The Life and Times of Miblo del Carpio

Having consulted my Concise Oxford Dictionary (with little success) and Dr. Google (with a little more) on the word suggestions outlined at the bottom of the previous article, the most fitting word with which to end this chapter on 'ologies', bearing in mind the original intentions for the chapter - being 'of introducing and elucidating upon subjects of which I have barely no knowledge whatsoever' - I say, the most fitting word with which to end this chapter seems logically to be 'Noology'.

Knowledge, and especially the search for new knowledge, was the impetus behind this chapter, and little though I seem to have succeeded in the attempt, this word 'noology' would nevertheless form a fitting end to a much more deserving chapter, and must now find itself condescending to this. However, fitting as it may be, the compilers of my Concise Oxford seemingly had insufficient space to fit it in this 1991 edition, thus I cannot present the definition (in my preferred form) from that publication. However, Dr. Google lent a hand in leading me to Wikipedia, thus providing a clear enough definition of the word. But then! It didn't stop there. Oh, no. An insight, dear reader. The pinnacle of thoughts occurred to me: the OED Online! Being a student with The Open University entitles one to browse the OED Online to their heart's content, thus there we find this beautiful definition:

noology /nəʊˈɒlədʒi/ n. Originally: the branch of learning that deals with the mind or thinking; (occas.) a work on this subject (now hist.). Later (also): the study of the spiritual or distinctively human aspects of humanity.

Definition courtesy of the OED Online

In its original sense is this word most appropriate for this blog. It could be argued that without either the mind or thinking this blog could not exist, as certainly could not intelligence, and the day the subjects studied in the field of noology cease to exist will be the worst of all days in the history of the Universe.

Summation

Thus we come to the end of Chapter 20 and of the year 2008, to head into next year with Chapter 21 to begin very shortly. As I write, there are 37 minutes of this year remaining and let me now, before I forget, wish us all a Happy New Year and that it brings us all even closer to contentment than this year has done.

This presently ending chapter has been a little bit of a disappointment, has it not? It was intended to introduce fields of study, expand on them, and open them up for discussion, but in the end it became little more than an exercise in copy-and-pasting, with each article being no more impetus for discussion than a single word scribbled on a piece of paper.

But this is not to be regretted. New chapters will come, with more opportunities for mind-altering discussions, and whether they deserve the name or not there are a handful of poems currently in the works to be published as they are completed on the sister blog, My Creative Alter-Ego's Other Half.

A fond farewell to Chapter 20 and 2008, and let us warmly welcome in the new year.

If paleomammalogy be 'the branch of zoology that studies the mammals of past geologic ages', may we not be forgiven if wrongly supposing palaeopsychology to be defined as 'the branch of psychology that studies the mind of past ages'. But we seem to need no forgiveness, for a trawl around the internet has uncovered the following from Questia:

paleopsychology The study of psychological processes supposedly left over from an earlier stage of human EVOLUTION. For example, Jung’s suggestion of a COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS.

Definition courtesy of The Concise Dictionary of Psychology, p.97

There seems not to be much interest in this field from English scientists, if the two spellings of the word - palaeopsychology and paleopsychology - provide any indication of nationality, but in 1997 Howard Bloom wrote this Manifesto for a New Psychological Science to inaugurate (I presume) The International Paleopsychology Project, which aims to '[map] out the evolution of complexity, sociality, perception, and mentation from the first 10^-32 second of the Big Bang to the present'. No small task I wouldn't have thought.

In fact, it's fascinating the way that this little script of mine, running as it is on a fairly modern computer and an operating system not much older than one year, has now thrown up two words beginning with 'pal(a)eo-' (dealing with the distant past) and one (in the shape of 'sitology') having been entirely superseded by a newer term.

Now, I feel this chapter has just about run its course and that we must move on into the next one, so the plan of action now runs as follows:

I will run my ologies script six times in succession, throwing up six random possibilities for an article; then before next week's article is due to be written I will decide between, 1) selecting one of those words and writing an article on it next week, to follow it on the week after with a summation of the chapter; 2) same as 1) with the exception that the summation will form part of the same article; or 3) disregarding all of the words, and merely finishing the chapter with the summation next week.

Here goes...

[matt@werewolf ~]$ ologies ; ologies ; ologies ; ologies ; ologies ; ologies
acanthology
psychophysiology
palaeocosmology
serophysiology
petralogy
noology
[matt@werewolf ~]$ ❚

Would you believe it? Another 'palaeo-'! Let's see.

