Toposphoid and the Abstract N-Dimensional Meta-rubber-sheet Philosophy
-- Update: I used "Toposphoid" as my character name in the Entropia Universe but haven't been in that virtual reality for some time, now. The old email address is gone.
I was chatting in the Jabber JDEV Conference Room the other day and through a fortuitous series of events (search for "csharpener") ended up using the term "toposophy" to describe a sort of "abstract n-dimensional meta-rubber-sheet philosophy." Another participant (ulrich) coined the words "semantropolis" and "semantopolis" to denote the virtual (Matrix-style) universe that might be based upon such a philosophical "foundation."
I hastened off to apply the "Google Test," meaning that I put "toposophy" in the Google search box, hit the enter key, and waited expectantly. If Google doesn't find anything for your new item, it has passed the "Google Test" and you may have actually coined a new word, term, or phrase. I quickly discovered that "toposophy" was already taken by Orion's Arm, an extremely cool "collective hard science SF worldbuilding endeavour." They defined Toposophy and specified this about it: "While technically speaking it applies to all mental growth, it is mainly used to denote the science of major mental paradigm shifts." Well, that's seriously awesome and I will be happy to keep searching for a different name for my concept of an abstract n-dimensional meta-rubber-sheet philosophy.
On the other hand, "semantropolis" and "semantopolis" passed the Google Test. The "semant-" prefix makes them especially interesting to the idea of rubber-sheet philosophy because of the connection to General Semantics and hence to A. E. van Vogt and his wonderful World of Null-A series. These terms fully deserve to be enshrined in some hard science SF universe and I will probably find some way to contribute them in a story for Orion's Arm.
Now, I was not quite done with "topo-" and coined "toposphoid," which passes the Google Test. I immediately laid "intellectual claim" to toposphoid (TM) ;) by creating a new email alias (now defunct) with it. The "topos-" prefix has a literary definition and a mathematical definition but I found the Wikipedia entry for Mathematical topos the most interesting with respect to the themes in this article.
So, this eChat turned out to be quite creationally generative for me and Toposphoid fully intends to find a new name for the idea of "abstract n-dimensional meta-rubber-sheet philosophy."