The probably most well known expression of the ancient Greeks is the one of Archimedes running through the streets of Syracuse shouting out Heureka (εὕρηκα heúrēka) after he took a bath and suddenly understood that the volume of water displaced must be equal to the volume of the part of his body he had submerged.
Heureka roughly translates to “I have found (it)“. However, a fuller translation, closer to the original meaning, would be: “I am in a state of having found it“.
The infinitive of this ancient Greek verb is called heuriskein or in the first person heurísko (εὑρίσκω): I discover or I find.
The word heuristic comes also from heuriskein, but in an indirect way, namely from the derived adjective heureteos (roughly: discovered or found).
The superlative form of it is called “heuristos“: most discovered or found.
This word has found its way to the ancient Romans who called it heuristicus in Latin. Many modern languages like English, German, French, Spanish etc. imported this word from Latin.
Some dictionary definitions of the word heuristic and its original Greek form heuristos, in its modern use, are:
- constituting an educational method in which learning takes place through discoveries that result from investigations made by the student.
- encouraging a person to learn, discover, or solve problems on his or her own, as by experimenting, evaluating possible answers or solutions, or by trial and error
- pertaining to or based on experimentation, evaluation, or trial-and-error methods.
In my interpretation I use this blog to report on things, which I have found through experimentation, trial and error and other methods mostly involving some kind of mental or physical hard work.
Hence, heuristos – the essence of my dabbling through this world.
Links:
Dictionary definition of “heuristic”
Wikipedia: Eureka Archimedes
Discussion on the etymology of the word heuristic