Well, my beauties, this most elusive of words appears not in my Concise Oxford Dictionary, nor in my Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, and a search for it on Wikipedia merely delivers us to the article for Dietitian. These are the first ports of call, and after they have been exhausted it's the turn of Dr. Google to see what she can deliver. She doesn't disappoint, with a whopping yield of approximately 16,400 results, and besides that information a link to its definition, where we learn that the word is a noun (indicated by 'n.'), that we must 'See dietics', and tucked away in grey text at the end is revealed the origin of the word: '[Greek sītos, food, grain + –LOGY.]'.

This cannot do, for we would end up with this week's WoW reading thus:

Word of the Week

Sitology

sitology n. See dietics. [Greek sītos, food, grain + –LOGY]

Definition courtesy of Answers.com

What we need is something more substantial. Looking back to the suggestions from dear Dr. Google we see that The Free Dictionary may have more to offer - only to discover, upon following the link, that it has little more to say on the subject than did Answers.com - or that YourDictionary.com may be able to shed some more light - which indeed it certainly can, to a certain extent:

sitology n. the study of foods, food values, nutrition, diet, etc.; dietetics

Definition courtesy of YourDictionary.com

Dietetics, though. We keep coming back to this. With your leave I will attempt my Concise Oxford Dictionary and see how she may define this most popular of words:

dietetics /daɪəˈtetɪks/ n.pl. (usu. treated as sing.) the scientific study of diet and nutrition.

Definition courtesy of the Concise Oxford Dictionary

Are we any the wiser? I am not sure that we are. However, lest our appetite sickens and so dies, let this suffice for the present and now discover what will be our subject next week.

The next article will be on the subject of 'palaeopsychology'.

Ah, sleep - how wonderful! And now, not having the will or energy to explain in my own words the state of 'artificial somnambulism' which the physician James Braid (1795–1860) called 'neurhypnology', I hope to be forgiven for plummeting once again into the depths of copy-and-paste hell, and now present a portion of this article from Anesthesia & Analgesia, in an effort to fulfil my promise of presenting some information this week on the subject of Neurhypnology. However, before doing so I would urge you to read the article in its original context, where you will find references and further information regarding hypnosis.

neurhypnology n. the term used by the physician James Braid for an altered state of consciousness, also known as 'artificial somnabulism', in which patients appear to be hyperalert, while seemingly being asleep.

Definition courtesy of this article from Anesthesia & Analgesia

A Brief History of Hypnosis and its Entry Into Clinical Practice

Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815) brought the medical use of hypnotic phenomena to the attention of the European medical community. He believed there was a magnetic field around and extended through people, and that this "animal magnetism" could be influenced to heal the sick. In treating patients, Mesmer provoked them to enter a trancelike state with changes in physical perception, which would transition into a therapeutic "crisis" when the patients might fall to the floor, faint, lapse into deep sleep, or convulse.

The Marquis de Puységur (1751–1825), a Mesmer disciple, referred to this altered state as "artificial somnabulism" as he noticed patients to be hyperalert, while seemingly being asleep. James Braid (1795– 1860) later called this "neurhypnology," a neurophysiologic variant of sleep. Braid and Alexandre Bertrand (1795–1831), who emphasized the importance of the subject's suggestibility rather than the physician's magnetism, laid the groundwork for a psychological explanation of hypnosis. The term "hypnosis" (from the Greek root "hypnos," sleep) was coined by Etienne Felix d'Henin de Cuvillers in 1820, even though James Braid has often been credited. According to Orne, hypnosis is "a subjective state in which alterations of perception or memory can be elicited by suggestion." This definition will be adopted in the following review.

The documented use of hypnosis as an adjunct to surgical therapy dates back to the 1830s when Jules Cloquet (mastectomy) and John Elliotson (numerous operations) performed major surgical procedures with hypnosis as the only anesthetic. The Scottish physician James Esdaile, who used hypnoanesthesia in approximately 300 surgical patients in India between 1845 and 1851, became the best known early hypnoanesthetist. Almost simultaneous with Esdaile's report, chemical anesthetics (ether 1846, chloroform 1847) were successfully introduced into surgical practice. Hypnosis subsequently became discredited as a therapeutic tool and continued to be used mainly by charlatans and stage hypnotists while diethyl ether and nitrous oxide, drugs that had become known for their use in ether frolics and entertainment, along with chloroform, became standard clinical drugs for anesthesia. Collins puts the discontinuation of hypnosis for anesthesia at about 1860, i.e., the era of the rapid adoption of inhaled anesthesia. Collins mentions that around the turn of the century Freud used hypnosis in psychotherapy, but that anesthesiologists paid little attention to hypnosis until 1955 when the British Medical Association declared that "there is a place for hypnotism in the production of anesthesia or analgesia for surgery and dental operations, and in suitable subjects it is an effective method of relieving pains in childbirth without altering normal course of labor". In 1958 the American Medical Association endorsed the use of hypnotism by physicians while condemning hypnosis for entertainment.

