Authority received a complaint after a Magners advert showed an orchard keeper saying: "Feck off bees."The Irish firm insisted he was merely issuing "a mild rebuff" - and not cursing. Feck has been around in various forms in Ireland since the early 1800s. And it was made famous in phrases such as "feck off" and "feckin' eejit" in the 90s sitcom Father Ted. In particular, drunken priest Father Jack, played by actor Frank Kelly, used it liberally to replace the other F-word.

And as they refused to uphold the complaint, the regulators said: "The use of the word feck in Britain has been popularised by TV programmes such as Father Ted. "We considered that the tone of the ad was not aggressive or threatening. "The term feck was unlikely to be seen as a swearword." It claimed the use of the word would not offend adults and was not unsuitable to be seen by children either. 

The blogger at Swordplay posed and answered (aptly, in my view) a provocative rhetorical question about the appropriateness of the ASA's decision, to wit:

A feckless disregard for decency, or an informed take on the Protean nature of language? We’re opting for the latter. (Swordplay www.spada.co.uk Dec. 10, 2008.)

Finally, for the record, I should note that the Irish also use feck informally in three nonexclamatory senses: (1) "to steal" (e.g. 'They had fecked cash out of the rector's room'); or (2) "to throw" (e.g. 'He's got no manners at all.  I asked him nicely for the remote control, and he fecked it across the table at me.'); or (3) "to leave hastily" (e.g. "He's after feckin off down the road when he saw the shades!") —Wikipedia.

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For a YouTube stream of scenes presenting "Father Ted" characters declaiming "feck" phrases, click here: Father Ted - Holy Swearing.

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Even on welcome mats.  

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risible

Disney image

rizible  [rĭz'ə-bəl]  adj.

1. Relating to laughter or used in eliciting laughter.

2. Eliciting laughter; ludicrous.

3. Capable of laughing or inclined to laugh.—AHD

rizibility  [rĭz'ə-bĭl'-ĭ-tē]  noun  plural -ties

1. The ability or tendency to laugh.

2. A sense of the ludicrous or amusing. Often used in the plural.

3. Laughter; hilarity—AHD

IN USE

risible adj.

"[James] Cameron* still has trouble with (or maybe just no interest in) writing a script that isn’t riddled with action-movie clichés, risible villains and ham-fisted foreshadowings. *Director of the movie "Avatar." — Steve Ponds, thewrap.com, Dec. 17, 2009.

risibility noun

WFB [William F. Buckley Jr.] was very proud of his son, as well he should have been. Christopher Buckley continues the legacy of Buckley wit and increases my risibility index with every reading. —From goodreads.com, Johnny's review of Little Green Men: A Novel, Random House Inc.  

risibilities noun

"Risibilities support us as we skim over the surface of a deep issue." — J. A. Pike —WIII

risibles noun

"Unable to control her risibles, Lady Grimley guffawed after Count Erple punctuated the silence with a hiccup."—J.H.

ORIGIN

Mid 16th cent. (in the sense [inclined to laughter] ): from late Latin risibilis, from Latin ris- ‘laughed,’ from the verb ridere.—OAD

SYNONYMS

risible adj. a risible comedy routine from their old radio days;

laughable, ridiculous, absurd, comical, comic, amusing, hilarious, humorous, droll, farcical, silly, ludicrous, hysterical, informal rib-tickling, priceless —OAWT

COMMENT

As as my modest attempt at risibility above about Lady Grimley strives to illustrate, risibile, as Webster's III of 1928 tells us, is sometimes used as a plural noun, "for muscles and other organs used in laughing," as in, for example, "one's being unable to control one's risibles." Granted, risibles in this sense is somewhat dated, but it can still be useful, especially with a nimble audience already familiar with the word. A standup comedian might say after telling a joke that prompted more laughter than she had anticipated, "A hah! That one tickled your risibles!"

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scrum

A rugby scrum

whatisrugby.com image

scrum noun

[skrum]

1. Rugby an ordered formation of players the forwards of each team push against each other with heads down and the ball thrown in.

2. British informal: a disorderly crowd —The New Oxford American Dictionary

ORIGIN

Scrum is an abbreviation of scrummage, a variant of scrimmage, "a confused struggle or fight." Scrimmage was at one time also a variant of skirmish, "an episode of irregular or unpremeditated fighting." Skirmish traces back to Old French eskirmir, a derivative of a Germanic verb meaning "defend." —Online Etymology Dictionary

Though a scrum these days in rugby is an "orderly formation" of players pushing against each other just before the ball is put into play, the word's earlier forms signified confrontations that were confused, irregular, or unpremeditated — put bluntly: spontaneous fights.

