Monday, February 27, 2012

Summa contra nihiles


There’s an o-old folk saying, that our granddads used to just love:


So here’s a new one to try on for size, for this age of reductionists, deconstructionists, and laboratory eliminativists:

~ Eliminate the Eliminators ~

Sort of has a ring, right?  Make you want to tap your toes?

We-ll, if you’re itching for the fun of a punch-up, check this out, where we take on the dementor of academic nihilism, and drive a stake through its coal-black heart:




[Update, 8:30 p.m.]

As you may or may not know, Dr. Massey is not only my personal spiritual advisor, but the Official Latin Master of this site.  So, prior to posting, I ran the title by him, thus:

The diatribe on "Eliminative materialism" has now received over a hundred views.
So I'd like to post a link back to it today, and am searching for a nice title.

Would   "Summa contra nihiles" work  for "Against Nihilists" -- punning on Summa contra gentiles ?
I know, it's a little like "Illegitimi non carborundum",  but if it's not too stupid, I'd like to use it.
If it's tooo stoopid, can you think of another appropriate word in -iles.

The clock ticked on; first the big hand, then the dreadful little hand, crawled remorselessly clockwise.  No reply.   Dr. Massey was away on business (in all probability, out saving souls.)
At last I could wait no longer, and posted the thing, and sent off this to my itinerant advisor:

Too late -- I had to go live -- the pun has been perpetrated.
America's bond with classical antiquity  may never be the same.
Mea maxima culpa.

Only, just now,  to receive this stern and stinging rebuke:

I don't like it. the -ist suffix comes from Latin, in a feminine form (but denoting males as well, for instance, lanista, gladiator instructor). Some of them are turned into isticus.

Don't underestimate the ability of astute readers to still pick up on the reference just from the rest of the sentence.

Summa contra nihilistas/Summa contra nihilisticos

Either of these is fine.

Yeh well -- fine, mebbe, but they don’t rhyme.
(Truth to tell, neither do gentiles and the made-up nihiles -- it's just an eye-rhyme.
The quantity is wrong: the i is long in gentilis, short in nihil.
Such tomfoolery  grievously offends  the trained ear of a Classicist.)

Anyhow, in penance, I must don sackcloth and ashes -- which, fortunately, this being already Lent, does not even require a change of costume.

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