Interest in the clinical applications of hypnosis in anesthesia has been waxing and waning since the end of the Second World War. Clinically hypnosis has been used sporadically in anesthesia in a variety of settings. Rather than an alternative for general anesthesia it has been studied as a complementary technique. Scientific constraints have limited the progress of hypnosis from experimental use to routine clinical practice. It has been difficult, for example, to find measurable physiologic variables identifying the hypnotic state. It is a challenge to reliably and reproducibly measure a hypnotic trance and it is impossible to conduct a double-blind clinical study involving hypnosis. More recently, the trend towards greater prominence of conscious sedation in anesthesia has reawakened the interest in hypnosis. In fact, hypnoanalgesia has emerged as a combination of hypnotic techniques with pharmacological analgesia and sedation, and has found its way into the everyday practice of specialists.

The next article will be on the subject of 'sitology'.

Not, as we might like, the study of ancient erotica, Paleomammalogy is, according The Free Dictionary:

paleomammalogy, palaeomammalogy
    the branch of zoology that studies the mammals of past geologic ages.
See also: Zoology

-Ologies & -Isms. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

Definition courtesy of The Free Dictionary

or, if linguistics is to suggest a more specific definition, 'the study of extinct American mammals'. Fascinating!

According to Wikipedia, a list of such extinct species would read thus:

Prehistoric extinctions (begin Holocene to 1500 AD)

* American Lion Panthera leo atrox, Western USA, 8000 BC.
* Ancient Bison Bison antiquus, USA, 8000 BC.
* Beringian cave lion Panthera leo vereshchagini, Alaska.
* Cuvieronius, Florida and Arizona, 400 AD
* Dire Wolf Canis dirus, USA, 8000 BC.
* Giant Beaver Castoroides ohioensis, Great Lakes region, 8000 BC.
* Giant hutia Elasmodontomys obliquus, Puerto Rico, 1000 BC.
* Giant Short-Faced Bear Arctodus simus, USA, 10500 BC.
* Glyptodon USA, 8000 BC.
* Helmeted Musk Ox Alaska, 9000 BC
* Pygmy Mammoth Mammuthus exilis, Channel Islands.
* Smilodon fatalis USA, 8000 BC.
* Woolly Mammoth Mammuthus primigenius, Northern USA, 2000 BC.
* Western Camel USA, 8000 BC.
* Yukon Wild Ass Equus asinus lambei, Alaska, 11000 BC.
* Antillean Cave Rat
* Insular Cave Rat
* Corozal Rat
* Columbian Mammoth Mammuthus columb, USA, 5800 BC.
* American cheetah USA
* Bison occidentalis USA

Recent extinctions (1500 AD to present)

* Puerto Rican Shrew Nesophontes edithae
* Puerto Rican Long-nosed Bat
* Puerto Rican Long-tongued Bat
* Guam Flying Fox Pteropus tokudae
* Lesser Puerto Rican Ground Sloth,
* Sherman's Pocket Gopher
* Goff's Pocket Gopher Geomys pinetis goffi
* Tacoma Pocket Gopher Thomomys mazama tacomensis
* Chadwick Beach Cottonmouth Mouse
* Giant Deer Mouse
* Pallid Beach Mouse Peromyscus polionotus decoloratus
* Gull Island Vole Microtus pennsylvanicus nesophilus
* Louisiana Vole
* Puerto Rican Hutia
* Puerto Rican Paca
* Lesser Puerto Rican Agouti
* Greater Puerto Rican Agouti
* Sea Mink Mustela macrodon
* Caribbean Monk Seal
* Steller's Sea Cow
* Badlands Bighorn Sheep
* Columbia Basin Pygmy Rabbit
* Arizona Wapiti
* Oregon Bison
* Eastern Woodland Bison
* Colorado Hog-nosed Skunk
* Big Thicket Hog-nosed Skunk
* Smith Island Cottontail
* Allen's Thirteen-lined Ground Squirrel
* Banks Island Wolf Canis lupus bernardi, 1920
* Cascade Mountains Wolf Canis lupus fuscus, 1940
* Antillean Giant Rice Rat
* Eastern Elk
* Arizona Jaguar Panthera onca arizonensis

Now, I don't know about you, but, considering the age of the Earth, this list seems only to be a very small step on the way to being comprehensive. Nevertheless, this article from the depths of copy-and-paste hell has taken me almost an entire step further along the path towards palaeontological enlightenment. Excellent!

The next article will be on the subject of 'neurhypnology'.