Callosity (pronounced kuh-los-i-tee)
(1) In pathology, an alternative name for a callus.
(2) In botany, a hardened or thickened part of a plant.
(3) In zoology, as ischial callosity, a large callus on
the butts of certain animals.
(4) In the human condition, being of a callous demeanor;
insensitivity or hard-heartedness
1375–1425: From the late Middle English calosite, from the Late Latin callōsitās, the construct being callōs(us) (callous) (from callum
(hardened skin) + -ōsus (the suffix added to a noun to form an adjective indicating
an abundance of that noun)) + -itās which in English was rendered as callus + -ity, the
substitute “o” a familiar device. The
–ity suffix was from the French -ité, from the Middle French -ité, from the Old French –ete & -eteit (-ity), from the Latin -itātem,
from -itās, from the primitive
Indo-European suffix –it. It was cognate with the Gothic –iþa (-th), the Old High German -ida (-th) and the Old English -þo, -þu & -þ (-th). It was used to
form nouns from adjectives (especially abstract nouns), thus most often
associated with nouns referring to the state, property, or quality of
conforming to the adjective's description.
Callosity is a noun; the noun
plural is callosities.
Essentially a thickening of the skin which forms in
response to damage, a callus is one of the body’s protective mechanisms and
example of how human skin have evolved to respond to a “fragile” area by
replacing it with something “anti-fragile”.
The skin is a good barrier to much which would be dangerous if able to penetrate
the surface but easily it can be cut and it’s prone to delimitation if exposed to
repeated friction, something well known to gardeners digging holes, the skin on
the palms of the hands soon “wearing off” at the points where the handle of the
shovel repeatedly rubs. That will be
painful but the body will respond, replacing the dead skin with new skin which
is thicker and harder, thus enabling the gardener to soon again pick up their
shovel and return to their excavations.
This is an example of the general principle of healthy human physiology
which responds to damage not by replacing things with something just as strong
but something stronger, able to resist whatever force it was which caused the
injury and it is the same with a bone fracture; when the bone knits back
together, it will not be merely as strong as it was but a little stronger. The new skin on the gardener’s hands will
also be stronger and as the holes continue to be dug, the skin will become more
robust still but the difference should not be thought of as fragile vs robust
but as fragile vs anti-fragile, the point being that as pressure is applied,
the material responds by becoming less-fragile.
Fragile and robust, although often used as antonyms (and
in general use usefully so because the meanings are so well conveyed and
understood) are really not opposites but simply degrees of the same thing. In the narrow technical sense an expression
of robustness or fragility is a measure of the same thing; a degree of
strength. The traditions of language
obscure this but it becomes clear if measures of fragility or robustness are
reduced to mathematics and expressed as comparative values in numbers. It's true that on such a continuum a point
could be set at which point something is regarded as no longer robust and
becomes defined as fragile (indeed this is the essence of stress-testing) but
this doesn't mean one is the antonym of the other. The opposite of fragile is actually anti-fragile
(the anti prefix was from the Ancient Greek ἀντι- (anti-) (against, hostile to, contrasting with the
norm, opposite of, reverse (also "like, reminiscent of"))). The concept is well known in physiology and
part of the object in some forms of strength training is to exploit the
propensity of muscles to tear at stress points, relying on the body to repair
these tears in a way that doesn’t restore them to their original form but makes
them stronger so that if subjected again to the same stress, a tear won’t
happen. It’s thus an act of anti-fragility,
the process illustrated also by the calluses which form on the hands after the
skin blisters in response to work.
Fragile and robust merely express points on a spectrum and are used
according to emphasize the extent of strength; anti-fragile is the true
opposite.
The idea of anti-fragile was introduced by Lebanese-born,
US-based mathematician and trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb (b 1960) in the book Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder (2012), the fourth of five works
which explore his ideas relation to uncertainty, randomness & probability,
the best-known and most influential was The
Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007). His work was thoughtful, intriguing and
practical and was well received although the more accessible writing he adopted
for the later volumes attracted criticism from some who felt an academic style
more suited to the complex nature of his material; probably few who read the
texts agreed with that. Apart from the
ideas and the use to which they can be put, his deconstruction of many
suppositions was also an exploration of the rigidities of thought we allow our
use of language to create.
