Crank (person)
Encyclopedia
"Crank" is a pejorative
term used for a person who unshakably holds a belief that most of his or her contemporaries consider to be false. A "cranky" belief is so wildly at variance with commonly accepted belief as to be ludicrous. Cranks characteristically dismiss all evidence or arguments which contradict their own unconventional beliefs, making rational debate an often futile task.
Common synonyms for "crank" include crackpot and kook. A crank differs from a fanatic
in that the subject of the fanatic's obsession
is either not necessarily widely regarded as wrong or not necessarily a "fringe" belief. Similarly, the word quack
is reserved for someone who promotes a medical remedy or practice that is widely considered to be ineffective; this term however does not imply any deep belief in the idea or product they are attempting to sell. Crank may also refer to an ill-tempered individual or one who is in a bad mood, but that usage is not the subject of this article.
Although a crank's beliefs seem ridiculous to experts in the field, cranks are sometimes very successful in convincing non-experts of their views. A famous example is the Indiana Pi Bill
where a state legislature nearly wrote into law a crank result in geometry.
s, 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, conservation of mass-energy, or a round earth (See Flat Earth Society
). More engineer-minded cranks may claim to have invented a magic compression algorithm or a perpetual motion
/ free energy
machine.
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 geologist
s to be cranky, but was eventually dramatically vindicated, albeit by plate tectonics
, a mechanism of which Wegener had never dreamed.
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. 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
.
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, for example, the Earth is flat
as making this assertion in the face of all counterarguments and contrary evidence. 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.
was a study of crank beliefs, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science
. 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. And in a 1992 UseNet
post, the mathematician John Baez humorously proposed a "checklist", the Crackpot index
, intended to "diagnose" cranky beliefs regarding contemporary physics.
According to these authors, virtually universal characteristics of cranks include:
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 achievement (real or alleged) 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:
Cranks who contradict some mainstream opinion in some highly technical field, such as mathematics
or physics
, frequently:
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.
In addition, cranky scientific "theories" do not in fact qualify as theories
as this term is commonly understood within science. For example, crank "theories" in physics typically fail to result in testable predictions, which makes them unfalsifiable and hence unscientific. Or the crank may present their ideas in such a confused, "not even wrong
" manner that it is impossible to determine what they are actually claiming.
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.
s or website
s promoting particular beliefs. There are a number of websites devoted to listing people as cranks. Community-edited websites like Wikipedia have been described as vulnerable to cranks.
Science fiction author and critic Bruce Sterling
noted in his essay in CATSCAN 13:
There are also newsgroups which are nominally devoted to discussing (alt.usenet.kooks) or poking fun at (alt.slack, alt.religion.kibology) supposed cranks.
to describe the propensity of cranks to hold multiple irrational, unsupported or ludicrous beliefs that are often unrelated to one another. Crank magnetism may be considered to operate wherever a single person propounds a number of unrelated denialist conjectures, poorly supported conspiracy theories, or pseudoscientific
claims. Thus, some of the common crank characteristics (see above)-- such as the lack of technical ability, ignorance of scientific terminology and claims that alternative ideas are being suppressed by the mainstream—may be operating on and manifested in multiple orthogonal assertions. For example, Hoofnagle's fellow blogger Orac has discussed crank magnetism in relation to the writings of British columnist Melanie Phillips
, who denies anthropogenic global warming
and who has promoted Intelligent Design
and the discredited view that the MMR vaccine causes autism in children
. Blogger Luke Scientiæ has commented on the relationship between the number of unrelated claims magnetic cranks make and the extent of their open hostility to science. He has also coined the phrase "magnetic hoax" in relation to hoax claims that attract multiple cranky interpretations.
It is from a Proto-Germanic stem *krank- meaning "bend". German krank has 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 1872 for being applied to Horace Greeley
who was ridiculed during his campaign for the U.S. presidency. In 1882, the term was used to describe Charles Guiteau who shot U.S. president James Garfield
.
