Terminators: Wordplays for Ideas & Insights
Ontogeny, Ontology, and Onus
March 18, 1997
In honor of Dolly and the demise of the paradigm of
cellular impotency, and the rise of mammalian totipotency, we present
these three terms, which by irony or serendipity are sequential in the
dictionary:
Ontogeny: the development or course of development especially of an
individual organism. From New Latin, from Late Greek, from Greek ont-,
on, participle of einai: to be. The root onto- having two meanings:
1: being; existence. 2: organism. (Merriam Webster's Collegiate
Dictionary, Tenth Edition)
Ontology: 1. a branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature and
relations of being. 2. a particular theory about the nature of being
or the kinds of existents. (Merriam Webster's Collegiate
Dictionary, Tenth Edition)
The Bonus: "onus": the burden of proof, from New Latin: onus
probandi, literally "burden of proving" (Merriam Webster's Collegiate
Dictionary, Tenth Edition)
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