Ontology.

“M. R. James’s Professor of Ontography.”

And then there is ontogeny, which was once alleged to recapitulate philogeny. Several years before the appearance of TAKI 183, the ur-tagger, the cool kids in my NJ high school had stickers printed with “Ontogeny recapitulates philogeny,” and slapped them all over the school. (There were several other sticker campaigns; the only other one I remember was “Back to Spain.” Not being a CK myself I have no idea what that meant.)

It has a Wiki page, ergo it exists (that’s an ontological statement, as well as epistemological). If the Wiki-page and the quoted article are to be taken seriously, the ꙮ is not really an ontology, but is in some branch of philosophizing that looks at perceptions. Ontologically it seems to be some old-timey Kantianism. Don’t know an appropriate Greek name, seems to be closer to epistemology, but whatever.

sticker campaigns

i recall a period in late-1980s harvard square where someone(s) used stickers to clarify what was “art” and what was “not art”. which seems ontological, though i suspect it may have had as much to do with lily tomlin’s trudy as continental philosophy.

I hereby coin the term onttology for vacuous claims, studies or invocations of ontology (from Finnish ontto ‘hollow’).

In the Gallows Songs collection of poems by Christian Morgenstern there is one called “Der Werwolf” which Jerry Lettvin translated as “Ontology Recapitulates Philology”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galgenlieder

There’s also tontontology, the study of the existence of ethnic stereotype sidekicks.

(Not to be confused with totontology, the study of not-being in Kansas.)

Again, there is oontontology, the study of the existence of oonts.

https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_oonts.htm

To me, metaphysics is “all that weird shit that doesn’t have anything to do with the world I can see and touch”

This reminded me of Ben Aaronovitch’s excellent Rivers of London series, in which the distinctly non-magical Murder Squad Detective Chief Inspector Seawoll describes all supernatural phenomena as “weird bollocks.”

(In a refreshing change from the the usual urban fantasy tropes, Seawoll is actually very good at his job, and neither stupid nor prone to ignoring the input from his more specialised colleagues. He just likes winding them up.)

Instead of a noetic disquisition on ontology proper (Greece before Mills), I decided to add-use ondtology (a Joycean matterfusical speciesiality) – but off course it oilready eggcysts. (Grease before mules.)

Oontology is in fact the study of the metaphysical status of eggs. Orontology, that of mountains. Crays before moules.

If anyone ever makes a business out of ‘object-oriented ontology’, they better register it in Russia as OOO OOO (общество с ограниченной ответственностью).

By the way, entomologists worldwide study insects—except in German-speaking countries, where, due to a long-engrained misunderstanding, they stubbornly keep studying ducks.

Omologists study the shoulder. Antomologists study the other shoulder.

Trond, each is an omolog of the other. (Grice before Mahls.)
Onomatopology: excusing oneself for getting a name wrong.
Ondts Martenot: an instrument played painfully loud.

I! Fixed! The! Galgenlieder! Article! It! Is! Downright! Tiring! To! See! An! Attempt! To! Apply! Headline! Capitalization! To! German!

I was at MIT when Lettvin was there, tail end of the 60s. Did not get to know him, either, but I did ask him to be on a panel at the MIT Baker House dorm with a few other profs, to discuss the topic of “Marijuana.” Lettvin had shortly before gained some fame by debating Timothy Leary on the topic of LSD, also at MIT, so the pot forum drew a full house. Lettvin could talk about just about anything.

@David Marjanović

(emphatically) Thank you!

You might want to double-check, though, since ‘Lass die Moleküle Rasen’ (with a capital R) could also be youth slang for ‘Let’s get the molecules on the grass’ or ‘Let the molecules reach the grass’.

@MARTIN: Lettvin was long retired from teaching by the time I was there, but he was still active in a lot of campus events. He was also friends withy undergraduate advisor, and I met him a few times but never really got to know him. Years later, I saw the film of his takedown of the incredibly pompous Timothy Leary, and it was epic.

‘Lass die Moleküle Rasen’ (with a capital R) could also be youth slang for ‘Let’s get the molecules on the grass’ or ‘Let the molecules reach the grass’.

…no, it would mean “let the molecules lawn”, an ungrammatical sentence that I can’t make sense of (even with what I think I know about youth slang of 1905). You’re looking for lass die Moleküle auf den Rasen; that would mean “let the molecules get on the grass”.

‘Lass die Moleküle Rasen’
If you insert a comma before Rasen, it could be interpreted as a vocative: “Leave the molecules alone, lawn!”.

@DM

…no, it would mean “let the molecules lawn”, an ungrammatical sentence that I can’t make sense of (even with what I think I know about youth slang of 1905). You’re looking for lass die Moleküle auf den Rasen; that would mean “let the molecules get on the grass”.

Why, yes. It was of course a joke, but let me explain.

I meant todays youth slang, not 1905 usage. It’s not uncommon to hear people forego prepositions and articles.

‘Lass mal Innenstadt gehen.’ – ‘Let’s go to the city.’

‘Hast du Fenster zugemacht?’ – ‘Did you close the window?’

‘Ich bin ZOB.’ – ‘I’m at the bus station.’

A word that comes up a lot in French is déontologie, which would I suppose be deontology in English, though I’ve not often met it in English. I’m never too sure of what it means.

@PlasticPaddy

At least “Fenster zugemacht” is an older usage where an object or adverb is closely associated with a particular verb or verbs. Something like Gassi gehen.

