I'm sorry,
kinesis fans, but you haven't persuaded me.
It's true, it's a term in biology. According to the online Oxford it means "An undirected movement of a cell, organism, or part in response to an external stimulus". It can also mean "Mobility of the bones of the skull, as in some birds and reptiles". As such, is it a term every schoolchild should know? I don't think so. I looked in a few glossaries of biological terms, and some had it; some didn't. Here's a usage example, courtesy of the OED:
The formation of cell aggregates is undoubtedly favoured by a non-directional movement of the cells, by a kinesis, with thigmotaxis taking over once contact is established.
The word can also be used in a more general sense, to mean movement. This generally seems to be in highbrow writings about art or philosophy. For example
For as regular sequence of events is in accordance with nature, so, too, regular sequence is observed in the actualization of kinesis (in consciousness), and here frequency tends to produce (the regularity of) nature.
Or Stephen Dedalus, in James Joyce's
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:
—He uses the word visa, said Stephen, to cover esthetic apprehensions of all kinds, whether through sight or hearing or through any other avenue of apprehension. This word, though it is vague, is clear enough to keep away good and evil which excite desire and loathing. It means certainly a stasis and not a kinesis. How about the true? It produces also a stasis of the mind. You would not write your name in pencil across the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle.
Or this:
Speaking of the winning image, Dr Chris Short, PhD, CSAD Senior Lecturer, Fine Art, notes "Like an encounter between Magritte and Ernst, the picture evokes tension and calm, lightness and weight, kinesis and stasis... exceeding other forms of representation."
The word may seem familiar because of the many brand names and other proper noun usages. The Wikipedia disambiguation page refers to a band, a keyboard, a magazine, a maker of bicycle frames, a holding company and a data processing platform. And there are plenty of other businesses that have adopted the name. All written with a capital
K and not relevant to Chi.
I'm not convinced
kinesis is a word that most Chihuahua player would know.
