I was looking for a word to describe people that are without science, or don't believe in science, similar to the word atheist for religion. I couldn't find anything, so I thought I would make one up. I thought it should sound similar to atheist, maybe the same amount of syllables. The root is scient which shows up in the etymology of science (on webster) as 'having knowledge', and the "a" part would be as in greek or latin, 'without or not'. So the definition and word would look something like this.
ascient - A person that lacks scientific knowledge or doesn't believe in scientific facts because of a conflicting belief system.
I'm pronouncing it ay-sea-ent. When googled it comes up with about 3700 hits, most I'm guessing as misspellings of ancient. There does seem to be an IT company named ascient though. It may therefore be necessary to spell it differently, maybe asceint which only gets 16 google hits.
Please feel free to use my word if you like it. If you happen to know a word already in existence that would fit the definition, please educate me. Let me know of any ideas you have that may be similar. Maybe I'll use your word instead.
Asceint is a good word for one who is ignorant of science.
ReplyDeleteThere's an already extant word for one who is ignorant, proud of their ignorance, and pushy about it. Igoranus: An ignorant asshole.
haha, I like that. An igoranus ascient.
ReplyDeleteEven though I've already mentally accepted ascient (and posted it on Urban Dictionary), I'm going to go into the way this word is made up a bit.
ReplyDeletea-: not
scient: knowing
related to omniscient.
Other scient words might be polyscient, megascient, nanoscient, antiscient, and just plain scient (having some although not all knowledge).
Antiscient seems more appropriate for the definition you're trying to fill. Ascient would be merely someone who doesn't know, as opposed to deliberately not knowing and even confounding the efforts of others to know. An antiscient would probably claim to have some sort of metascience and would, on further inspection, be discovered to have no conscience.
Amazing that I didn't link omniscient with science even though I know the meaning of both.
ReplyDeleteIt's a good point that you make about ascient vs antiscient. I suppose it would matter whether you were describing someone who is willfully ignorant or blissfully ignorant. I was specifically thinking of a few of my co-workers who are more blissfully ignorant than anything else. They don't try and spread their ignorance (except to their kids), but they don't pursue knowledge either.
Applying the same logic, would I be more of an antitheist than an atheist?
Even atheist is a tough one.
ReplyDeleteAs most sciencey-bloggy types are already aware, and I'm sure you are too Eric, technically we are agnostic, since most scientific atheists simply see no evidence for gods, but also no way to verify 100% a negative.
I like how the term "atheist" is evolving in cultural discourse the last few years. It seems to be carrying with it some very cool baggage and memes. Most public atheists seem to be secular humanists, somewhat scientifically literate, full of humour and self-deprecation, and being as brave and loud as they need to be. I often describe myself as a Bright, but atheist is developing much of the same meaning.
Ascient. I like it.
Yep, I am an agnostic and also an atheist. I don't believe in god, but I also don't think you could ever prove conclusively either way. Well, actually, if there were a god, it would be easy for the god to prove it, but I'm betting there isn't one.
ReplyDeleteI think the main reason that the term atheist is carrying better baggage/memes is that atheists are the ones that are defining the term now instead of religious people. In the strict by the definition in Webster sense of the word it has meant the same thing for awhile, but the public persona has now changed. Whether the "New" Atheists are responsible for the change, or a by product of it I couldn't say.