proleptics

From proleptic +‎ -ics.

proleptics (uncountable)

1. (medicine, obsolete) The art and science of predicting in medicine.
   • 1843 January, J. A. Walker, “Observations on Education, considered with reference to Physiology”, in The Phrenological Journal, and Magazine of Moral Science, volume 16, page 349:

     At the best, the student of proleptics will anticipate paralysis, premature senility, and asthenic apoplexy towards middle life, when he finds the pulse feeble, and the spirits correspondingly low in youth, unless remedial measures be adopted in good time, and persevered in with due diligence.

   • 1848, Thomas Laycock, “The periods regulating the recurrence of vital phenomena”, in Western Lancet, page 335:

     Of course the science of proleptics recognises no mysterious or supernatural agency more than is recognised in astronomy, or any other natural science; it is founded altogether on the observation of phenomena, with a special reference to the order in which they arise.

   • 1858, Edward Coit Rogers, Philosophy of Mysterious Agents, Human and Mundane, page 59:

     The periodical character of her nervous paroxysm, and the aggravation of the dynamic phenomena at some periods, show that both alike belong to the science of Proleptics.

2. (obsolete, more generally) The art of making of predictions.
   • 1860, Thomas Laycock, Mind and brain:

     The desire to know definitely and presciently is also one of the most urgent of the instincts proper of man; it leads him on to the most mystical speculations as to the future, and is the orectic basis of all the arts of divination, as well as of scientific Proleptics or anticipation of the order of nature.

   • 1873, Joseph Simms, An Original and Illustrated Physiological and Physiognomical Chart:

     try to divine the inevitable fortunes of your friends, and of the leaders and rulers of nations; endeavour to previse and forewarn; and study proleptics.

3. The act of making prophecies.
   • 1979, Erhardt Güttgemanns, Candid Questions Concerning Gospel Form Criticism, page 132:

     To be sure the anticipatory proleptics of the "historical survey in future-form" associated with pseudonymity rests upon the literary fiction of the pre-historicality of the revelation of these secrets; but this fictionality is intended to emphasize precisely by means of its esoteric quality that God will allow the elect righteous (cf. I Enoch 1:1) and wise persons (cf. I Enoch 100:6, 104:12) of the present day to participate already in his revelation that has proceeded from the mouths of the righeous and wise ones of pre-history, through the "literary" medium of the book.

   • 2001, Mark Allan Powell, Chasing the Eastern Star, page 18:

     Eschatology and proleptics aside, I think this is a really stupid way to read a mystery novel.

   • 2002, Dave Hill, Marxism Against Postmodernism in Educational Theory, page 257:

     Derridean "messianicity without messianism" that marks so much of post-modernist educational theorizing today, and that makes use of esotericism, sigetics, acroamatics, proleptics, and illocutionary and perlocutionary acts in the disguise of a new pedagogy of the unknowable, wasn't the answer ten years ago.

4. The elaboration and exploration of proleptic themes and ideas; the employment of prolepsis.
   • 2012, Harrison C. White, Identity and Control, page 282:

     Getting action can make use of prolepsis; that is, getting action may proceed by inveigling others to take an anachronistic view of the future. Either way, proleptics is for them an art of paradox.

   • 2016, Laurie Langbauer, The Juvenile Tradition: Young Writers and Prolepsis, 1750-1835, page 77:

     This is literary identity-formation in Harold Bloom's sense of the proleptics that lead to oneself, whether those origins are one's own early poems or other young writers that represent a new beginning for poetry.

   • 2019, Sarah Parker, ‎Ana Parejo Vadillo, Michael Field: Decadent Moderns, page 32:

     To a degree, this poem's temporality falls in line with what I have elsewhere described as Michael Field's proleptics—like them, Rossetti imagines a fruitful future, a posthumous fulfillment of her wishes.

   • 2023, Zachary Tavlin, Glancing Visions, page 177:

     On the proleptics of the American picturesque and Manifest Destiny politics, see Kris Fresonke, West of Emerson: The Design of Manifest Destiny (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003);

5. plural of proleptic.