Seven
“Research & Ideas” memo from Harvard Business School dated April 17, 2006:
“The word experience comes from the Latin words ex pericolo, which mean ‘from danger.'”
— Etymology by Professor Joseph Badaracco of Harvard University. Badaracco gives no evidence for his dubious claim.
Related (if only temporally):
Easter Monday, April 17, 2006.
- experience
- 1377, from O.Fr. experience, from L. experientia “knowledge gained by repeated trials,” from experientem (nom. experiens), prp. of experiri “to try, test,” from ex- “out of” + peritus “experienced, tested.” The v. (1533) first meant “to test, try;” sense of “feel, undergo” first recorded 1588.
The title of this entry refers to the time it was posted. Related references to seven: April 7, 2003, and today’s previous entry.
See also an entry from 2/29, 2004
(Leap Day and Oscar Night):
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Vita Brevis “In many ways, the arts are the highest achievements of man.” — Harvard President ”We intensively train children in the Arts and ritual because deep down we know that these are the only things that really MATTER. This is what we must share first with the young, in case they DIE.” — Lucy Ellmann, Dot in the Universe, quoted in today’s [2/29/04] New York Times |
Harvard persons from parts of the university that are more scholarly than the Business School may sneer at the above-quoted Online Etymology Dictionary. They can consult the following:
On “experience”
From
J.L. Austin,From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play:“Scholars, such as Julius Pokorny (Indogermanisches Etymolgisches Worterbuch, 1959), trace ‘experience’ right back to hypothetical Indo-European base or root *per-, ‘to attempt, venture, risk,’ whence the Greek peira,”experience,” the source of our word ’empirical.’ It is also the verbal root which derives the Germanic *feraz, giving rise to Old English faer, “danger, sudden calamity,” whence Modern English ‘fear.’ Already, we see the ‘cognitive’ directions taken by * per-, through the Greek route, and affective ones, through the Germanic — which would have interested Dilthey, one may be sure! But more directly ‘experience’ derives, via Middle English and Old French, from the Latin experientia, denoting ‘trial, proof, experiment,’ itself generated from experiens, the present participle of experiri, ‘to try, test,’ from from ex-, ‘out’ + base per as in peritus, ‘experienced,’ ‘having learned by trying.’ The suffixed extended form of *per is peri-tlo-, whence the Latin periclum, periculum, “trial, danger, peril. Once more, we find experience linked with risk, straining towards ‘drama,’ crisis, rather than bland cognitive learning!”
“… Finally, ‘experiment,’ like ‘experience,’ is derived from Latin experiri “to try or test.” If we put these various senses together we have a ‘laminated’ semantic system focused on ‘experience,’ which portrays it as a journey, a test (of self, of suppositions about others), a ritual passage, an exposure to peril or risk, a source of fear. By means of experience, we ‘fare’ ‘fearfully’ through ‘perils,’ taking ‘experimental’ steps. …” (17-18)
The above is taken from an anonymous weblog entry. The author of the entry identified the source as From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. The author of the entry falsely stated that the author of this book was J. L. Austin. In fact, the book was written by Victor Turner, apparently the same philosophical sociologist whom we encountered in the previous entry and in the Log24 entry for the recent feast of St. Max Black. Turner may have been quoting Austin; pages from the book are not available online. Another author, however, says the quotation is by Turner himself. See Rena Fraden’s Imagining Medea, pp. 218-219.
Today’s previous entry is a sort of “ritual passage” for a Nobel Prize winner. For a ritual passage more directly related to Professor Badaracco, see the Brookline TAB obituary of his 23-year-old daughter, who died on Monday, August 21, 2006. According to today’s online Harvard Crimson, “she was walking along Hammond Street in Newton [Mass.] when an 84-year-old driver jumped the curb and struck her.”
From her Brookline TAB obituary of Thursday, Aug. 24, 2006:
“Funeral services will be held Friday [Aug. 25, 2006] at 10 a.m. at St. Mary’s of the Assumption Church, at 67 Harvard St.
The family asks that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Centro Romero Community Center in Chicago: 6216 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL 60660.”