I don’t think so. To me, ‘das Fenster zumachen’ or ‘die Fenster zumachen’ is standard usage, ‘Fenster zumachen’ is markedly clipped, as in, you might write that on a sign as a command, but leaving out the article in conversation is an innovation, I think. ‘Gassi gehen’, ‘Auto fahren’ etc are another cup of tea. But I don’t have the sources to back my claim.

Here is Frederick the Great: “[…] so wollen wier sie Mosqueen (Moscheen) und Kirchen bauen.”

I’m afraid I don’t see the relevance. ‘Mosqueen’ and ‘Kirchen’ is just acc. plur. indefinite. (The ‘sie’ is of course different from today’s standard German. Perhaps a Low Saxon or French influence, what do I know.)

‘Déontologie’ crops up regularly on the French news. You hear it when the police beat up the wrong person or whatever, thereby breaching their ‘Code de déontologie’.

Yes Bybo, it’s the same in English. A long-established way of partitioning ethical theories is into two camps: the consequentialist and the deontological.

Utililitarianism (in all its variants) is the overwhelmingly dominant example of the first: actions are to be evaluated according to their consequences in terms of net overall “utility”, variously considered a matter of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, the greatest satisfaction of preferences, etc. etc.

A central deontological account would be Kantian ethics, diametrically opposed to utilitarianism: it’s always wrong to tell a lie (the notorious example) no matter what ill consequences telling the truth may have. But that’s to express it in the most negative way. Originally conceived of as a matter of duties (δέον = duty): hence the “code de déontologie” mentioned above by Steve Plant.

(Grouse before moles.)

@Paddy: I’m with Bybo here, Gassi gehen, Auto fahren are established usages, while Fenster zumachen is not. Crucially, the fixed constructions are always indefinite, so Hast du Fenster zugemacht cannot mean a specific window, like in Bybo’s example, outside slang. Dropping of articles is something I specifically associate with immigrant / migratory background youth slang, but it may have moved beyond that; I’m not very up to date on slang.
I also agree with Bybo that the Frederick example doesn’t belong here. The sie is probably dialect influence*); Berlinerisch is known to not distinguish accusative and dative in pronouns.
*) Like for many German aristocrats of his time, Frederick’s preferred language for writing was French, and his written German shows colloquial and dialect influence.

@PlasticPaddy

‘so wollen wir ihnen Moscheen und Kirchen bauen’ is perfectly correct.

though Fenster zugemacht could be something quite different: noun incorporation.
That’s what Paddy had in mind. I’m skeptical – I’ve never encountered this combination (not a reliable criterion, I know), and the cases of noun incorporationI know normally refer to actions with a bit of duration on unspecified or mass nouns, not to punctual acts on individual objects. But that’s what Bybo’s translation infers (“Have you closed the window?”), otherwise it would be just an unremarkable article-less indefinite plural, like in the F2 example.

It occurs to me that, just as cogito ergo sum is the fundamental principle of Descartes’ philosophy, the basis of ontology must be that famous statement “It is what it is.”

cinematic expressions which should at best become new automatisms themselves.

‘ should at <sup>’ I usually see in a form ‘should at least …’ or ‘should as a minimum …’. There’s plenty examples of the ‘at best’ version via Google, but either they’re clearly not from native speakers or they’re embedded in the sort of convoluted jargon as in @Hat’s quote. Again, most of them would sound more natural as “should at least”.

Is there a pair of commas (or en-dashes) missing?: ‘… should, at best, become …’ with the meaning ‘… should — at their best — become …’? ‘the best of which should become …’? IOW an expectation the best examples will get worked into other movies. (I’m wildly guessing: I don’t think the words on the page actually mean that.)

Candidate for Pseud’s Corner.

“At best” means, of course, “in the best case”

Errm it’s specifically the “should at best be(come) …” I’m asking about; not “at best” in general.

Thanks David, but there’s no “of course” for me. I’m afraid Baumgartner has failed to convey anything. (not that I have high expectations from a film critic, but I’m well used to cutting through that sort of pseudery. Give me Barry Norman any day.)

P.S. I see Baumgartner writes in German as well as English. Is this locution a calque?

To me, metaphysics is “all that weird shit that doesn’t have anything to do with the world I can see and touch” (cue Johnson/Berkeley), epistemology is “how we know stuff,” and ontology is… what the fuck is ontology? The OED (entry revised 2004) says “The science or study of being; that branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature or essence of being or existence.” Well, yeah, ὄν is ‘being,’ I can see that, but “the nature or essence of being or existence” just floats up over my head and recedes into the distance like a balloon whose string has slipped my grasp on a windy day.

Here I giggled, it is a very accurate description of my own feelings.

(I think “metaphysics” means a variety of things to me but it is not in my active vocabulary. I wonder how accurate WP is when it says:

The term was misread by other medieval commentators, who thought it meant “the science of what is beyond the physical”.[10] Following this tradition, the prefix meta- has more recently been prefixed to the names of sciences to designate higher sciences dealing with ulterior and more fundamental problems: hence metamathematics, metalinguistics, metaphysiology, etc.[11])

SPeaking of Ontology and Ontogeny.
Russian WP compares Ontology to what in Cyrillic looks like Genology.

But as it is from ἕν, neuter of εἷς “one”, in English it would be Henology. The Russian article is long (and contains also énologie), the English is short but contains this gem of philosophopoetismus:

Reiner Schürmann describes it as a “metaphysics of radical transcendence” that extends beyond being and intellection.[2]

(sadly, the translation of this line in Persian WP is lacking much of the characteristic splendour of the Occidental (Teuton) original:
راینر شورمان آن را به عنوان «متافیزیک تعالی» توصیف می‌کند که فراتر از عقل است. )