English

Noun

agnosy ‎(countable and uncountable, plural agnosies)

1. (uncountable) A lack of spiritual understanding or insight; a lack of enlightenment.
   • 1893, Theosophical Review - Volume 12, page 461:

     Triad above all substance, super-divine and above the good, guide of the Christians into the Divine Wisdom, conducting us to that above agnosy, i.e., the unknowable, to the highest clearness and the super-eminent height

   • 1963, Zeitschrift Für Romanische Philologie, page 340:

     Just as agnosy is the great evil to the Hermetist, so is Parzival's zwivel at the root of all his tribulations.

   • 1984, Henry Kahane & ‎Renée Kahane, The Krater and the Grail: Hermetic Sources of the Parzival, page 45:

     Before man receives the grace of revelation, he lives in agnosy: he does not know God, the gnostic God who is his father and the source of revelation; he does not know himself as the son of God.

   • 2015, Isaac Myer, Qabbalah: The Philosophical Writings of Solomon Ben Yehudah Ibn Gebirol, ISBN 1507604556, page 458:

     And then (the man,) delivered as much from that which is seen as from that which sees, penetrates into the true mystic obscurity and darkness of the agnosy;

2. (countable, neurology) A deficit in the ability to perceive.
   • 1975, Martha Davis, Recognition of facial expression, page 17:

     This "mimic agnosy" will be removed only through very prolonged maturation and learning.

   • 1985, Psychology, psychopathology, psychiatry, page 467:

     Music perception disorders from neurological origin (the 3 levels of musical perception désintégration considered as auditory agnosy).

   • 1993, The Italian Journal of Neurological Sciences: Supplementum:

     Neuropsychological examination performed two weeks after the stroke revealed normal speech and auditory verbal comprehension and no number dyslexia, acalculia, colour and digital agnosy.

   • 2010, JL Petit, “A Husserlian, Neurophenomenologic Approach to Embodiment”, in Handbook of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science:

     Somato-agnosies vary widely, and somato-paraphrenia is one of the examples of this inability to recognize a part of the body as one's own.

   • 2010, L Gangoiti & IM Villafruela, “Initiation of the most appropriate post-stroke rehabilitation”, in Diabetologḯa, volume 26:

     The problems related to the visual-spatial difficulties are due to the loss of spatial references, either due to problems of the visual field loss or perceptive problems (agnosy), attention problems or difficulties of the executive function, which cause an inefficient search of information.

   • 2013, Norberto Confalonieri & ‎Sergio Romagnoli, Small Implants in Knee Reconstruction, ISBN 8847026555, page 3:

     These advantages also play a role in treatment for special indication such as in patients with neurological problems (e.g. Parkinson's disease), in whom a total replacement leads to a worsening of the underlying disease whereas compartmental reconstruction avoids the effect of somato-agnosy (loss of sensation of a body part).

3. (countable, neurology) A patient suffering from an agnosy.
   • 2000 October, M Sitton, MC Mozer, & MJ Farah, “Superadditive effects of multiple lesions in a connectionist architecture: Implications for the neuropsychology of optic aphasia.”, in Psychological Review, volume 107:

     Finally, optic aphasics are usually described as being unimpaired in everyday life, whereas agnosies are often noticeably handicapped by their inability to recognize objects, people, and locales.

4. (uncountable, rare) Ignorance, especially that which is common to a group or category of people.
   • 1987, Porter Gulch Review - Volume 3, Issue 1, page 14:

     Your logic is faulty, reflecting cachexia and the general agnosy that plagues your race.

   • 1993, George Dimitriadis, The Importance of Hahnemann's Organon:

     That Organon remains largely unstudied and even ignored reveals the real agnosy of our institutions and teachers charged with training future generations of homœopaths.

   • 2011, David Brin, The Uplift War, ISBN 1405514450:

     No historical anecdote had ever brought home to Fiben so well just how much agnosy and craziness poor human mels and fems had endured.