Thursday, October 08, 2015

Word of the day: obversion

The word of the day is obversion:

  1. Logic. a form of inference in which a negative proposition is obtained from an affirmative, or vice versa, as “None of us is immortal” is obtained by obversion from “All of us are mortal.”
(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/obversion)


"Baillie's book, written for surgeons and anatomists, was the obverse of Vesalius's project: if Vesalius had mapped out 'normal' anatomy, Baillie mapped the body in its diseased, abnormal state."

 - Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies

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