Blogg-Ed Indetermination

As a disciple and (I hope) practitioner of continuous improvement I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. But I know many people do, and if it helps them become better, I say go for it.

So in keeping with the season, I started thinking about the word “resolution.” I had never realized how many different ways the word is used.

(1) There is, of course, the meaning that is top of minds this time of year of “a firm decision to do or not something.”* It’s interesting that it’s the decision that’s important in this definition, not the actual results. Naturally, there is a web site devoted to New Year’s Resolutions.

(2) There’s also a more legalistic meaning of resolution ascribed to legislative bodies when they pass a resolution to make “a formal expression of opinion or intention.” For example, there’s House Resolution 117, “Honoring the contributions of Barbaro to the Commonwealths of Kentucky and Pennsylvania and to America’s horseracing industry.” (Barbaro was a horse but, apparently, not just any horse. The U.S. Government says so!)

(3) As a techie, I care a lot about resolution, as in the number of pixels on a computer display. The higher the resolution, the better the picture. Or so goes the argument. We’re reaching the point where TV resolutions are approaching the threshold where the human eye won’t be able to tell the difference anymore. I guess the resolution of our eyeballs have an upper limit.

(4) There’s a lot of the talk about the problems that President-Elect Obama is facing, and how he must bring “resolution” to them. All of them. Now. Though everybody wants their particular issue to have a successful resolution, they want their definition of success to prevail. Good luck. Sometimes the best resolutions are those which no one party fully likes.

(5) In medicine, doctors talk resolution as the “disappearance of inflammation, or of any other symptoms or conditions.” Inflammation is linked to so many diseases and disease risk factors I wish I could have some resolution in this area myself.

(6) Musicians use resolution to describe “the passing of discord into concord during the course of changing harmony.” Maybe this is what we mean when we say we need to  “get us all on the same page.” I always felt that expression referred to the same musical page, but perhaps it’s derivation is different than that. But certainly singing from different pages of the songbook has a great chance of being discordant. Here’s a short video demonstrating resolution playing a jazz saxophone.

(7) Linguists use resolution to mean the “substitution of two short syllables for a long one.” I found a completely indecipherable study that seems to be about such resolution entitled “Prosodic resolution of a syntactic ambiguity in Korean learners of English.” If anyone can translate this for me, please drop a comment here. I need resolution.

(8) Perhaps out of fear of appearing irresolute, scientists have there own definitions of resolution. Chemists use it to describe “the process of reducing or separating something into its components.” To apply this to our previous example with Mr. Obama, I guess it means that he may need to separate the many problems into smaller ones he is facing before he can work on them, meaning that resolution leads to further resolution. Makes sense, but seems likely to be an endless task.

(9) Physics was always my toughest subject in high school. I mean, particles that can be in two places at the same time? I just don’t get this quantum stuff. But anyway, in physics resolutions means “the replacing of a single force or other vector quantity by two or more jointly equivalent to it.” I need a little help here. Comments anyone?

Following the physics definition, the dictionary says: “the conversion of something abstract into another form.” Perhaps they don’t understand physics, either.

So there you have it. Nine meanings of “resolution.” Which one is most pertinent to your meaning of “resolution” for the New Year?

We know that the Beatles were already tuned into the multiplicity of these meanings with with their song – ahem – Resolution #9.

*All definitions are from the New Oxford American Dictionary.