An Ontology of Variations

bigsley
6 min readMay 2, 2020

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“What is ‘Normal?’ What is ‘Weird?’”

Descriptivism vs. Prescriptivism

I want to begin by stating that I am neither a Linguistic Descriptivist nor am I a Linguistic Prescriptivist. I believe that both a descriptive characterization of a word or words (how the word has been used historically, and how it is currently used by different social/ethnic/cultural/etc. groups) and a presciprtive characterization (that is, how the word “should” be used in the sense of maximizing its potency/utility) are both very reasonable things to assess. As an example, let’s take the plethora of synonyms (descriptively) to “Very Good” to varying degrees:

“Amazing” =Very Good
“Great” = Very Good
“Awesome” = Very Good
“Wonderful” = Very Good
“Fantastic” = Very Good
“Outstanding” = Very Good
… = Very Good

This is a pretty straightforward descriptive characterization of how these words are used, currently. A historic descriptive characterization might be different:

“Amazing” = Causing Amazement
“Great” = Very Good
“Awesome” = Causing Awe
“Wonderful” = Causing Wonder
“Fantastic” = Causing Fantasy
“Outstanding” = Above the rest

Unless you believe that Amazement, Goodness, Awe, Wonder, Fantasy, and Superlativity are all the same thing, you can perhaps agree that using these 6 words in this way it would be easier to describe a particular phenomenon than using the 6 words in the former way. In this sense, we might prescriptively say that the meanings “should be” conformant to the latter definitions if we wish to maximize the precision and accuracy of our language’s task to externalize our conceptual constructions / perceptions / etc.

This is the framework which will be used to derive (from etymology and consideration of game-theoretic utility) a Prescriptive definition of various terms of Variation, paired in dichotomies for ease of description and reference.

Dichotomies of Variation

There are a number of dichotomies of variation, and precision in their definition, founded in etymological analysis (historic-descriptive), contemporary analysis (socio-descriptivist), andutility-analysis (prescriptivist), is useful so that we may more simply and accurately describe the variations we perceive. To this extent, the remainder of this essay will attempt to provide a useful definition of the words in these dichotomies, namely:

“Normal” vs. “Weird” — a dichotomy of Human vs. The Divine.

“Unusual” vs. “Usual” — a dichotomy of Probability (and therefore Knowledge)

“Strange” vs. “Mundane” — a dichotomy of Regularity (different from probability)

A Brief Note on Etymology

I will be using Google’s etymology knowledge cards for most of the etymological descriptions of these words. You can find the etymology of a word using Google by typing, for example, “weird etymology.”

“Normal” vs. “Weird”

The word “Normal” derives from the concept “Norma” which was the name of a carpenters square. A “Norm” in contemporary usage in the domain of society is a relationship to reality that is acceptable to society. E.g. a “Norm” might be that a Man must stand on the outside of a Woman while walking down the street. Another “Norm” may be that we wash our hands after we eat. These “Norms” define the aspects of culture which form the orthogonal basis of the description of a person: “Oh John, he isn’t Normal — he doesn’t even like Football!”

The word “Weird” originally means “destiny” or “other-worldly,” or even more distantly “Of God.” This sets up an immediate contrast between the pole of “True to Humans” (Normal — “of the Norms, which are Human constructions”) and the pole of “True to God” (Weird — “respecting no norms, guided by relationship to Nature/God/The Universe etc.”).

In this way, “Normal” and “Weird” have historically been used to characterize individuals in reality with respect to the extent to which they can be thought of with reference to a “Human Way of Being” vs. a “Natural or Godly or OtherWordly Way of Being.”

“Unusual” vs. “Usual”

The words “usual” and “unusual” are obvious antonyms due to the use of the prefix “un” (unlike most other words in this ontology — e.g. there is no “unstrange” or “unmundane” or “unnormal” or “unweird”). The etymology has to do with “use” and the “typical use.” E.g. I “usually order a gin martini, but today I’m ordering a vodka martini.”

In contemporary parlance one might say “that’s weird — he ordered a vodka martini.” And this is not correct or incorrect — but using the word “unusual” would be a more precise choice and would allow the word “normal” to maintain its meaning with respect to societal aspects of character.

Similarly, using the word “unusual” to describe a person who is “weird” (e.g. someone who loves wearing all pink) is technically correct, but “weird” is the more precise term here because it references the societally constructed expectation that one will not wear all of a single color (admittedly not a strong norm, but a norm nonetheless).

Usualness vs. unusualness thus is characterized by probability — something that “Always” happens is not “Usual” (“Usually the Universe exists.”) and something that “Never” happens is not “Unusual” (“How unusual, the first of March is March 3 this year!”). Only a thing that could happen under the right conditions, but usually does not, is unusual. A thing which happens under the right conditions, and those conditions are often present, and therefore happens most often, is usual. Similarly, we would not say that something that happens 50% of the time is usual or unusual — thus, these terms have some idea of “high probability” (>95%?) vs. “low probability” (<5%) baked in.

“Strange” vs. “Mundane”

The word “strange” comes from the Latin “extraneus,” meaning “external” or “alien.” “Mundane” comes from the Latin “mundus” meaning “of the world. Thus we can see that these words refer not to the domain of Humanity vs. the Divine, but to another continuum: “Of the World” vs. “Not of the World.” Now, you may say “everything is of the world” and, of course you’d be correct. However, the sense of “alienness” is a strong one — e.g. when we look into the abyssal eyes of a squid or octopus… there is something… strange about the feeling. It feels as if these creatures come from a disjoint “World” although undoubtedly they come from the same earth.

In this way, there is a counterplay between our definition of world and our definitions of strangeness or mundaneness. When we ask ourselves “what do we find strange?” and “what do we find mundane?” we are simultaneously asking ourselves “which worlds are there, and how do entities fall into those worlds? Which entities are in the worlds I am in, and which ones are in worlds I am not in?”

As you can see, these concepts are very different from any of those explored above. A person who drinks the vodka martini vs their usual gin martini is not being strange, a person who drinks the whisky martini in their weird fucking way is not being strange, but a person who drinks their usual and very normal gin martini with a distant and otherworldly look in their eye, as if they have gazed too long into the abyss… is strange.

What to do?

I’m not saying that you need to use these words this way, or that using these words this way is correct. What I am saying is that if you use these 6 words in this way (and prescriptively grow your set of dichotomies along etymologically defined historico-descriptivist lines) consistently you will be able to describe three dimensions of Variation of Reality rather than just one. If you use these words interchangably, saying “weird” or “unusual” or “strange” whenever something does not conform to your expectation, or “normal” or “usual” or “mundane” to mean that something does conform to your expectation, you have lost the ability to articulate whether that expectation is grounded in societal norms, an understanding of probability, or a concept of “what is of this world and what is not.” Surely these are all dimensions of understanding that are meaningful and independent, and thus should be explored separately.

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bigsley
bigsley

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