Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
18 lines (10 loc) · 2.19 KB

name.md

File metadata and controls

18 lines (10 loc) · 2.19 KB

What's in a name?

As initially described in our first Public Work Log entry, the name Coεmeta (co∙eh∙meta) is a compound neologism / portmanteau with the overarching concept of co-creation of knowledge & understanding, or as stated in our mission & vision statements: finding truth together.

The core substring emet (hebrew for "truth") is borrowed from golem folklore, as inspired by Richard McElreath's admonitions about statistical models as "golems" or "robots" in his Statistical Rethinking course & textbook.

  • In that folklore, golems are clay monsters brought to life by inscribing "emet" (truth) on their forehead, & then 'decommissioned' by scratching out the initial character, to leave "met", meaning "death".

  • We play on this (a bit melodramatically, admittedly), by using an "ε" (epsilon) for the first "e" in Coεmeta, which is meant as a reminder of the 'error margin' in any model, estimate or probabilistic assessment

Beyond that, the "co" (together) & "meta" (big picture) substrings should be pretty self-explanatory

Finally, the resulting composite Coεmeta has resonances with a few other somewhat obscure terms which are personally meaningful:

  • Gallia Comata - literally "long-haired Gauls" or "free Gaul", referring to ancient lands & peoples not yet conquered, colonized & "civilized" by Romans
  • Coimimeadh [koym-imah] - a Scots Gaelic word referring to "co-walker" or "co-traveller" spirits