Aristotle defined man as the thinking creature -- as opposed to God whom he
defined as a 'thought thinking itself'.
Piet Hein found that funny and added the 'fondly' -- the phrase 'missing
link' Hein borrows, but does not return, from Darwin ("I think of evolution
as a chain," -- Journal of the Beagle -- cited in Lovejoy, "The chain of
being".)
In a message dated 7/28/2015 10:47:50 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx writes in "Thinking in dark corners.': "Piet Hein
wrote in his Grooks : Man's a kind of missing link fondly thinking he can
think. Fondly is the key word, I think.
Indeed. As H. P. G. would say: "this might need an analysis."
If Piet Hein is right, people before the late fourteenth-century would need
to have adopted a different adverb to modify their thinking.
'Fond' was first found in the late fourteenth century, meaning "deranged,
insane", but also, later, by other authors, "foolish, silly, unwise."
It comes from "fonned", a past participle adjective from a somewhat
obsolete verb "fon" (also spelt "fonne" in Chaucer (cf. Middle English Anglian
form, "fonnen") "to BE foolish, be simple." It's from Middle -- i.e. between
what Oxonians call Old English and New English -- English "fonne", noun, "a
fool, stupid person" (early 14c.). Skeat confesses that 'fonne' is "of
uncertain origin" (but then ain't anything?) -- Skeat, being his self of
Scandinavian stock, hypothesises that it may be "perhaps from Scandinavian,
i.e.
Viking." Related forms are of course fonder and fondest.
Grice noted that some implicatures get, figuratively, 'fossilised': and
thus 'fonne''s meaning "evolved" (or as he prefers, 'changed', via
implicature) via "foolishly tender" to "having strong affections for" by 1573
-- "The
Journal of Mrs. Willoughby". Still another use of the verb fon was "to lose
savour" (late 14c. in Middle English past participle "fonnyd"), which,
Skeat suggests, may be the original meaning of the word -- the 'etymon' --
Skeat is foreshadowing Grice's maxim, "Do not multiply senses beyond
necessity" -- and quotes from Wycliff's 1380 translation of Matthew v.13,
Gif þe salt be fonnyd it is not worþi.
-- which might (but then again might NOT) be where Piet Hein got it all
from.
Cheers,
Speranza
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