In 1906, Nature
offered essentially the same definition which is used here:
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:
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 late 1958, Edd Byrnes first played a hair-combing parking lot attendant called "Kookie" on 77 Sunset Strip
. The noun
-form kook, may have first appeared in 1960 in Britain's Daily Mail
newspaper:
Spoofs
Pejorative
Pejoratives , including name slurs, are words or grammatical forms that connote negativity and express contempt or distaste. A term can be regarded as pejorative in some social groups but not in others, e.g., hacker is a term used for computer criminals as well as quick and clever computer experts...
term used for a person who unshakably holds a belief that most of his or her contemporaries consider to be false. A "cranky" belief is so wildly at variance with commonly accepted belief as to be ludicrous. Cranks characteristically dismiss all evidence or arguments which contradict their own unconventional beliefs, making rational debate an often futile task.
Common synonyms for "crank" include crackpot and kook. A crank differs from a fanatic
Fanaticism
Fanaticism is a belief or behavior involving uncritical zeal, particularly for an extreme religious or political cause or in some cases sports, or with an obsessive enthusiasm for a pastime or hobby...
in that the subject of the fanatic's obsession
Fixation (psychology)
Fixation: 'concept originated by Sigmund Freud to denote the persistence of anachronistic sexual traits'. Subsequently '"Fixation" acquired a broader connotation...
is either not necessarily widely regarded as wrong or not necessarily a "fringe" belief. Similarly, the word quack
Quackery
Quackery is a derogatory term used to describe the promotion of unproven or fraudulent medical practices. Random House Dictionary describes a "quack" as a "fraudulent or ignorant pretender to medical skill" or "a person who pretends, professionally or publicly, to have skill, knowledge, or...
is reserved for someone who promotes a medical remedy or practice that is widely considered to be ineffective; this term however does not imply any deep belief in the idea or product they are attempting to sell. Crank may also refer to an ill-tempered individual or one who is in a bad mood, but that usage is not the subject of this article.
Although a crank's beliefs seem ridiculous to experts in the field, cranks are sometimes very successful in convincing non-experts of their views. A famous example is the Indiana Pi Bill
Indiana Pi Bill
The Indiana Pi Bill is the popular name for bill #246 of the 1897 sitting of the Indiana General Assembly, one of the most famous attempts to establish scientific truth by legislative fiat...
where a state legislature nearly wrote into law a crank result in geometry.
Relativity of crank beliefs
The term crank is often applied to persons who contradict rigorously proven mathematical theoremTheorem
In mathematics, a theorem is a statement that has been proven on the basis of previously established statements, such as other theorems, and previously accepted statements, such as axioms...
s, such as the impossibility of squaring the circle
Squaring the circle
Squaring the circle is a problem proposed by ancient geometers. It is the challenge of constructing a square with the same area as a given circle by using only a finite number of steps with compass and straightedge...
by ruler and compass, or who deny extremely well established physical theories, such as the special theory of relativity, conservation of mass-energy, or a round earth (See Flat Earth Society
Flat Earth Society
The Flat Earth Society is an organization that seeks to further the belief that the Earth is flat instead of an oblate spheroid. The modern organization was founded by Englishman Samuel Shenton in 1956 and was later led by Charles K...
). More engineer-minded cranks may claim to have invented a magic compression algorithm or a perpetual motion
Perpetual motion
Perpetual motion describes hypothetical machines that operate or produce useful work indefinitely and, more generally, hypothetical machines that produce more work or energy than they consume, whether they might operate indefinitely or not....
/ free energy
Second law of thermodynamics
The second law of thermodynamics is an expression of the tendency that over time, differences in temperature, pressure, and chemical potential equilibrate in an isolated physical system. From the state of thermodynamic equilibrium, the law deduced the principle of the increase of entropy and...
machine.
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
Continental drift
Continental drift is the movement of the Earth's continents relative to each other. The hypothesis that continents 'drift' was first put forward by Abraham Ortelius in 1596 and was fully developed by Alfred Wegener in 1912...
proposed by Alfred Wegener
Alfred Wegener
Alfred Lothar Wegener was a German scientist, geophysicist, and meteorologist.He is most notable for his theory of continental drift , proposed in 1912, which hypothesized that the continents were slowly drifting around the Earth...
was widely considered by contemporary geologist
Geologist
A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth as well as the processes and history that has shaped it. Geologists usually engage in studying geology. Geologists, studying more of an applied science than a theoretical one, must approach Geology using...
s to be cranky, but was eventually dramatically vindicated, albeit by plate tectonics
Plate tectonics
Plate tectonics is a scientific theory that describes the large scale motions of Earth's lithosphere...
