dedicated to LJ Kramer
From today's World Wide Words, ed. M. Quinion:
"Douglas Hofstadter recounted the story in one of his Metamagical
Themas columns in Scientific American in 1982 and coined "sphexish"
for this unthinking deterministic or pre-programmed behaviour, in
which the wasp was at the mercy of its instincts and environment.
In a book derived from his columns, Hofstadter later suggested that
humans might likewise exhibit such robotic behaviour:
To the extent of having an individual style, any
artist is sphexish - trapped within invisible,
intangible, but inescapable boundaries of mental
space.
[Metamagical Themas, by Douglas Hofstadter, 1985.]
So far as I know, the term hasn't appeared in any dictionary, but
it has some circulation among behavioural psychologists. Daniel
Dennett created the related noun "sphexishness" in 1984. Hofstadter
coined "antisphexishness" in his book for the opposite state: free
will.
[Thanks to Barry Rein for telling me about this word.]"
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Hi, JL -
ReplyDeleteI just dropped by, perhaps sphexishly, perhaps not, to see what's up, and was tickled to see my name being taken, I hope not in vain.
As it happens, I've been reading about anti-matter inter alia in Quantum by Manjit Kumar, so I am alert to the choice of prefix in "antisphexishness." I can't say that I like it. I'd go with the simpler "un." I'd also do some surgery on the wasp's tail, replacing "ish" with its cuter cousin "y." The inspiration is Ogden Nash: Sphexish is lexish, but sphexy is sexy.
Anyway, visiting is Something sort of Grandish.