More Rare Words--On Drogulus and Proprioception, etc.

Even when I find lists of unusual words online, and try to confine my research to those words, I find myself straying to other words and being delighted with what I find. This is what happened to me today. In looking up geitonogamy (derived from Greek geitonos, meaning "neighbor," and gamos, meaning "marriage"), which is the pollination of a flower with the pollen from another pollen of the same flowering plant, I ran across the rarer, but more suggestive, word gelasin. Derived ultimately from the Greek word gelan, which means "to laugh," a gelasin is a dimple in the cheek, produced by smiling. From 1630: "The cheeks somewhat rising, and in the middle the pleasant gelasin." So, the point of the chin is either the pogonion or the gnathion; now we know that the dimple of the cheek is the gelasin.

But while on gelasin, I found gelastic right away, which is a synonym with risible, and means "serving the function of laughter" or "something capable of exciting smiles or laughter" (It is pronounced "djelastic"). Paraphrasing a sentence from 1838: 'Happy is the man...who when he had made up his mind...to a dreadful course of drastics, should find that gelastics had been substituted."

Proprioception

One "weird word for the day" dictionary I found calls this word "weird" or "rare." But, in face, it is making quite a strong comback, and I have heard the word several times in autism lectures of late. Here is an online presentation of sensory integration and autism. The thesis of the paper is that the autistic individual is often lacking in ability to integrate the senses and thus either moves clumsily, has poor judgment, or is hyper (or hypo) sensitive to touch. Sensory integration focuses primarily on three basic senses--tactile, vestibular and proprioceptive. The tactile sytem includes light touch, pain, temperature and pressure. The vestibular system refers to structures in the inner ear that detect movement and changes in the position of the head. Finally, the proprioceptive system:

"refers to components of muscles, joints, and tendons that provide a person with a subconscious awareness of body position....for example, the proprioceptive system is responsible for providing the body with the necessary signals to allow us to sit properly in a chair and step off a curb smoothly. It also allows us to manipulate objects using fine motor movements, such as writing with a pencil, using a spoon to drink soup, and buttoning one's shirt..."

Another site defined proprioception as "body awareness in space." That is a wonderful, brief and helpful definition. In fact, that article says that "proprioception is the most important part of the nervous system to a chiropractor." Hardly a "weird word"...

Drogulus

The way this word is introduced, even in the OED, seems to suggest its obsolescence even before you get started, but once you know the 'big picture' of the word, it not only makes sense but actually is useful. The OED simply has it as an "entity whose presence is unverifiable, because it has no physical effects." It says that A.J. Ayer coined it "on the spur of the moment," but what it doesn't tell you is the crucial point--that Ayer, the linguistic philosopher and religious skeptic, used the term as a way of ridiculing the belief system of Frederick Copleston, perhaps the biggest "theistic" philosopher of the day. Let's tell the story, from Ben Rogers' biography of A. J. Ayer.

After WWII, Ayer did a lot of radio broadcasts on BBC Radio's Third Programme, which tried to bring more intellectual discussion to the airwaves. In one 1949 broadcast, he had a debate with Copleston, a Jesuit philosopher with deep knowledge of contemporary and classical philosophy. At stake were the contrast and conflict between Ayer's empiricism and Copleston's belief in metaphysics (i.e., the existence of the Christian God). Ayer began, Rogers says, by an explanation of logical positivism as simply the analysis and elucidation of concepts used in science or mathematics or everyday language (p. 224). The debate then went back and forth, until Ayer came up with the following as a way of illustrating the point that Copleston's metaphysics had no content because there was no way of testing the truth of metaphysical assertions. He said:

"I say, 'There's a "drogulus" over there,' and you say, 'What?' and I say, 'Drogulus' and you say 'What's a drogulus?' Well, I say, 'I can't describe what a drogulus is, because it's not the sort of thing you can see or touch, it has no physical effects of any kind, but it's a disembodied being.' And you say, 'Well how am I to tell if it's there or it's not there?' and I say, 'There's no way of telling. Everything's just the same if its' there or it's not there. But the fact is it's there. There's a drogulus there standing just behind you, spiritually behind you.' Does that makes sense?," Rogers, p. 225.

Of course, the natural answer Ayer was waiting for was "No, of course it doesn't make sense." Therefore, the implication would be that metaphysics is like the "drogulus"--a being which cannot be seen and has no perceptible effects. If Ayer can get to that point, he can claim that any kind of belief in the Christian God or in metaphysical principles in general is really contrary to our logical and scientific understanding of the world.

So, even though the word wasn't attested in print until 1957, Rogers has demonstrated that the word drogulus was first uttered in 1949. But what is necessary for the word to make sense and be useful is the context of the debate with Copleston. Then, and only then, would you see that a drogulus is a hypothetical entity invented by Ayer which Ayer does not believe exists. He introduces drogulus to try to show the ridiculousness of metaphysical belief. Shorn from this context, the word in the OED, and in most other online sources I have seen, is not very useful. But, once the larger context has been restored, well, drogulus becomes very useful in the perennial debate between theists and agnostics or atheists. I can think of many occasions worthy of resurrecting it...

Conclusion

As is often the case, I didn't seem to make too much progress here but, as I say to audiences of senior with whom I speak, older folks (I am 56) learn deeper than faster. Others may claim to learn faster but what, in fact, do they learn? They would learn drogulus, but they would get it completely wrong. Thus, let me take the slow learning any day. It is like climbing a mountain one sure-footed step at a time.

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