Chaophilia
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Spurious overemphasis of or oversubscription to chaos theory and/or its characteristic concepts. nonce-word, rare, uncountable
"[H]ow can we not deplore the all too frequent distortions of “importations” by anthropologists who think they are “hardening” their discipline by consistently using the language of the “hard” sciences? This is a particularly pernicious form of popularization…Whence the “Gödelism,” “chaophilia,” and other “complexolatries” of certain social scientists, who are doing nothing to help their own disciplines[.]"
Example
More examples"[H]ow can we not deplore the all too frequent distortions of “importations” by anthropologists who think they are “hardening” their discipline by consistently using the language of the “hard” sciences? This is a particularly pernicious form of popularization…Whence the “Gödelism,” “chaophilia,” and other “complexolatries” of certain social scientists, who are doing nothing to help their own disciplines[.]"
Etymology
From chao- + -philia. By surface analysis, chao- + -phile + -i- + -a.
Related phrases
More for "chaophilia"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.