ideonomy
ideonomy noun: a combinatorial "science of ideas", for the categorization and analysis of any kind of idea.
Noun
ideonomy (uncountable)
- A combinatorial "science of ideas", for the categorization and analysis of any kind of idea.
- According to Gunkel, ideonomy is at the same time a fundamental science and applied science. The subject of research is ideas as such and the applicable laws.2022, Guido Enthoven, Seweryn Rudnicki, Rico Sneller, Towards a science of ideas, page 10
- My current favorite list is the 186 things ideonomy can do. As a young aspiring scientist, with nary a hint of irony, Gunkel sought to pitch ideonomy as the "use of same to describe, generate, investigate, or otherwise treat all possible ideas related to any subject, problem, thing, or other idea."2023, Marijn van der Poll, Rightbrainer: The Survival Handbook of Original Thoughts
Origin of ideonomy
Championed as the science of ideas by Patrick M. Gunkel (1947–2017), from ideo- + -nomy. Although Gunkel stated on the “About” page of his ideonomy website that “supposedly the word ideonomy was first coined by the French Encyclopedists” to refer to a science of ideas, no direct evidence of this coinage has been found to date.
Questions about ideonomy
- What does ideonomy mean?
- Ideonomy means a combinatorial "science of ideas", for the categorization and analysis of any kind of idea.
- What part of speech is ideonomy?
- Ideonomy is a noun.
Words near ideonomy in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: ideonomy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “ideonomy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ideonomy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.