The Evolution of Fudge Words in Human Thought

From Myth to Physics

By Bodhangkur

Abstract

This essay traces the historical and cognitive evolution of fudge words—strategically vague terms that provide pseudo-explanatory structure where explanatory mechanisms are absent. Through stages spanning mythic consciousness, classical metaphysics, monotheistic theology, early scientific rationalism, and contemporary physics, I demonstrate that fudge words are not a defect but an adaptive feature of human conceptual systems. They survive by continuously altering their form while retaining their function: the stabilization of incomplete world-models.

1. Introduction: Fudge Words as Adaptive Cognitive Artifacts

Human beings generate theories far more rapidly than they generate understanding.
Because reality is complex and cognitive resources limited, intellectual systems evolve compensatory mechanisms to preserve coherence, continuity, and authority. Among the most enduring of these mechanisms are fudge words—semantic structures that both conceal and accommodate conceptual incompleteness.

This essay explores how fudge words have evolved across five major epochs:

1. Mythic cognition

2. Classical metaphysical systems

3. Monotheistic theology

4. Early scientific rationalism

5. Modern theoretical physics

The continuity across these otherwise disparate traditions reveals a universal cognitive strategy: where ontology is weak, fudge words proliferate.

2. Mythic Consciousness: The World as Narrative Density

2.1. Early Myth as Total Explanation

In mythic thought (prehistoric, shamanic, oral cultures), explanatory terms were embedded in narrative structures. The gods, spirits, ancestors, and cosmic forces served as compressive fudge words: they unified complex empirical patterns under emotionally salient agents.

Examples include:

· “Spirit” as the explanation for movement, disease, emotion.

· “Fate” as the resolution of unpredictability.

· “Taboo” as a placeholder for social and metaphysical prohibitions.

2.2. Function

Mythic fudge words:

· provided coherent ontologies,

· reduced cognitive burden,

· provided causal narratives,

· created social cohesion.

They were fudge words because they explained everything and nothing simultaneously.

3. Classical Metaphysics: Abstraction as Fudge

With the Greek, Indian, and Chinese classical systems, discourse shifted from narrative to abstraction. But abstraction magnified, rather than eliminated, fudge.

3.1. Greek Philosophy

Concepts like:

· “Eidos” (Plato)

· “Substance” (Aristotle)

· “Logos” (Stoics)

served as metaphysical fudge words—elegant but undefined. Each term absorbed explanatory load by positing ideal forms, underlying substrates, or rational tensions without providing mechanistic specifics.

3.2. Indian Philosophy

Advaita’s Brahman, maya, avidyā, and adhyāsa exemplify fudge vocabulary par excellence—each term stabilizes a system built upon negation and abstraction.

3.3. Chinese Philosophy

Daoist and Neo-Confucian metaphysics use dao, qi, li, and wú as conceptual placeholders of vast semantic flexibility.

3.4. Function

Classical metaphysics replaces narrative ambiguity with conceptual ambiguity.
The fudge persists but now operates at a higher linguistic resolution.

4. Monotheistic Theology: Transcendence as Fudge

4.1. The Explosion of Apophatic Vocabulary

Christian, Islamic, and Jewish intellectual traditions developed systematic frameworks for speaking about the ineffable:

· “Mystery”

· “Grace”

· “Spirit”

· “Divine will”

· “Eternal”

· “Infinite”

These terms maintain doctrinal opacity by shifting explanation from mechanism to divine intention or transcendence.

4.2. Theological Necessity of Fudge

Monotheism introduces conceptual problems—omnipotence, omniscience, free will, evil—that cannot be resolved. Fudge vocabulary preserves coherence without resolution.

4.3. Scholasticism and Its Inherited Fog

Even the highly rational scholastic tradition refined, but did not eliminate, fudge terms:

· “Substance and accident” in the Eucharist

· “Analogy of being”

· “Procession” and “generation” in the Trinity

The terminology becomes more technical but retains strategic vagueness.

