Acatalectic

ACATALECTIC. - From the Greek ἀκαταληψία (a priv. and καταλαμβάνειν, percipio, comprehendo), it is the impossibility of apprehending the true. In its substantive form the term appears for the first time in Cicero (Att. 13, 19, 3), then in Sextus Empiricus and in Diogenes Laertius (cf. prooem. 16), but the corresponding adjective ἀκατάληπτος is older and goes back to the Stoics, who used it joined to φαντασία (representation) to distinguish that which does not correspond to the real, or whose object does not exist at all, from that which proceeds from a real object and corresponds to it, called precisely καταληπτική or κατάληψις (Cic., Acad., II, 145 "Zeno... nomen... quod ante non fuerat, e imposuit"). Outside this technical use ἀκατάληπτος meant "not knowable in its reality." That all things were such was taught at the same time by Pyrrho of Elis (early 3rd century B.C.), founder of the Skeptical School, and by Arcesilaus (315-241), who gave the Middle Academy the skeptical direction which it maintained until Philo of Larissa, who was the teacher of Cicero. A direct consequence of a. was the suspension of judgment (ἐποχή), and, in the practical sphere, the pursuit of ataraxia or absence of disturbance, also called apatheia. The term is taken up again by Bacon in the sense of skeptical doubt, to which he opposes methodical doubt: cf. Nov. Org., I, 126: "nos vero non acatalepsiam sed eucatalepsiam meditamur."