COMMENTS

This posting centers on scrum, not as a rugby formation, but as "a disorderly crowd" or as the OED phrases it, "a confused noisy throng (at a social function or the like)."

Scrum in this latter sense appears with increased frequency of late in American publications, notably in the New York Times, wherein it appeared no fewer than 15 times during the past 30 days. Each of the example sentences employ scrum to convey the notion of "disorderly crowd" or "confused noisy throng," but also an added piece of localized information, which I will call a contextual entailment, a necessary or inevitable part or consequence of the situation described. After each example sentence, I've added what I think is the operative contextual entailment. If the reader thinks that I've misidentified any of the entailments or that the words I've chosen could be improved, I'd be delighted to read any comments you care to share using the Comments widget at the bottom of the posting.

SCRUM IN RECENT USE

BlogTalk: Palin Enters, and Quickly Tries to Exit, the Scrum on Obama's Birthplace.—NYTimes, The Caucus Politics, Reader's Comments, Dec. 25, 2009.

▶Contextual entailment: political disagreement

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But the brief scrum set off [the attack upon Pope Benedict XVI] in the Vatican assault involving security officers. —NYTimes, The Lede, The New York Times Blog. Dec.25, 2009.

▶Contextual entailment: physical attack

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There may be reveling elsewhere in the city, and an oversize scrum clogging Times Square just a few blocks away, but Ms. [Mariah] Carey's performance is certain to be this night's true spectacle. —NYTimes, Music, by Ben Ratliff, et al., Dec. 24, 2009

▶Contextual entailment: raucous dancing

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The closest my siblings and I ever come to religion is at Christmastime: we always liked to go to church to sing carols. We overcompensated for out lack of piousness with a deafening coral volume; we can make "Angels we Have Heard on High" sound like a scrum of Panzers. —Henry Alford. NYTimes, Fashion & Style, Dec. 18, 2009.

▶Contextual entailment: sound of World War II German tanks

▶Rhetorical intent: hyperbole in the service of humor

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With "The Lady in the Tower," inserts herself into the scrum of historians eager to interpret Anne Boelyn's story. —Janet Maslin. NYTimes, Books. Dec. 17, 2009.

▶Contextual entailment: scholarly argumentation

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As the brand that is Tiger Woods goes pop and accusers scrum over notoriety, [here are] a few thoughts on the hidden costs of fame. —New York Times, Week in Review, Times Topics, Dec. 13, 2009.

▶Contextual entailments: speculating and probably some jabbering

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The pioneer in the all-news TV format loses viewers' interest in the political scrum between Fox on the right and MSNBC on the left. —Bill Carter. NYTimes, Times Topics, Oct. 27, 2009.

▶Contextual entailment: conflicting political biases

THE SCRUM EXPERIENCE

Here is an on-the-ground description of a scrum of reporters who were following Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson in the early days of the 2007 primaries.

At this point in the political season news bureaus which might have been saving their travel budgets have had to start sending print reporters, television reporters, still photographers, videographers, producers and sound people on the road to cover the campaign.When they gather around a candidate it is called from rugby or Australian Rules Football or something.Here’s an example: The candidate [Fred Thompson] is barely visible in the middle.

The scrum is an interesting being because the still and video guys need to have a direct view of the candidate. The sound guys have their microphones on long booms and just need to keep it somewhere near the top of the candidate’s head. The TV reporters are always mindful of “the shot” and will try to keep themselves between their camera and the candidate. Print reporters don’t care as long as they can hear – or, at least, get their voice recorders somewhere in the vicinity of the candidate’s mouth.

—Source: mullings.com, where Rich Galen gives a Republican "take on politics, culture and general modern annoyances." The excerpt comes from a posting titled "At the Fair," published August 19, 2007.

THE SOUNDS OF SCRUM

Scrum — skrum! —sounds about right for a word that means disorderly, noisy, crowd. The keen-eared Roy Blount Jr. in Alphabet Juice describes the vowel in scrum as the "sound that comes from deepest down — the grunt vowel, the dull thud vowel, the vowel we may utter when punched in the stomach — . . . the flat u-sound: uh." Attend to the scr sound for a while, and some rather rousing words come to mind: scrape, scour, score, scream, scourge, scrunch. Note, too, the rum words scum, thrum, and drum, and one can concluded that the sounds of scrum resonate robustly with the word's rambunctious intention.

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