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"Crank" is a pejorative term for a person who

  1. holds some belief which the vast majority of his contemporaries would consider false,
  2. is eccentric, especially one who is unduly zealous,
  3. is bad-tempered. Words and phrases are pejorative if they imply disapproval or contempt [1]

The term implies that

  1. a "cranky" belief is so wildly at variance with some commonly accepted truth as to be ludicrous,
  2. and arguing with the crank is useless, because he will invariably dismiss all evidence or arguments which contradict his cranky belief.

Common synonyms for "crank" include kook and crackpot. The word quack is usually reserved for someone who promotes a medical remedy or practice that they know to be ineffective. The crank differs from the fanatic in that the subject of the fanatic's obsession is not necessarily widely regarded as wrong, or a "fringe" belief. Fanaticism is an Emotion of being filled with excessive uncritical Zeal, particularly for an extreme religious or political cause or in

Contents

Relativity of crank beliefs

The term crank is often applied to persons who contradict rigorously proven mathematical theorems, such as the impossibility of squaring the circle by ruler and compass, or who deny extremely well established physical theories, such as the special theory of relativity. In Mathematics, a proof is a convincing demonstration (within the accepted standards of the field that some Mathematical statement is necessarily true In Mathematics, a theorem is a statement proven on the basis of previously accepted or established statements Squaring the circle is a problem proposed by ancient Geometers. The word theory has many distinct meanings in different fields of Knowledge, depending on their methodologies and the context of discussion. Special relativity (SR (also known as the special theory of relativity or STR) is the Physical theory of Measurement in Inertial More engineer-minded cranks may claim to have invented a magic compression algorithm or a perpetual motion machine. Lossless data compression is a class of Data compression Algorithms that allows the exact original data to be reconstructed from the compressed data The term perpetual motion, taken literally refers to movement that goes on forever (As of the early 21st century, perpetual motion is most often called "free energy". The second law of Thermodynamics is an expression of the universal law of increasing Entropy, stating that the entropy of an Isolated system which )

In the latter case, when scientific paradigms are overthrown, a belief previously considered cranky could in principle later be considered mainstream. Examples are rare, but they do exist; for example, the notion of continental drift proposed by Alfred Wegener was widely considered by contemporary geologists to be cranky, but was eventually dramatically vindicated (Williams 2000). Continental drift is the movement of the Earth 's Continents relative to each other Alfred Lothar Wegener ( November 1, 1880 – November 2 or 3 1930 was a German Scientist and Meteorologist. A geologist is a contributor to the Science of Geology, studying the physical structure and processes of the Earth and planets of the solar system

It appears to be even more unlikely that the opinion of the mathematical community might change concerning whether some proven theorem is true, despite nineteenth and twentieth century discoveries in mathematical logic which are often popularly misunderstood as having overthrown theorems previously regarded as true. Mathematical logic is a subfield of Logic and Mathematics with close connections to Computer science and Philosophical logic. It would be more correct to say that mathematicians have gradually become aware of subtle issues which had previously been overlooked. That is, previous mathematical knowledge has been enriched, not overthrown, by such discoveries as non-Euclidean geometry or Gödel's incompleteness theorems. In mathematics non-Euclidean geometry describes how this all works--> hyperbolic and Elliptic geometry, which are contrasted with Euclidean geometry In Mathematical logic, Gödel's incompleteness theorems, proved by Kurt Gödel in 1931 are two Theorems stating inherent limitations of all but the most

Nonetheless, since the nature of mainstream opinion can change over time, it is useful to define crankery in terms of characteristics which are independent of the allegedly cranky belief. Indeed, it is widely accepted that the true hallmark of the crank is not so much asserting that the Earth is flat as making this assertion in the face of all counterarguments and contrary evidence. The idea of a flat Earth is the idea that the surface of the Earth is flat (a plane) rather than the view that it is a very close approximation of Certain authors (see the references) who have studied the phenomenon of crankery agree that this is the essential defining characteristic of a crank: No argument or evidence can ever be sufficient to make a crank abandon his belief.

