Concepts – patrick 林香麟

Anagoge

From Wikipedia: Anagoge (ἀναγωγή), sometimes spelled anagogy, is a Greek word suggesting a climb or ascent upwards. The anagogical is a method of mystical or spiritual interpretation of statements or events, especially scriptural exegesis, that detects allusions to the afterlife.[1] Certain medieval theologians describe four methods of interpreting the scriptures: literal/historical, tropological/moral, allegorical/typological, and anagogical. The four methods of interpretation point in four different directions: The literal/historicalContinue reading “Anagoge”

Stochastic Tunnel

If you have two states that require an large amounts of energy/distance to travel between them, it is not likely that state one will become state two. However, if there is enough random fluctuation, state two will eventually be sampled, and if it is a stable minimum, this can lead to conversion from state oneContinue reading “Stochastic Tunnel”

Hysteresis

The best way to explain this is the meme that came about from Kamala Harris asking if ‘(you) think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’. Hysteresis, broadly speaking, is the phenomenon of a state identity having a dependency on its past states. Examples of this include magnetic fields, elastic bands, and marital satisfaction.

Spandrel

An architectural feature common in Renaissance architecture used to support a dome or arch. Often they are decorated, but this decoration is secondary to their structural role. The term also has an interesting usage in evolutionary biology. In 1979, Stephen Jay Gould conceptualised evolutionary “spandrels”, making the analogy that a trait present in an organism mayContinue reading “Spandrel”

Social Contract

A term and philosophical concept originating in French enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacque Rousseau’s 1972 treatise, The Social Contract. In an ideal and just society, people would have equal access to resources, education, technology, etc.. However in a world with scarcity, whether inherent or artificially imposed, there is a strong incentive to satisfy wants or desires throughContinue reading “Social Contract”

Elite-overproduction

I’ve known about this concept and Peter Turchin, Russian population ecologist turned global historian, for some time now. Turchin approaches history in a uniquely quantitative manner which has drawn the attention of many a blogosphere intellectual, and very recently on Ribbonfarm. The concept of ‘elites’ and their ‘supply vs demand’ is one aspect of Turchin’sContinue reading “Elite-overproduction”

Ideasthesia

An explanation posited by Danko Nikolić, a neuroscientist at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, that the experience of synaesthesia (the mixing of sensory inputs, e.g. seeing a colour when hearing a sound) may be mediated semantically. In order words, it is the idea of the input, not the direct experience of the input itselfContinue reading “Ideasthesia”

Omnigenetics

A model that posits that every gene in the genome contributes to (some?) complex traits.

Dark Side of The Moon

First of all, a great album. And more than being a figure of speech, the actual phenomenon of the moon’s dark side is pretty interesting. The moon is tidally locked — it’s orbital period (how long it takes for one thing to orbit another thing) matches its rotational period (the rate at which the moonContinue reading “Dark Side of The Moon”

Linguistic Relativity (aka Sapir-Worf hypothesis)

Basically, this is the idea that the language we speak shapes our thoughts and our perception of the world. Linguistic relativity is actually a rather old concept with a long history harking back to Plato. It makes sense intuitively, that how we would describe something is necessarily linked to what we notice and thus affectingContinue reading “Linguistic Relativity (aka Sapir-Worf hypothesis)”