Talk:hermetic

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hermetic

Rfv-sense: ‘Isolated, away from outside influence.’ Ƿidsiþ 14:57, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

• This state of hermetic isolation replicates for Adomo the subjective correlate of the thing-in-itself: the self—enclosed, transcendental subject, for whom experience becomes a problematic category.[1]
• ...a mystified genius who looks inward for his powers and inspiration, a hermetic recluse isolated from social and economic spheres[2]
• Too often, this interchange of knowledge is thwarted, one way or another: the entropic leanings of the workplace foster hermetically isolated patterns of behavior[3]
• However he had led an isolated hermetic life[4]
• In other words, it is a mistake to regard this or any film text 'as if it were merely hermetic', or an isolated island.[5]
• Increasingly isolated in the military's hermetic world, as winter stretched endlessly onward, Gamelin was finally overcome by an insidious complacency in the adequacy of his fellow generals, their British counterparts and his own troops.[6]
• This meant, in the first place, reestablishing an intellectual contact which, given tight Francoist censorship and Spain's almost hermetic isolation from the outside world during the 1940s, had been practically nonexistent.[7]
• In its early days, progressive rock drew on the hermetic streak of psychedelia, the supposition that music should contain hidden meanings which insiders would be aware of, but outsiders would be oblivious to.[8]
• Salman Rushdie, Ewing Campbell, Emily Dickinson, Beethoven may labor away incessantly in the “solitude” of their hermetic workplaces; but the world is with them—and let the political climate alter in the right (or the wrong) way, and the world will batter down their doors, bearing, as the case may be, laurels or handcuffs.[9]
• The spirit that roots Professor Wu, that endows him with his quiet serenity and his recent influence, is the inverse of the spirit that has been celebrated, lionized, and rewarded in the hermetic, self -perpetuating culture of the architectural world for most of the last seventy-five years.[10]
• Thus, in concert with the privatization, intensification, and amplification of digitized sound, the digitized imagery renders not only the immensity, intimacy, and heightened detail of reverie but also the surrounding vagueness of its internalized and hermetic space.[11]
• The tension between public enlightenment and private, sometimes hermetic, introspection is inscribed within Tennyson's 1830 volume in the pendant poems, “The Poet” and “The Poet's Mind.”[12]
• SpinningSpark 02:18, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Isn't it in fact a misspelling of hermitic? Mglovesfun (talk) 10:55, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

That crossed my mind too. Certainly some of them might be, but others are very hard to interpret that way. For instance a film text is not something that could normally be described as hermitic, nor is the military's hermetic world. In particular the hermetic streak of psychedelia I think is a slam dunk for not meaning hermitic. SpinningSpark 13:51, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

By the way, the OED has unaffected by external influences, recondite, which it puts down to a derivation of the alchemy sense. SpinningSpark 13:56, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

It looks to me like it's similar to the sense that gave rise to hermetically sealed. Historically, the cult of Hermes was very secretive and jealously guarded its mysteries, so hermetic came to mean closed-off and protected. This sense is only different in direction: sealing out rather than sealing in. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:38, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

That makes sense for some of the quotations above, but most of them seem to be specifically referring to being a hermit, which makes me think they meant hermitic. --WikiTiki89 16:06, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't think any of them can be unambiguously read as hermitic, although some could be that, and around half are definitely a different meaning to my mind. SpinningSpark 16:19, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

OED agrees with you (Chuck Entz). They have sense#1 pertaining to Hermes Trismegistus, sense#2 is the figurative sense; sense#2a is occult science/alchemy and gives our sense as a subsense of 2a, sense#2b is hermetic seal, and sense#3 is pertaining to Hermes. SpinningSpark 16:19, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

The OED also has "Erron. for hermitic adj., q.v." as sense #4. —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 18:40, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Then perhaps we should add that sense also. It doesn't mean that the sense under discussion isn't citable and the OED still has the isolated sense. SpinningSpark 23:36, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't think Mr. Granger was using that as evidence against this sense or anything like that. --WikiTiki89 23:44, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Right, I just meant to point out that it's quite possible that some of the citations are for the sense being RFVed and some are for the sense Wikitiki89 mentioned. —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 00:33, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

• Good enough for me, let's close this as verified; if someone wants to add a couple of these cites to the page then go ahead. Ƿidsiþ 14:14, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

• Done, SpinningSpark 13:54, 16 December 2013 (UTC)