When I use a word . . . Purely academic

Plato’s Academy

The Greek philosopher Aristocles (ca. 427–348 BCE) was born in either Athens or the nearby island of Aegina. It was probably his broad forehead that led him to be nicknamed Πλάτων, from the Greek word for broad, πλατύς, or as he is otherwise known, Plato.

Plato founded his academy in Athens in around 387 BCE, building it in the Academia, a garden containing olive groves and a gymnasium, named after the legendary Greek hero Academos. According to Plutarch, Theseus, the King of Athens, abducted Helen when she was a child, so great was her beauty even then; Academos discovered her whereabouts and informed her brothers Castor and Pollux, who retrieved her. He was also, in some accounts, responsible for thwarting an attack on Athens by the Spartans.

Plato had been a disciple of Socrates, and Aristotle was his most famous pupil. The ostensible purpose of his academy was to train individuals to serve the state. The subjects chiefly taught were mathematics and astronomy and later philosophy. Above the entrance was written the slogan ΜΗΔΕΙΣ ΑΓΕΟΜΕΤΡΙΚΟΣ ΕΙΣΙΤΩ, “Let no-one ignorant of geometry enter here.”

The word enters English

The word “academy” is first recorded in an English text in about 1382, in Wycliffe’s translation of the Bible.1 He spelt it “Achademy,” translating the Latin word Academia. It came from the first prefatory epistle of Saint Jerome, addressed to Paulinus, Bishop of Nola. Here is the relevant extract from the original Latin,2 followed by my own modern English translation:

“Legimus in veteribus historiis quosdam lustrasse provincias, novos adisse populos, mare transisse, ut eos quos ex libris noverant coram quoque viderent. Sic Pythagoras memphiticos vates, sic Plato Aegyptum et Arcitam Tarentinum eademque oram Italiae quae quondam magna Graecia dicebatur laboriosissime peragravit, ut qui Athenis magister erat et potens, cuiusque doctrinam Academiae gymnasia personabant, fieret peregrinus atque discipulus, malens aliena verecunde discere quam sua impudenter ingerere.”

“We read in old stories that men travelled through provinces, visited strange peoples, and crossed seas, so as to see face to face people whom they knew only from books. So Pythagoras visited the prophets of Memphis; and Plato visited Egypt and Archytas of Tarentum, assiduously exploring that part of the coast of Italy formerly known as Great Greece. Thus, the influential Athenian master, whose teachings resonated in the schools of the Academy, became both a pilgrim and a pupil, choosing to learn what others had to teach rather than presumptuously propounding his own opinions.”

Because Plato founded his institution on the Academia, land that was dedicated to the memory of Academos, it became known as The Academy. Having entered English the term then came to be associated with the ideas that were promulgated in the academy. Later it was applied to other similar institutions and then became even more generalised. In the 16th century it came to be used to describe any institute of higher learning. Examples include the Royal Academy of Arts, founded in 1768, and the British Academy (full title The British Academy for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical and Philological Studies), which was established in 1902, and which does for the humanities and social sciences what the Royal Society does for the sciences.

In Scotland some schools are called academies, such as the Glasgow Academy, an independent school for pupils aged 3–18, founded in 1845. Sports teams from such schools are sometimes called “Academicals.” This use was not espoused in England. Indeed, as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) points out, the first fascicle of the first edition of the dictionary, at that time called the New English Dictionary, A–Ant, published in January 1884, stated that “In England the word has been abused, and is now in discredit in this sense.” However, in recent times the term has been revived in England to name independent, not for profit, non-fee paying, publicly run schools. London’s City Academy is an adult academy for creative and performing arts, founded in 2006.

Academe

The spelling “Achademe” instead of Wycliffe’s “Achademy” first appears in Love’s Labour’s Lost (1598) [the spelling here is from the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays]:

“Our Court shall be a little Achademe.

Still and contemplative of living Art.”

“Academe” has been used as the equivalent of both “academy” in all its meanings and “academic” as a noun.

The phrase “groves of Academe” comes from a translation of one of Horace’s epistles (Book 2, Epistle 2, lines 41-5):

“Romae nutriri mihi contigit atque doceri

iratus Grais quantum nocuisset Achilles.

Adiecere bonae paulo plus artis Athenae,

scilicet ut vellem curvo dinoscere rectum,

atque inter silvas Academi quaerere verum.”

“I was fortunate to have been brought up in Rome, where I was taught how much Achilles harmed the Greeks. Further education in Athens taught me how to distinguish the crooked from the straight and to seek truth in the groves of Academe.”

The earliest use of the phrase “grove of Academe” is to be found in Milton’s Paradise Regain’d (1671):

“See there the olive grove of Academe,

Plato’s retirement, where the Attic bird

Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long.” (Book IV).

