eschatology

The area of knowledge about death

Anoth­er one found in Jaron Lanier’s [*You Are Not A Gadget*]([canonical-url:2013/05/26/finding-internets-inner-human]). Lanier is earn­ing points with me for teach­ing me words. This one in par­tic­u­lar I am sur­prised not to have encoun­tered before, as it is a field of great inter­est to me. I sup­pose the mat­ter is prob­a­bly of great inter­est to every­one, but even so. 

This comes from the Greek, mean­ing «final dis­course». As is so often the case going back to the roots of the word brings up an image that sim­pli­fies mean­ing. Instead of being a dis­ci­pline or study of death and mat­ters ulti­mate, I see a cou­ple of peo­ple talk­ing and exchang­ing ideas. What a won­der­ful thing, to momen­tar­i­ly see any ‑olo­gy not to be a mat­ter of soli­tary study, or indi­vid­ual dec­la­ra­tion of truth but instead as a top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion. I will try to keep this in mind the next time I hear about any ‑olo­gies.