epeirogeny and orogeny and diastrophism and tectonism and esemplastic and entelechy

Let's begin with a word that first had a humanistic meaning when it was introduced into English in the sixteenth century and then lost that meaning when the scientists took over the term. We can see the word "nucleus," which means "kernel," in our word enucleate. Originally enucleate meant to "extract the kernel from" or "to bring out from disguise; to lay open, clear, explain." If you are taking the kernal out of something you are, in our language today, getting to the heart of an issue. Hence you are explaining it. A 17th century pastor could say, "We sweat to enucleate the mystery." In the 19th century a writer could say: "to enucleate and bring into light their abstruse wisdom." We might use the term "elucidate," "explain," or "exposit" today to express the meaning, but enucleate so communicates something about getting to the essence of a thing that we ought only reluctantly to give up the word.

Yet, eftsoons the scientific revolutions of the 19th century came about, enucleate was taken from normal human speech and shunted off to medical language--to mean "to extract (a tumor, etc.) from its shell or capsule" or, more popularly, "to extract an eye from its socket." From 1968, "When an eyeball containing a malignant growth is enucleated, as much of the optic nerve as possible should be removed." No attestations of enucleate in a humanistic form are recorded after the mid-nineteenth century; perhaps that is why the Collegiate calls the definition "explain" archaic. But it is only archaic to those who make it so and don't have an imagination. I need enucleate my point no further.

Entelechy

Everyone who studies the history of philosophy becomes confused by this term. However, if we take the word's etymology seriously and look at how it was first used in English, we get a clear linguistic field. An entelechy is the realization of the something that previously existed only in its potentiality. The word is made up of three Greek terms: "en" and "telos" and "exein." Putting these three together you have, "to have its end in (itself)." So, the OED defines it as "the realization or complete expression of some function; the condition in which a potentiality has become an actuality." The Century also emphasizes this "realization" dimension of the term: "Realization: opposed to power or potentiality, and nearly the same as energy or act." Thus, iron is potentially in its ore, which to be made iron must be worked: when this is done the iron exists in entelechy. A change has to take place in either the basic matter or the potential in a situation in order for something to exist in entelechy. One might say that a 50 year-old man exists in entelechy, where as a teen is a "potential" man. However, I think that Tom Wolfe's book would not have sold so many copies had it been entitled "A Man in Entelechy." Two quotations from the OED give us further examples of its use: "Wickedness is the form and entelech of all the wicked spirits." Or, "The Soul is the first Entelechy of a natural organical body, having life potentially." I suppose what this latter quotation means is that "ensoulement," in which the immaterial though conscious self is connected with the organic self is the entelechy of that organic self.

The reason people become confused by the term entelechy is that some have tried to equate the word with the force or energy that takes something from its potential to realized state. In this reading of the term, entelechy is not the end or realization of the process but the process or "informing spirit" itself. In this way entelechy becomes vaguely associated with the word "energy" and everyone, from New Age spiritualists to channelers to anyone who has babbled the contemporary cliche, "the process IS the goal," or something like that, feels free to use the term almost anytime they want. So, you have a ridiculous use of the term in the Village Voice from 2002: "As movies directed by ex-Star Trek actors go, it isn't nearly as jejune as, say, Leonard Nimoy's Three Men and a Baby, but neither does it possess the ambivalent entelechy of LeVar Burton's The Tiger Woods Story." I think the author is trying to use entelechy as a synonym for energy. This isn't a good use of the term; it makes a clear and sturdy term ambiguous and hyper-pretentious. And, in the final analysis, it tells you nothing.

Esemplastic

If you really want to use a pretentious-sounding term, try esemplastic. Derived from Greek words meaning "into" and "one" and "mold," and coined by Coleridge in 1817, the word means "having the function of molding into unity; unifying." The picture derived from the word is of someone, probably a poet, taking images and words and feelings from a number of realms of human endeavor and thought and bringing them all together into a poem s/he writes. This requires a huge effort of the imagination, which we might call the "esemplastic power of the poetic imagination." A decade after its first appearance a writer could remark, "Nor I trust will Coleridge's favorite word esemplastic..ever become current." Yet, when Farrar wrote his two volume work on St. Paul a half century later, he says, "The unifying--or if I may use the expression--esemplastic power of the imagination over the many subordinate truths.." One might not only refer to an esemplastic power of the imagination, but why not use the word to describe a person? "No one can ignore the esemplastic ability of great religious leaders to create a powerful movement out of a rag-tag and disheveled band of confused followers." If one is a theologian, one might pray for the esemplastic power of the Spirit to descend upon a schismatic gathering.

Finishing with Epeirogeny

Epeirogeny is a deformation of the earth's crust whereby continents and ocean basins are produced. The word goes back to 1890 when G.K Gilbert wrote, "I shall take the liberty to apply to the broader movements the adjective epeirogenic...The process of mountain formation is orogeny, the process of continent formation is epeirogeny (from the Greek word meaning "mainlaind" or "continent"), and the two collectively are diastrophism." Another word for distrophism (from the Greek "twisting) is tectonism, which was not invented until 1948. The Collegiate neatly includes in its definition both continents and mountains: "the process of deformation that produces in the earth's crust its continents and ocean basins, plateaus and mounains..." From the mountains...to the valleys....God bless America.

I still find that I have not finished all the terms I had highlighted for consideration from these pages. One more essay will do it.

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