This, of course, is purely a description of the place, with no metaphorical connotation. It wasn’t until the mid-18th century that the phrase “groves of Academe” was first used to mean, as the OED puts it, “a place of studious seclusion, the academic world, viewed as sheltered from the demands of everyday life.”3

The phrase has also been widely used in the titles of books of both fiction and non-fiction, a good example being The Groves of Academe, a 1952 satire on academic life by Mary McCarthy.

Academia

The spelling “academe” is not justified by its Greek etymology. The Greek variants were Ἀκᾰδήμεια and Ἀκᾰδήμία, making “academia” the logical preference, and the form that preceded “academe” in English by over 50 years; it first appeared in Nicholas Udall’s translation of one of Erasmus’s Apophthegms (1542).

“Academia” was originally used as a synonym for “academy” in its earliest meaning, i.e. that of Plato. However, it replaced “academe” at the start of the 20th century, meaning “the academic community; the world of university scholarship.”4

Academic

The variant “academic” is, surprisingly, the oldest form in English, going back to King Alfred’s translation from Latin of St Augustine’s Soliloquies.5

It started out as a noun, meaning an ancient philosopher of Plato’s Academy. It wasn’t until the late 16th century, however, that it came to have a more general meaning, referring to a member of a university or college, and specifically a senior member. And soon after that it started to refer, less specifically, to any person interested in pursuing learning of any sort.

When institutions started to be called academies, their members came to be known as academics.

Semantic shift

Many words undergo some form of semantic shift or change over their lifetimes. Such changes include functional shift and figurative extension, generalisation and specialisation, melioration and pejoration. “Academic” words have undergone such changes.

Functional shift occurs when a word changes its part of speech, when, for example, a noun becomes a verb or an adjective or a verb a noun. From its long history of being a noun, “academic” became an adjective at the end of the 16th century. And “the groves of academe” illustrates a form of figurative extension.

From applying only to members of Plato’s Academy, “an academic” came to mean a member of any academy, and then a member of any institute of learning, and then anyone interested in learning of any sort, all examples of generalisation. On the other hand, the shift from any member of an academy to a senior member is an example of specialisation.

Melioration is an improvement in the meaning of a word; pejoration is a worsening. The classical example of the former is “nice.” “Nice” originally meant foolish or stupid (Latin nescius) and later, and at different times, lascivious or wanton, extravagant or strange, shy or tender, careful, precise, or fastidious, dainty or appetizing, refined or cultured, and finally agreeable or pleasant. Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary (1959 edition) lists among possible meanings “calling for very fine discrimination,” “done with great care and exactness,” “accurate,” and then puts the boot in: “used in vague commendation by those who are not nice.”

“Academic” has not undergone melioration, but it has undergone pejoration. Originally its changes in meaning occurred because of the changes in the philosophical interests of the members of Plato’s Academy. The academy during Plato’s time was known as the old Academy (Ἀκᾰδήμία παλαιά) and it taught Platonic philosophy. After Plato’s death, a sceptical form of philosophy started to dominate the teaching, under the leadership of Arcesilaus, and the academy became known as the middle Academy (Ἀκᾰδήμία μέση). Then later, under Carneades, it became known as the modern Academy (Ἀκᾰδήμία νεωτέρα). Different approaches, different types of academics.

Subsequently, as the word underwent semantic change in English, generalisation took place, and the adjective referred to any kind of intellectual research or education. However, philosophy then became regarded as a theoretical or formal subject, and those meanings attached themselves to “academic,” after which it took only short steps before meanings such as “not leading to a decision” and “impractical” emerged, and finally “of no consequence” or “irrelevant.” Purely academic.

Purely academic

My erstwhile boss, David Grahame-Smith, who was the Rhodes professor of clinical pharmacology in the University of Oxford from 1972 to 2000, was the model clinical academic, as astute at the bedside as he was innovative in the laboratory.6

Ward rounds with David were often entertaining. On one occasion, which I quote from memory, doubtless imprecisely, we had admitted an older woman with delirium and a urinary tract infection. As the antibiotics we gave her took hold, her delirium resolved. David asked the attending medical students about the pathophysiology of the association between the delirium and the infection, and a discussion ensued on the possible role of cytokines, such as interleukin-6.7 One student started to fidget impatiently and finally burst out, “But that’s purely academic!” There was an embarrassed silence before David responded. “In those two words,” he said, “you have just devalued my whole career.” The other students saw the joke and their laughter defused the tension.

A final thought

If the legendary Greek hero Academos had been more commonly known by his older name, Hekademos, we would now be talking about hekademics, not academics. “Hekademos” means “from a far country” (ἑκάς+δῆμος), perhaps because he was said to have come from far-off Arcadia. However, it can also mean “far from the common people,” referring to those who live in the country.

Academics may sometimes be thought of as being distant from others, with the associated image of the ivory tower. But clinical academics are not at all like that. They are far too involved with the practice of medicine to lose sight of reality.