User:Anagogist

'''Wikinostalgia. It can hit you when you least expect it.'''

Hello, I'm Anagogist. I used to edit under the name Orthologist a really, really long time ago. Few, if any, contributions I made were worthwhile, and I decided to make a fresh start after such a long period of absence.

What's in a name
"Orthologist" is quite a strange word. Since one of the definitions of orthology is the correct use of words, an orthologist may be a person who places a great deal of emphasis on speaking precisely and unambiguously. I am such a person. Incidentally, orthologist was once proposed |as an alternative to physiatrist. I am not such a person.

In Greek, however, an orthologist'ēs (ορθολογιστής) is a rationalist, one who holds the belief that one of the keys to knowing the world is reason (or the belief that reason is the only key, if you are using the dated definition). This word, with both its modern Greek and modern English meanings, described me (and still does) perfectly.

Nevertheless, I prefer not to continue editing under my old account, which I created when I was much younger. As one grows older, it appears, they wish to associate less with their past selves. So, Anagogist it is.

Anagogist, alas, does not provide such a bilingual bonus; it is even more of a false friend to the Greek anagogist'ēs (αναγωγιστής) than orthologist is to orthologist'ēs. In English, anagoge is an extremely obscure term applied to a mystical interpretation of a (usually scriptural) passage. Anagogismós, in Greek, however, means something completely different, as it refers to the philosophical viewpoint of reductionism, to which I also adhere (that is, epistemological reductionism, as opposed to methodological).

So, both usernames have a philosophical flavour to them. Nonetheless, I am in no way a philosopher of any kind. I am, in fact, a Physics student in the UK. I am also Greek (which may have become just a hint too obvious by now). I selected both names due to their uniqueness, and their philosophical implications. I considered "Diapseusistes" (Greek for falsificationist, Hylistes (Greek -and also English) for materialist, and other such colourful names, but none of them had the ring that "Anagogist" has.

Plans
After all this droning about etymology and some of my philosophical views, one would expect an in-depth analysis of what my plans will be after my return to Wikipedia. However, the only reason for the above babbling was that, frankly, I have never had the chance to tell anyone about my username. Moreover, I have no grandiose plans, truly. Suffice it to say that I will most probably be adding material to Physics and Mathematics-related articles (especially to articles who lack clear and informative introductions to the main body). Some articles have some sort of "elementary introduction" or "informal discussion" at the beginning, where more abstruse concepts are dealt with in a relatively more elementary way, but this is not always the case, which is something that I would like to assist in changing. I will also be doing quite a bit of copy-editing. Finally, I may contribute to articles from other areas, though much more infrequently.

My meager contributions
These are the most significant contributions I made as Orthologist, which should be quite informative regarding the overall quality of my previous contributions to Wikipedia (hint: it's not too great). I created the First Certificate in English, Misner space and Lil' Pimp articles. Segments from the last two were featured on Did You Know?. I also established the Association of Eventualist Wikipedians over at Meta.

To do

 * Betz' law
 * Sidereal time
 * Price of anarchy
 * Archimedes' principle
 * Schwinger multichannel method
 * On shell and off shell
 * Translation operator (quantum mechanics)
 * Ostrogradsky instability
 * Chaplygin sleigh
 * Pepper (cryptography)