'Automatica'

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 3/6/2003 1:48:04 PM Eastern Standard Time,
andrew.danielson at CMU.EDU writes:

> I just had a discussion with a [colleague] who is seeking an
> appropriate English term for a degree program. One option is
> 'Automatica' (whereas my suggestion was 'Automation and Information
> Theory'). The question came up whether 'Automatica' is indeed a valid
> English word. Since there is a journal with this title, it can't be
> competely wrong, but the word is not contained in the dictionaries I
> have. So I am wondering where this ending 'a' comes from. (It is not
> unique: There is, e.g., also a mathematical tool called 'Mathematica'.)
> My feeling is that Automatica stands for the subject or science of
> automation, but this is just a guess.
>
The ending "a" is from Latin.  It is used for the plural of some English
words such as "addenda", "corrigenda", "errata", "phenomena", "candelabra".
Just to be confusing, there is English "automaton" plural "automata".

There is a small number of English words which consist of an adjective ending
in "-ic" with the suffix "-a".  The only ones I can think of are "exotica"
amd "erotica".  In both these cases the meaning is more or less "a collection
of items to which the adjective applies", e.g. "erotica" is a collection of
erotic items.

Sometimes the suffix "-a" is added to an adjective not ending in "-ic".
Example: "Americana" which means a collection of items from or about the
United States [or the New World, depending on context].  Sometimes you meet
some ad-hoc or one-time coinages along this line, e.g. the curator of a
museum with a collection on the Hanoverian Kings of England might say he had
"Georgiana" or "Hanoveriana".

If I encountered the word "automatica" with no defining context, I would
guess it was the name of a museum of remote-control devices or a trade show
featuring robotic devices for factory work.  I would not guess it were an
engineering or scientific discipline covering automation and information
theory, although it would make an obvious pseudo-Latin title for a scholarly
journal covering the field.

Would the word "cybernetics" be useful here?  That word is not too common
nowadays, but it did inspire the Greek-English coinage "cyberspace".

"Mathematica" is not a good analogy, because to most people in the field it
refers to a pair of famous books, both called "Principia Mathematica" (the
Isaac Newton, and by Whitehead and Russell).

            James A. Landau
            systems engineer
            FAA Technical Center (ACB-510/BCI)
            Atlantic City Int'l Airport   NJ   08405   USA