Entelechy, citation indexes, and the association of ideas

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Abstract
Do you know what ‘entelechy’ means? It was in the title of a manuscript IJE received and it got me wondering what it meant and why the authors had used such an obscure word in their title. Indeed, one of our chosen reviewers (an eminent figure in gerontology) refused to read the manuscript as he did not understand the title. My more curious response was to look it up in the online Oxford Dictionary where all was revealed. Aristotle was the first to use the term as ‘the realization or complete expression of some function’, derived from the Greek meaning ‘to have perfection’. Catalano and Bruckner justify their use of entelechy as the most parsimonious means of communicating the idea of the effect of early-life adversities leading to failure of individuals or populations to achieve their expected lifespan.1 Using cohort life table data from Sweden, Denmark, and England and Wales, they find support for the diminished entelechy hypothesis as the life expectancy of cohorts experiencing higher mortality below the age of 5 years was lower than expected. The effect seemed to be much weaker in women suggesting that they are more resilient than men to adversity, a point taken up by our commentators.2 What does this add to our growing understanding of the early-life determinants of adult health? Will these relatively strong but non-specific signals marked by child mortality on late-life mortality make the detection of specific early-life exposures (e.g. diet, infections) operating at sensitive periods cumulatively more difficult given these pervasive general effects and the likely correlation between them and specific exposures?

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