Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Science gets Oxymoronic
Yesterday on Fox News I saw someone promoting a book dealing with the "Top Ten Science Myths" and it got me to thinking about the possible oxymorons here. Many might consider Fox News an oxymoron, and also the realization that if you're tenth on a Top Ten list then you're really at the bottom. But the idea of a "Science-Myth" struck me as the real oxymoron. Granted we know the intent -- something generally believed to be science but isn't. Still it is the literal application of the phrase that gets us in trouble as with all oxymorons. Since most myths are dispatched with science, how does one dispatch a myth created with science? Of course to some, science-myth might not be an oxymoron at all, people who believe in religious dogma over science for instance, say like in the Creationism over Evolution debate.
I did a quick Google search to see if science-myth is commonly quoted as an oxymoron and ironically while science-myth and oxymoron often show up often on the same page, they don't do so directly in connection with one another. Creation-Science is often cited as an oxymoron then also labeled a science-myth, but the oxmoronicness of science-myth itself is never noted.
I thought for a second I might have invented a new word in "oxymoronicness", but oxymoronicness is cited 88 times by Google.com out there on the web. But fear not, with a little creativity and with the clever application of suffixes I can net me some new words not listed with Google.com.
Oxmoronicism: The act of doing something that is in and of itself an oxymoron.I could go on and on, but I'll quit with the final score BNL:4 Google:0
Oxmoronicismness: The degree to which engaging in an act has the quality of being an oxymoron.
Antioxymoronicism: Oppositon to the engaging in of acts that are oxymoronic.
Antioxymoronicismness: The degree to which something has the quality of being against engaging in acts that are oxymoronic.
I have a long way to go to catch up with "truthiness", but watch out world -- I have only begun to fabricate new words!
*** Small Late Addendum: Science-Myth not listed on Oxymoronlist.com which purports to be the world's largest list of oxymorons collected online, so I'm submitting it now. Just remember you heard it hear first folks!
