Talk:Some Buried Caesar

Ethology
WFinch, thank you for clarifying "ethology." It helps considerably to know that the first edition of SBC also gives that word, spelled thus. Clearly that rules out the possibility of an erratum, at least in the Bantam edition.

So I was spurred to look further into the definition – and here it becomes clear how seductive are the convenience of links to other Wikipedia articles and what we tend to assume to be their comprehensive nature. Wikipedia's Ethology article stresses the "study of animal behavior" definition. A passing mention of J.S. Mill's 19th century suggestion seems not only cavalier but misleading, as per this:

The New Shorter OED also gives: ". . . an exposition of or treatise on manners. rare. M-L17. 2. The science of character formation. M19." As the definition's third item, the SOED mentions the "branch of science that deals with animal behaviour, esp. in the wild. L19." (The SOED uses abbreviations such as M-L17 to date the first known usage; in that case, to mean "Middle-Late 17th century.")

I think that may solve what I regarded as a puzzle. I stand by my (now excised; thank you) statement that "ethology barely makes sense in the context" insofar as the animal behavior definition is concerned. But given the definitions "treatise on manners" and "character formation" it seems clear that Stout was referring to one or the other of them, or perhaps both, as a chaos. (And is it just me, or does the use of the indefinite article before "chaos" sound odd to 21st century ears?)

So it seems safe to conclude that in this case Stout was not only employing an unfamiliar word, but also inviting inquiry into 17th through 19th century usages. I give myself one of Archie's supply of black marks for not having looked into it further before assuming an erratum. And thanks again for your FE research; without it I would never have taken the minor trouble of looking it up in an apodictical reference work. TurnerHodges (talk) 17:17, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * How interesting. I particularly like that "rare" — do I detect POV? Tsk. I hope that having this particular example on the record can help explain, if need be, why the NW book articles have an unfamiliar word section. I've found a number of word lists and vocabulary quizzes online, by the way:     WFinch (talk) 21:33, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Images
There seem to be a lot of images in the summary section, with the result that a lot of them are looking a bit cluttered. I've moved two of them here to discussion for preservation purposes, but we probably don't need all of them, interesting though they are. --2001:8003:A920:B00:9DE5:4118:497:F547 (talk) 12:39, 29 July 2017 (UTC)