Anti-callus devices (gloves the most common type) are used when the aim is to avoid the growth of a callus, the use of an “artificial callus” sometimes preferable to the natural. A carpet layer in knee pads (left) and bra strap “cushions” (right).
When the new areas of skin are called calluses (calli the
alternative plural), callus from the Latin callum
(hard skin). Most often used to describe
the hardened areas of skin (typically on hands & feet) induced as a
response to repeated friction, wear or use, in anatomy, the same word is
applied to the initially soft or cartilaginous substance exuded at the site of a
bone fracture which converts ultimately into bone, knitting the fragments into the
one piece. One the process fully is
complete, if again exposed to the same stress, the bone will not break. In botany, it’s used of the new formation
over the end of a cutting. Callus is a noun & verb, the calluses, the present
participle callusing and the past, callused.
In some professions, the callus can be close to essential;
those whose life involves supporting weights on their shoulders form them on
the pressure points, enabling them to ply their trade without undue pain or
further damage. However, not all whose
shoulders might suffer welcome calluses, however beneficial they might be: Women who wish to avoid what manufactures
term the “shoulder grooving” caused by the pressure of their bra’s shoulder
straps (the physics of this a product of (1) the weight supported and (2) its
surface distribution which is dictated essentially by the width of the strap)
can buy inserts for the straps which increase the surface area, thereby reducing
the specific loading by re-distributing the downward pressure. A variation on this idea is the “knee pad”
worn by those who lay carpets, floor tiles and such. These folk are compelled to work “on their
knees” for hours at a time, often upon hard and sometimes rough surfaces and although,
given time, calluses would form were the work to be performed unprotected, it
would not be a pleasant experience and the degree of hardening needed would
likely adversely affect normal mobility.
In zoology, calluses are a noted environmental adaptation among some
species, (Old World) gibbons, monkeys and some chimpanzees having evolved notably
large calluses on their butts (described as ischial callosities (the
seventeenth century ischium (from the
Latin ischium, from the Ancient Greek
ἰσχίον (iskhíon)
(hip joint)) describing the lowest of the three bones that make up each side of
the pelvis). On the animals so endowed,
the advantage is the ability to sleep while sitting upright on thin branches, safe
from both predators and the risk of falling.
Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.
In figurative use callosity came to be used to refer to
one with a lack of feeling or capacity for emotion but the use when documented
comes usually with the caveat that those so described are not “psychopaths” but
merely the “hard-hearted”. So it’s there
to be used and if it seems not to suit, English offers has quite an array of
choice when speaking of those lacking emotional range. There is “heartless” & “hard-hearted”,
both of which allude to the ancient idea of the special significance of the
heart as the source of all that human feeling and character; even now it’s
known to be a “just a pump”, the romantic notions persist in many culture and
variations of the ❤ symbol are among the most frequently used emojis. “Cold-blooded” is different in that although
it’s blood the heart pumps, the operative word really is “cold”, implying
decisions made or actions taken without emotion intruding and in idiomatic use,
a “cold-blooded murder” (such as a contract killing done for payment) is viewed
with less sympathy than a crime of passion (such murderers of said to have been
“seeing the red mist” of “hot” blood at the time of their crime. “Stolid” and “impassive” differs in that they
can often be virtues and anyway suggest not an absence of capacity for feeling
but its repression and one who wrote on how essential that was to civilization
yet simultaneous damaging to individuals was Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), his
ideas later taken up by German-American philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979). Mankind probably didn’t surprise Freud but
doubtless we disappointed Marcuse.
Finally, there is “stoic” which traces back to the Hellenic school of stoicism,
a philosophy with a great following in Antiquity which was intended always to
be practical, a way to help citizens live good lives rather than anything
concerned with abstractions. In its pure
form it survives in that form but the modern re-purposing of the word means it’s
now used to mean something like “suffering in silence”. “Callosity” then is one of many ways to refer
to the “unfeeling” and its use in this context is based on the use in medicine,
a callosity (ie a callus) being “skin of abnormal hardness & thickness”
which can be poked or pricked with the subject barely feeling the
intrusion. In that it’s subtly different
from “thick skinned” which usually means “not easily offended”.
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