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About
the titles of the sculpture:
Many
of my titles are derived from Ancient Greek. There are several
reasons
for this.
Most
simply, I find the language complex and expressive in ways
English is
not. For example, the suffix "-ics" implies "art",
"science", and "study
of". There is no word in our tongue that makes this
leap, since we have
divorced art from science, among many other divorces, in our
culture of
specialization. The ancient Greeks, aside from being our cultural
progenitors, were quite the opposite.
Another
reason is somewhat historical. Early naturalists from the
Enlightenment forward were always classically trained,
since it was a large component of all education at the
time. When
they were confronted with the new and unfamiliar, they usually fell back upon
this archive to name and classify.
Thus "dinosaur" simply means "terrible lizard".
Even a cursory perusal of medical terms, taxonomy, and
the natural sciences will reveal a preponderance of Greek
and Latin, even for very recent entries.
Structurally, many Greek words consist of a "base",
with a modifying suffix
and prefix added where desired. Because of this, generating
new words is
relatively straightforward. In the case of "Empurologia",
the base is "pyr",
"pur": fire, light. The prefix is "en-", ("em-" since
"n" becomes "m" before
a "p"): within. The suffix is "-logia": "the study
or science of". Thus,
Empurologia becomes "investigation of internal fire and light".
In a similar
manner, a "rhegma" signifies a fracture, so "Rhegmalogia" is
simply the
study of fractures.
GW
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