You know how you can be typing on your computer and sometimes the wrong keys get under your fingers?

Well, when you are in the communications business, it can happen a lot. So thank goodness for spell checkers on computers. The downside is that you might spell the word correctly but use the wrong word such as “site,” “cite” and “sight.” There are those really smart computers that give you these options. My computer was not the valedictorian of its class. And sometimes I may spell a word so terribly wrong that my spell checker will simply report, “I got nothing!” 

There was a time when “Mississippi” was the biggest word I knew. But through the years, I have added a few, and I try to use one occasionally just for practice. There are times when I’m forced to learn big words. That has happened a lot lately in the medical venue.

Sometimes I discover a new word quite by accident. So I thought I was typing “oncology” but the letter “t” was just lying there on the keyboard not doing a thing, and when I hit the spell checker, I was looking at “ontology.” Well guess what, there is such a word. Too bad I wasn’t playing Scrabble.

Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence or reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations, according to Wikipedia. 

In other words, if you are sitting around pondering the lint in your navel or wondering if fish worry about what their babies will grow up to be, then you may very well be doing some ontology. Or you may have just finished a six-pack.

Ontology has its roots in ancient Greece. You’ve probably heard the expression, “I think, therefore I am.” But then there’s that question: “If I don’t think, where does that leave me?” Probably running for Congress.

Then I ran across another big word that I seriously doubt will have much practical application along my journey. It’s “epistemology.” It “studies the nature of knowledge, justification, and the rationality of belief.”  As well, it’s roots are in ancient Greece. I don’t even remember what I was trying to type when that option came up.

So the Greeks invented democracy, deep thinking and big words. And depending on your interpretation of naked sculptures, maybe they also gave us porn.

I took one philosophy class in college. It was an elective. The more bull one could shoot, seemingly the better grade one got. Of course you had to know the difference between Plato and Play-Doh and that Aristotle had nothing to do with tuning up a ‘57 Chevy. 

I remember a couple of things from that class: If your professor started out studying for the priesthood but wound up moonlighting as a bartender, your chances were really good that you would get a take-home final exam. And when it comes to philosophy, everybody has one. Some people just don’t know it. 

So I was fishing the other day, and I was watching the bubbles float past — particles of water that would never pass that way again. It was their one shot in the existence of the universe to brush against my cork. Pondering such must be ontology. 

And now for that guy who’s always sending me snide remarks and hacking on me about my musings … don’t confuse “ancient Greece” with cooking catfish too many times in the same oil. 

Dwain Walden is editor/publisher of The Moultrie Observer. Email: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com.