Hunting The Muse

What I really want is

What I really want is a search engine that answers the question, "What's the word for when you....?" Sometimes those are important questions. The english language is just as limited as any language in that it uses societal history to frame our concepts, which frames our words, which limits our thinking. Maybe sometimes there isn't a word in our language for "when you...." but there should be. Maybe there is that word in other languages, maybe there isn't. Three months ago I was looking for a word, and it bugged the hell out of me that I couldn't find it. My question was, "What's the word for when you have one feeling that makes sense, and you have another feeling that makes sense, but the two feelings don't make sense when put together, even though you feel like you have to make them make sense? You have to something them. What is that?" And it was a very important question for me. After weeks of frustration I finally remembered it was the word "reconcile" and focusing on that very word has helped me with a lot of emotional growth these past couple of months.

Now my question is, "what is it called when someone takes two assertions and uses them to prove each other, skipping past the possibility that maybe both are wrong; that they only make sense within a limited field of experience, and that in the big picture the entire surrounding framework might be invalid?" It almost seems like it should be a word. To me, anyway. It's kind of like "truism" but not really. Posted by Curt at December 17, 2001 06:59 PM