10 Of The World's Most Fascinating Unsolved Problems

Is There A Universal Definition Of The Word, “Word”?

Source: Giphy

In linguistics, a word is the smallest utterance you can make that possesses some kind of meaning: either in the practical sense or the literal sense. A morpheme, while smaller and still able to communicate meaning, can’t always stand on its own conversationally. While you can see “—ness” and understand what it means (essence of), it wouldn’t be conversationally useful to you.

Every language in the world has its own lexicon which is subdivided into lemmas, which are the canonical form of particular words. Lemmas are extremely important in languages that rely heavily on inflection. Again, in the most general sense, a word is meant to be the smallest unit of speech that can stand alone and have meaning; though the fallacy in this definition comes in the form of words like “the” which don’t possess meaning on their own, free of surrounding context.

The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge

Source: Giphy

Since it began in 1964, around 1,000 people have applied for the Paranormal Challenge and no one has yet won the prize. The James Randi Educational Foundation offers $1 million to anyone who can scientifically prove a supernatural or paranormal ability. Over the years many high-profile psychic mediums have been encouraged to apply, though they categorically have declined. In order to apply, an individual is required to have a reference from an academic institution or some other “endorsement” of their respective sanity.

Even though not one of the 1,000 applicants proved their psychic ability in an observable, scientifically measurable way, Randi has said that “very few” of the applicants considered that their failure was caused by a lack of ability. Mostly, they just attributed it to nerves.

Since the foundation is offering a fairly well-backed strategy for measuring the viability of the claims of people like John Edwards, it’s kind of ironic that the overwhelming response is, “Nah, don’t validate me actually”. But then again, if one is to possess supernatural powers, it by definition cannot be explained by natural laws. And therein lies the problem.

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