, a mechanism of which Wegener had never dreamed.
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
Mathematical logic
Mathematical logic is a subfield of mathematics with close connections to foundations of mathematics, theoretical computer science and philosophical logic. The field includes both the mathematical study of logic and the applications of formal logic to other areas of mathematics...
which are often popularly misunderstood as having overthrown theorems previously regarded as true. 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
Non-Euclidean geometry
Non-Euclidean geometry is the term used to refer to two specific geometries which are, loosely speaking, obtained by negating the Euclidean parallel postulate, namely hyperbolic and elliptic geometry. This is one term which, for historical reasons, has a meaning in mathematics which is much...
or Gödel's incompleteness theorems
Gödel's incompleteness theorems
Gödel's incompleteness theorems are two theorems of mathematical logic that establish inherent limitations of all but the most trivial axiomatic systems capable of doing arithmetic. The theorems, proven by Kurt Gödel in 1931, are important both in mathematical logic and in the philosophy of...
.
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, for example, the Earth is flat
Flat Earth
The Flat Earth model is a belief that the Earth's shape is a plane or disk. Most ancient cultures have had conceptions of a flat Earth, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period ...
as making this assertion in the face of all counterarguments and contrary evidence. 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 mathematician and popular author Martin GardnerMartin Gardner
Martin Gardner was an American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, literature , philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion...
was a study of crank beliefs, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science
Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science
Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, also known just as 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
Underwood Dudley
Underwood Dudley is a mathematician, formerly of DePauw University, who has written a number of research works and textbooks but is best known for his popular writing. Most notable are several books describing crank mathematics by people who think they have squared the circle or done other...
has written a series of books on mathematical cranks, including The Trisectors, Mathematical Cranks, and Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras Wrought. And in a 1992 UseNet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
post, the mathematician John Baez humorously proposed a "checklist", the Crackpot index
Crackpot index
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. The method, proposed semi-seriously by mathematical physicist John Baez in 1992, computes an index by responses to a list of 36 questions, each...
, intended to "diagnose" cranky beliefs regarding contemporary physics.
According to these authors, virtually universal characteristics of cranks include:
- Cranks overestimate their own knowledge and ability, and underestimate that of acknowledged experts.
- Cranks insist that their alleged discoveries are urgently important.
- Cranks rarely, if ever, acknowledge any error, no matter how trivial.
- 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 achievement (real or alleged) 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:
- seriously misunderstand the mainstream opinion to which they believe that they are objecting,
- 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,
- compare themselves with GalileoGalileo GalileiGalileo Galilei , was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations and support for Copernicanism...
or CopernicusNicolaus CopernicusNicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance astronomer and the first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe....
(or in a religious context, NoahNoahNoah was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the tenth and last of the antediluvian Patriarchs. The biblical story of Noah is contained in chapters 6–9 of the book of Genesis, where he saves his family and representatives of all animals from the flood by constructing an ark...
), implying that the mere unpopularity of some belief is in itself evidence of plausibility, - claim that their ideas are being suppressed, typically by secret intelligence organizations, mainstream science, powerful business interests, or other groups which, they allege, are terrified by the possibility of their revolutionary insights becoming widely known,
- appear to regard themselves as persons of unique historical importance.
Cranks who contradict some mainstream opinion in some highly technical field, such as mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
or physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
, frequently:
- exhibit a marked lack of technical ability,
- misunderstand or fail to use standard notation and terminology,
- ignore fine distinctions which are essential to correctly understand mainstream belief.
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.