Common characteristics of cranks

The second book of the philosopher and popular author Martin Gardner was a study of crank beliefs, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. Martin Gardner (b October 21, 1914, Tulsa Oklahoma) is a popular American mathematics and science writer specializing in Recreational mathematics Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science was Martin Gardner 's second book and has become a classic in the literature of entertaining Scientific skepticism More recently, the mathematician Underwood Dudley has written a series of books on mathematical cranks, including The Trisectors, Mathematical Cranks, and Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras Wrought. Underwood Dudley (born January 6, And in a 1998 UseNet post, the mathematician John Baez humorously proposed a "checklist", the Crackpot index, intended to "diagnose" cranky beliefs regarding contemporary physics. Usenet, a Portmanteau of "user" and "network" is a world-wide distributed Internet discussion system John Carlos Baez (born 1961 is an American mathematical physicist at the University of California Riverside. The crackpot index is a number that rates scientific claims or the individuals that make them in conjunction with a method for computing that number [2]

According to these authors, virtually universal characteristics of cranks include:

  1. Cranks overestimate their own knowledge and ability, and underestimate that of acknowledged experts.
  2. Cranks insist that their alleged discoveries are urgently important.
  3. Cranks rarely if ever acknowledge any error, no matter how trivial.
  4. Cranks love to talk about their own beliefs, often in inappropriate social situations, but they tend to be bad listeners, and often appear to be uninterested in anyone else's experience or opinions.

Some cranks exhibit a lack of academic achievement, in which case they typically assert that academic training in the subject of their crank belief is not only unnecessary for discovering "the truth", but actively harmful because they believe it "poisons" the minds by teaching falsehoods. Others greatly exaggerate their personal achievements, and may insist that some alleged achievement in some entirely unrelated area of human endeavor implies that their cranky opinion should be taken seriously.

Some cranks claim vast knowledge of any relevant literature, while others claim that familiarity with previous work is entirely unnecessary; regardless, cranks inevitably reveal that whether or not they believe themselves to be knowledgeable concerning relevant matters of fact, mainstream opinion, or previous work, they are not in fact well-informed concerning the topic of their belief.

In addition, many cranks

  1. seriously misunderstand the mainstream opinion to which they believe that they are objecting,
  2. stress that they have been working out their ideas for many decades, and claim that this fact alone entails that their belief cannot be dismissed as resting upon some simple error,
  3. compare themselves with Galileo or Copernicus, implying that the mere unpopularity of some belief is in itself evidence of plausibility,
  4. claim that their ideas are being suppressed by secret intelligence organizations, mainstream science, powerful business interests, or other groups which, they allege, are terrified by the possibility of their allegedly revolutionary insights becoming widely known,
  5. appear to regard themselves as persons of unique historical importance. Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 &ndash 8 January 1642 was a Tuscan ( Italian) Physicist, Mathematician, Astronomer, and Philosopher

Cranks who contradict some mainstream opinion in some highly technical field, such as mathematics or physics, almost always

  1. exhibit a marked lack of technical ability,
  2. misunderstand or fail to use standard notation and terminology,
  3. ignore fine distinctions which are essential to correctly understanding mainstream belief. Mathematics is the body of Knowledge and Academic discipline that studies such concepts as Quantity, Structure, Space and Physics (Greek Physis - φύσις in everyday terms is the Science of Matter and its motion.

That is, cranks tend to ignore any previous insights which have been proven by experience to facilitate discussion and analysis of the topic of their cranky claims; indeed, they often assert that these innovations obscure rather than clarify the situation. [3]

In addition, cranky scientific "theories" do not in fact qualify as theories as this term is commonly understood within science. The word theory has many distinct meanings in different fields of Knowledge, depending on their methodologies and the context of discussion. For example, crank "theories" in physics typically fail to result in testable predictions, which makes them unfalsifiable and hence unscientific. Falsifiability (or "refutability" is the logical possibility that an assertion can be shown false by an observation or a physical experiment

Perhaps surprisingly, many cranks may appear quite normal when they are not passionately expounding their cranky belief, and they may even be successful in careers unrelated to their cranky belief. Others can (charitably) be characterized as underachievers in all walks of life. An underachiever is a person and especially a student who fails to achieve his or her potential or does not do as well as expected