5. Early Scientific Rationalism: Operational Fudge

The scientific revolution replaced theological authorities with empirical methods, but its foundational terms remained fudge-like.

5.1. Newton’s Refusal of Ontology

Newton’s “force,” “mass,” and “gravity” were deliberately undefined.
His famous phrase:

Hypotheses non fingo (“I frame no hypotheses”)

is an explicit assertion that fudge terms are necessary for predictive success.

5.2. Descartes’ Mechanical Fudge

“Extension,” “clear and distinct ideas,” and “mind-substance” are metaphysical fog in mechanical dress.

5.3. Enlightenment Operationalism

Early rationalists kept fudge functional by grounding it in measurement rather than metaphysics.

6. Modern Physics: Precision Fudge at the Limits of Explanation

Contemporary physics contains the most sophisticated fudge words in human history.

6.1. Quantum Mechanics

· “Wavefunction”

· “Collapse”

· “Entanglement”

· “Measurement”

These are fuzzy constructs attempting to bridge incompatible mathematical and empirical constraints.

6.2. General Relativity

· “Spacetime”

· “Curvature”

· “Geodesic”

· “Metric”

Elegant formalisms, but ontologically ungrounded: they describe behaviour without explaining substance.

6.3. Quantum Field Theory

· “Virtual particle”

· “Vacuum fluctuations”

· “Renormalization”

These are computational devices treated as ontological realities.

6.4. Cosmology

· “Dark matter”

· “Dark energy”

· “Inflation field”

· “Multiverse”

Each term is an inference from equations, not a defined entity.

6.5. Function in physics

Modern scientific fudge words:

· stabilize models at scales of incomplete knowledge,

· link incompatible frameworks (QM and GR),

· allow calculation without definition,

· enable extraordinary predictive accuracy at the cost of ontological clarity.

Unlike mythic fudge, modern scientific fudge operates through formalism rather than symbolism—but the function is identical.

7. Cognitive, Linguistic, and Procedural Underpinnings

7.1. Cognitive Underlying

Fudge words arise because human cognition demands:

· closure,

· coherence,

· pattern,

· causal narrative,

· interpretive unity.

7.2. Linguistic Conditions

Language attempts to articulate processes and realities that exceed representational capacity.
Fudge words serve as linguistic stabilizers.

7.3. Procedural Interpretation

Under a procedural metaphysics (e.g., Procedure Monism), fudge words can be understood as emergent tokens generated to maintain coherence when a system encounters:

· insufficient data,

· unresolved constraints,

· or ontological opacity.

Fudge words serve to preserve the continuity of procedural identity in the absence of full explanatory grounding.

8. The Evolutionary Continuity of Fudge Words

Across epochs, fudge words transform but do not disappear.

Epoch	Typical Fudge Words	Function
Myth	spirit, fate, taboo	agentive explanation
Classical Metaphysics	essence, form, Brahman	ontological unification
Theology	grace, mystery, divine will	doctrinal coherence
Early Science	force, mass, ether	operational prediction
Modern Physics	field, spacetime, vacuum	mathematical structure without ontology

The evolution shows continuity of function with increasing sophistication of form.

9. Conclusion: The Permanent Place of Fudge in Human Thought

Fudge words are not philosophical mistakes but adaptive instruments.
They arise wherever:

· concepts outrun understanding,

· models outrun mechanisms,

· theories outrun ontology,

· and language outruns reality.

Their evolution—from mythic spirits to quantum fields—demonstrates that human thought never eliminates conceptual fuzziness. It merely redistributes it into higher-order abstractions.

To recognise fudge words is not to reject a system; it is to understand the limits of its descriptive reach, the structure of its explanatory aspirations, and the cognitive scaffolding that holds it together.

In this light:

Fudge words are markers of the frontier where knowledge ends and imagination begins.
Their evolution charts the history of human attempts to speak the world into intelligibility.

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