[HPforGrownups] Origin of term 'metathinking' (was: metathinking? No.)

[Carol Bainbridge]

No: HPFGUIDX 47895

Carol wrote:
> > As far as I understand the use of "meta" this is
> > absolutely correct.  Metalanguage is language about
> > language and meta-analysis is an analysis of analyses.
> > Metathinking is the thinking about thinking.

KSA:
>  >with"metathinking" you have an English word unnaturally
> >attached to a Greek one.  Either find out the Greek
> >word for "thinking" and put "meta" in front of it, or
> >find out what the proper word for "thinking about
> >thinking" is.  "Epistemology," if I recall correctly

Carol (Me):
There is no such thing in English as an "unnatural" attachment of a 
morpheme from one language to another morpheme from another language.  We 
do that in English all the time.  "Language" is not a Greek word, but I 
assure you that "metalanguage" is quite real and used all the time in the 
linguistics field.  The ability to make such attachments is part of what 
makes the English language so rich in vocabulary.

Shane said:
>[Michel Foucault]  posited
>that knowledge can become a system of thought which becomes controlling, in
>terms of being socially legitimated and institutional. He called his
>investigations into knowledge an "archaeology of epistemes", from the Greek
>*epistomai*, meaning to know, or understand. Epistomology is then, the
>verification theory of knowledge, concerned with distinguishing genuine from
>spurious knowledge.

Carol (Me):
I didn't think "epistemology" was the right word either, so I'm glad to see 
this explanation.

Eloise added:
>I thought that this term had been introduced to the list from the field of
>computing, or computer games, and that the analogy was thus with virtual
>reality vs real life, rather than it meaning 'thinking about thinking'. But
>I'm not sure.

Carol (Me):
Now this is very helpful to me, although I'm at a loss to see how 
"metathinking" indicates any kind of comparison between virtual reality vs. 
real life.  Anyway, how about a word like "virtuality" instead of 
metathinking?  Or "vereality"?  Make up something entirely new that can't 
be confused with something else.  Newbies coming to the discussion and 
seeing "metathinking" will react just as I did (although I'm not a newbie) 
to this word.  It just confuses the discussion.  We can't take a word and 
use it to mean whatever we want it to mean or we're a bunch of Humpty 
Dumptys.


Carol