Science fiction author and critic Bruce Sterling noted in his essay in CATSCAN 13:[4]

Online communication can wonderfully liberate the tender soul of some well-meaning personage who, for whatever reason, is physically uncharismatic. Michael Bruce Sterling (born April 14, 1954) is an American Science fiction author, best known for his novels and his seminal work on the Mirrorshades Unfortunately, online communication also fertilizes the eccentricities of hopeless cranks, who at last find themselves in firm possession of a wondrous soapbox that the Trilateral Commission and the Men In Black had previously denied them. A soapbox is a raised Platform on which one stands to make an impromptu speech, often about a political subject The Trilateral Commission is a private organization established to foster closer cooperation between America Europe and Japan The term Men in Black ( MIB) in Popular culture, is used in UFO conspiracy theories to describe men dressed in black suits claiming to be government

The psychology of cranks

A widely quoted study by two Cornell University psychologists, Justin Kruger and David Dunning, is often thought to bear directly upon a striking and virtually universal characteristic of cranks: they simultaneously overestimate their own knowledge and ability and underestimate that of other persons, including that of acknowledged experts in the field. The Dunning-Kruger effect is an example of Cognitive bias in which people who are worst at a task show the most Illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above

Kruger and Dunning hypothesized that with regard to a typical skill which humans may possess in greater or lesser degree:[5]

  1. incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill,
  2. incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others,
  3. incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy,
  4. if they can be trained to improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.

They confirmed these hypotheses in a series of tests.

These results are taken to explain why cranks so often seem to represent, not individuals with an exceptional degree of knowledge, but rather individuals with an exceptional degree of ignorance concerning the subject of their cranky belief.

As noted above, in addition to a general lack of ability to accurately assess their own skills and knowledge, many cranks also exhibit deficiencies in reading comprehension, logical reasoning, and other cognitive abnormalities, which may contribute both to how they arrive at some bizarre counterfactual belief in the first place, and to how they are able to cling to such a belief in the face of all objections.

Many cranks seem to exhibit certain symptoms of grandiosity or megalomania. Megalomania (from the Greek word μεγαλομανία is a historical term for behavior characterized by Delusional fantasies of Wealth, power This may perhaps also be understood, in terms of the phenomenon studied by Kruger and Dunning, as resulting from a simultaneous overinflation of their own social value and underestimation of the social value of others.

Internet cranks

The rise of the Internet has given another outlet to people well outside the mainstream who may get labeled cranks through internet postings or websites promoting particular beliefs. A newsgroup is a Repository usually within the Usenet system for messages posted from many users in different locations A website (alternatively web site or Web site, a back-construction from the Proper noun World Wide Web) is a collection of Web pages There are a number of websites devoted to listing people as cranks. Community-edited websites like Wikipedia have been described as vulnerable to cranks. [6][7]

There are also newsgroups which are nominally devoted to discussing (alt. usenet. kooks) or poking fun at (alt.slack, alt.religion.kibology) supposed cranks. The Church of the SubGenius is a religious group that satirizes Religion, Conspiracy theory, UFOs and Popular culture. Kibology is a Parody religion, partly satirizing Scientology.

Etymology

Old English cranc- is preserved only in crancstæf "a weaver's instrument".

It is from a Proto-Germanic stem *krank- meaning "bend". Proto-Germanic, or Common Germanic, is the hypothetical common ancestor ( Proto-language) of all the Germanic languages such as modern English German and Dutch krank have a modern meaning of "sick, ill", evolved from a former meaning "weak, small". English crank in its modern sense is first recorded 1833, and cranky in a sense of "irritable" dates from 1821. The term was popularised in 1881 for being applied to Horace Greeley. Horace Greeley ( February 3, 1811 &ndash November 29, 1872) was an American editor of a leading newspaper, a founder

In 1906, Nature offered essentially the same definition which is used here:

A crank is defined as a man who cannot be turned. Year 1906 ( MCMVI) was a Common year starting on Monday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common year starting Nature, in the broadest sense is equivalent to the natural world, physical universe, material world or material universe.

