a[po[ri[a 7! pCr4c !8
n.
5L, doubt < Gr, perplexity < aporos, impassable < a3, not + poros, passage: see PORE26
1 a difficulty, as in a philosophical or literary text, caused by an indeterminacy of meaning for which no resolution seems possible
2 a condition of uncertainty or skeptical doubt resulting from this

Why is it that so many philosopy books have this fault?

Dr Bill, you should read some of the French post-modern deconstructionist stuff that's coming out. On second thought: don't bother. Just to let you know it perfectly illustrates this word you have chosen for our delectation.

So a passage for which nobody can figger out the right meanin' is an a-passage or a without-passage or not a passage at all because it's not.

I got it! Any aporia, a.k.a., without-passage is something you can't pass through because there is no passage through it. It's like a big road block, but worse, because there's no road in the first place.

I'm sure there's got to be some kind of mnemonic between aporia and aporous, even though they probably aren't related root-wise. Although, come to think of it, something that is aporous doesn't have pores, which are a kind of passage, too, right? And there is some writing by blockheads, such as I, that is so impossible to get through at times--you know, like you want to wiggle through the sentences and somehow still come out undamaged mentally on the other side, but there are no pores in the writing and you just keep banging your head on it.

There are even some people who can write a single sentence that is so dense that you don't know where to begin to find a hole into it to begin comprehending what was written.

That kind of writing, written by blockheads, is aporous writing, I have now learned today, because you cannot get through it. I feel very important having this new concept of aporous writing in my head.

And take the whole concept up a step to the writing of philosophers, who should know better, and blockheaded aporous writing becomes aporia.

Thanks, Bill. This is a great concept for a kind of writing blockheads who want to become philosophers may have a stab at achieving.

I believe I've posted this before, but given the context, it's worth a YART:

"(Sokal) decided to try an unorthodox (and admittedly uncontrolled), experiment: submit to a fashionable American cultural-studies journal, Social Text, a parody of the type of work that has proliferated in recent years, to see whether they would publish it. The article, entitled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", is chock-full of absurdities and blatant non-sequiturs."

They published it.

http://human-nature.com/reason/books/sokal-bricmont.html

Wordwind: "I'm sure there's got to be some kind of mnemonic between aporia and aporous, even though they probably aren't related root-wise."

actually, my dear colinguaphile, there is a relationship at the indeoeuropean level and i think you will be happy to know that.

chow, -ph

Hey, PG! What's the connection? Is it just that they both derive from some word or root that meant opening?

Thanks,
WW

Another similar word: acataleptic = incomprehensible.

chow = ciao?

1 a difficulty, as in a philosophical or literary text, caused by an indeterminacy of meaning for which no resolution seems possible

Some folks would say this would well-apply to James Joyce, especially Ulysses...Aporic Fiction?


Welcome back aboard, pgrew! Stick around and grace us with some more of your insightful and stimulating posts!

In reply to:

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Some folks would say this would well-apply to James Joyce, especially Ulysses...Aporic Fiction?

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...'less you'z gots notes to poke holes into it! And we won't begin to fink on Aporic wakes of Finnegan.