22 October 2017
a priori
[ey prahy-awr-ahy, -ohr-ahy, ey pree-awr-ee, -ohr-ee, ah pree-awr-ee, -ohr-ee]
adjective
1. from a general law to a particular instance; valid independently of observation.
Compare a posteriori (def 1).
2. existing in the mind prior to and independent of experience, as a faculty or character trait.
Compare a posteriori (def 2).
3. not based on prior study or examination; nonanalytic:
an a priori judgment.
Origin of a priori
1645-1655; < Latin: literally, from the one before. See a-4, prior1
Related forms
apriority [ey-prahy-awr-i-tee, -or-], noun
Can be confused
ad hoc, a posteriori, a priori, ex post facto, prima facie.
Dictionary.com
Anagram
I or pair
Today’s quote
There are three side effects of acid: enhanced long-term memory, decreased short-term memory, and I forget the third.
– Timothy Leary
On this day
22 October 1797 – Andre-Jacques Garnerin becomes the world’s first sky-diver after jumping out of a balloon above Paris.
22 October 1920 – birth of Timothy Leary, American psychologist and author. Leary was a major proponent of the use of pscyhedelic drugs, particularly LSD and psilocybin (mushrooms). He conducted numerous psychiatric experiments using psychedelics, particularly during the 1950s and and 1960s, when the drugs were legal. LSD was banned by the USA in 1966. Leary popularised 1960′s catch-phrases such as ‘turn on, tune in and drop out’, ‘set and setting’, and ‘think for yourself and question authority’. He was friends with beat generation poets, such as Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. Leary was arrested numerous times over his possession and use of drugs. He wrote a number of books on the benefits of psychedelic drugs. Leary became fascinated with computers, declaring that ‘the PC is the LSD of the 1990s’. He encouraged bohemians to ‘turn on, boot up, jack in’. Leary was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1995. He chose to stream his dying moments over the internet. Seven grams of Leary’s ashes were placed aboard a Pegasus rocket, launched on 21 April 1997. It remained in orbit around the Earth for six years until it burned up in atmosphere. Died 31 May 1996.
22 October 1934 – Notorious gangster, Pretty Boy Floyd, shot to death by FBI agents in Ohio. Born 3 February 1904.