In addition, cranky scientific "theories" do not in fact qualify as theories
Scientific theory
A scientific theory comprises a collection of concepts, including abstractions of observable phenomena expressed as quantifiable properties, together with rules that express relationships between observations of such concepts...
as this term is commonly understood within science. For example, crank "theories" in physics typically fail to result in testable predictions, which makes them unfalsifiable and hence unscientific. Or the crank may present their ideas in such a confused, "not even wrong
Not even wrong
An argument that appears to be scientific is said to be not even wrong if it cannot be falsified by experiment or cannot be used to make predictions about the natural world. The phrase was coined by theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who was known for his colorful objections to incorrect or...
" manner that it is impossible to determine what they are actually claiming.
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.
Internet cranks
The rise of the Internet has given another outlet to people well outside the mainstream who may get labeled cranks through internet postingNewsgroup
A usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users in different locations. The term may be confusing to some, because it is usually a discussion group. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on...
s or website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
s promoting particular beliefs. There are a number of websites devoted to listing people as cranks. Community-edited websites like Wikipedia have been described as vulnerable to cranks.
Science fiction author and critic Bruce Sterling
Bruce Sterling
Michael Bruce Sterling is an American science fiction author, best known for his novels and his work on the Mirrorshades anthology, which helped define the cyberpunk genre.-Writings:...
noted in his essay in CATSCAN 13:
Online communication can wonderfully liberate the tender soul of some well-meaning personage who, for whatever reason, is physically uncharismatic. 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 CommissionTrilateral CommissionThe Trilateral Commission is a non-governmental, non-partisan discussion group founded by David Rockefeller in July 1973 to foster closer cooperation among the United States, Europe and Japan.-History:...
and the Men In BlackMen in BlackMen in Black , in American popular culture and in UFO conspiracy theories, are men dressed in black suits who claim to be government agents who harass or threaten UFO witnesses to keep them quiet about what they have seen. It is sometimes implied that they may be aliens themselves...
had previously denied them.
There are also newsgroups which are nominally devoted to discussing (alt.usenet.kooks) or poking fun at (alt.slack, alt.religion.kibology) supposed cranks.
Crank magnetism
Crank magnetism is a term popularized by physiologist and blogger Mark HoofnagleMark Hoofnagle
Mark Hoofnagle is an American medical doctor, physiologist and blogger. He was one of the originators of the concept of "denialism", especially in relation to global warming. His interest in denialism concerns the use of denialist tactics to confuse public understanding of scientific knowledge...
to describe the propensity of cranks to hold multiple irrational, unsupported or ludicrous beliefs that are often unrelated to one another. Crank magnetism may be considered to operate wherever a single person propounds a number of unrelated denialist conjectures, poorly supported conspiracy theories, or pseudoscientific
Pseudoscience
Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status...
claims. Thus, some of the common crank characteristics (see above)-- such as the lack of technical ability, ignorance of scientific terminology and claims that alternative ideas are being suppressed by the mainstream—may be operating on and manifested in multiple orthogonal assertions. For example, Hoofnagle's fellow blogger Orac has discussed crank magnetism in relation to the writings of British columnist Melanie Phillips
Melanie Phillips
Melanie Phillips is a British journalist and author. She began her career on the left of the political spectrum, writing for such publications as The Guardian and New Statesman. In the 1990s she moved to the right, and she now writes for the Daily Mail newspaper, covering political and social...
, who denies anthropogenic global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
and who has promoted Intelligent Design
Intelligent design
Intelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a form of creationism and a contemporary adaptation of the traditional teleological argument for...
and the discredited view that the MMR vaccine causes autism in children
MMR vaccine controversy
The MMR vaccine controversy was a case of scientific misconduct which triggered a health scare. It followed the publication in 1998 of a paper in the medical journal The Lancet which presented apparent evidence that autism spectrum disorders could be caused by the MMR vaccine, an immunization...
. Blogger Luke Scientiæ has commented on the relationship between the number of unrelated claims magnetic cranks make and the extent of their open hostility to science. He has also coined the phrase "magnetic hoax" in relation to hoax claims that attract multiple cranky interpretations.