– Nature, 8 Nov 1906, 25/2

The term "crank" (or "krank") was once the favored term for spectators at sporting events, a term later supplanted by "fans". By implication, the "kranks in the bleaching boards" think they know more about the sport than do its participants. There is more discussion of this term in The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, by Paul Dickson.

The word crackpot apparently also first appeared in 1883:

My aunty knew lots, and called them crack-pots. Year 1883 ( MDCCCLXXXIII) was a Common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common

– Broadside Ballad, 1883

As noted in Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, the terms "crackpot", "crackbrain" and "cracked" are synonymous, and suggest a metaphorically "broken" head. The terms "crazy" and "crazed" also originally meant "broken" and derive from the same root word as "cracked". The dictionary gives no indication that "pate" and "pot" have the same root, despite their apparent similarity, and implied colloquial use of "pot" to mean "head" in the word "crackpot". However, the term "craze" is also used to refer to minute cracks in pottery glaze, again suggesting the metaphorical connection of cracked pots with questionable mental health.

The term kook appears to be much more recent. The adjectival-form, kooky, was apparently coined as part of American teen-ager (or beatnik) slang, which derives from the pejorative meaning of the noun cuckoo. In Grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a Noun or Pronoun, giving more information about the Slang is the use of highly informal Words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's Dialect or Language. In late 1958, Edd Byrnes first played a hair-combing parking lot attendant called "Kookie" on 77 Sunset Strip. Year 1958 ( MCMLVIII) was a Common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. This article concerns the actor For the actor/director see Edward Burns. 77 Sunset Strip is The noun-form kook, may have first appeared in 1960 in Britain's Daily Mail newspaper:

A kook, Daddy-O, is a screwball who is 'gone' farther than most

– Daily Mail, 22 Aug 1960, 4/5

See also

Spoofs:

Notes

  1. ^ Crank at Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
  2. ^ New improved crackpot index Posted by John Baez at Sci. The Daily Mail is a British newspaper currently published in a tabloid format In popular usage eccentricity refers to unusual or odd Behavior on the part of an individual Pseudohistory is a term applied to texts which purport to be historical in nature but which depart from standard historiographical conventions in a way which undermines Pseudoscience is defined as a body of knowledge methodology belief or practice that is claimed to be Scientific or made to appear scientific but does not adhere to the Pseudomathematics is a form of Mathematics -like activity that does not work within the framework definitions rules or rigor of formal mathematical models The crackpot index is a number that rates scientific claims or the individuals that make them in conjunction with a method for computing that number This is a list of fields of endeavor and concepts regarded as pseudoscientific by organizations within the international Scientific community or by notable skeptical Tallinna narrid ja narrikesed ( Estonian for Big Fools and Little Fools of Tallinn) is a satirical 1892 series by Eduard Bornhöhe Year 1892 ( MDCCCXCII) was a Leap year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian Calendar (or a Leap year Eduard Bornhöhe, born Eduard Brunberg ( 5 February 1862 Virumaa — 17 November 1923 Tallinn) best known by The Josiah Stinkney Carberry is a fictional Professor, created as a joke Kibo (ˈkaɪboʊ is the Nickname and Username of James Parry (born July 13 1967) a Usenetter known for his Sense John Carlos Baez (born 1961 is an American mathematical physicist at the University of California Riverside. physics Google group.
  3. ^ Hodges, Wilfrid (1998). "An Editor Recalls Some Hopeless Papers". The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 4 (1): 1-16. doi:10.2307/421003. A digital object identifier ( DOI) is a permanent identifier given to an Electronic document.   A paper describing several attempts at disproving Cantor's diagonal argument, looking at the flaws in their arguments and reasoning. Cantor's diagonal argument, also called the diagonalisation argument, the diagonal slash argument or the diagonal method, was published in 1891
  4. ^ CATSCAN 13: "Electronic Text" (Bruce Sterling, SF Eye)
  5. ^ Kruger J, Dunning D (1999). "Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments". J Pers Soc Psychol 77 (6): 1121-34. PMID 10626367.  
  6. ^ http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-32770712_ITM
  7. ^ http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-26188052_ITM

References

The Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience (2000 edited by Dr William F
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