Etymology
Old English cranc- is preserved only in crancstæf "a weaver's instrument".It is from a Proto-Germanic stem *krank- meaning "bend". German krank has 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 1872 for being applied to Horace Greeley
Horace Greeley
Horace Greeley was an American newspaper editor, a founder of the Liberal Republican Party, a reformer, a politician, and an outspoken opponent of slavery...
who was ridiculed during his campaign for the U.S. presidency. In 1882, the term was used to describe Charles Guiteau who shot U.S. president James Garfield
James Garfield
James Abram Garfield served as the 20th President of the United States, after completing nine consecutive terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. Garfield's accomplishments as President included a controversial resurgence of Presidential authority above Senatorial courtesy in executive...
.
In 1906, Nature
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...
offered essentially the same definition which is used here:
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:
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
Adjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
-form, kooky, was apparently coined as part of American teen-ager (or beatnik
Beatnik
Beatnik was a media stereotype of the 1950s and early 1960s that displayed the more superficial aspects of the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s and violent film images, along with a cartoonish depiction of the real-life people and the spiritual quest in Jack Kerouac's autobiographical...
) slang
Slang
Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...
, which derives from the pejorative meaning of the noun cuckoo. In late 1958, Edd Byrnes first played a hair-combing parking lot attendant called "Kookie" on 77 Sunset Strip
77 Sunset Strip
77 Sunset Strip is an hour-length American television private detective series created by Roy Huggins and starring Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Roger Smith, and Edd Byrnes....
. The noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
-form kook, may have first appeared in 1960 in Britain's Daily Mail
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...
newspaper:
See also
- Crackpot indexCrackpot indexThe crackpot index is a number that rates scientific claims or the individuals that make them, in conjunction with a method for computing that number. The method, proposed semi-seriously by mathematical physicist John Baez in 1992, computes an index by responses to a list of 36 questions, each...
- Eccentricity (behavior)Eccentricity (behavior)In popular usage, eccentricity refers to unusual or odd behavior on the part of an individual. This behavior would typically be perceived as unusual or unnecessary, without being demonstrably maladaptive...
- Illusory superiorityIllusory superiorityIllusory superiority is a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate their positive qualities and abilities and to underestimate their negative qualities, relative to others. This is evident in a variety of areas including intelligence, performance on tasks or tests, and the possession of...
- Independent scholarIndependent scholarAn independent scholar is anyone who conducts scholarly research outside universities and traditional academia. Independent scholars play an especially important role in areas such as art history and other humanities fields...
- Donna KossyDonna KossyDonna J. Kossy is a U.S. writer, zine publisher, and online used book dealer based in Portland, Oregon. Specializing in the history of "forgotten, discredited and extreme ideas", which she calls "crackpotology and kookology", she is better known for her books Kooks: A Guide to the Outer Limits of...
- Dunning-Kruger effectDunning-Kruger effectThe Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to recognize their mistakes....
- List of topics characterized as pseudoscience
- PseudohistoryPseudohistoryPseudohistory is a pejorative term applied to a type of historical revisionism, often involving sensational claims whose acceptance would require rewriting a significant amount of commonly accepted history, and based on methods that depart from standard historiographical conventions.Cryptohistory...
- PseudomathematicsPseudomathematicsPseudomathematics is a form of mathematics-like activity that does not work within the framework, definitions, rules, or rigor of formal mathematical models...
- Pseudophysics
- PseudosciencePseudosciencePseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status...
- Tallinna narrid ja narrikesedTallinna narrid ja narrikesedTallinna narrid ja narrikesed is a satirical 1892 series by Eduard Bornhöhe depicting cranks in their daily activities...
- Time CubeTime CubeTime Cube is a website created by Gene Ray, also known as Otis E. Ray, in 1997 where he sets out his personal model of reality, which he calls Time Cube. He suggests that all of modern physics is wrong, in addition to claiming religion to be evil, specifically Christianity, and the idea of family...
- Usenet celebrity
Spoofs
- Kibo
- Psychoceramics
Further reading
- Kossy, Donna. Kooks: A Guide to the Outer Limits of Human Belief, Los Angeles: Feral HouseFeral HouseFeral House is a book publisher owned and operated by Adam Parfrey. The publisher itself describes the books it sells as "pure information", and says the topics of the books are "forbidden"....
, 2001 (2nd ed. exp. from 1994). (ISBN 978-0-922915-67-5)