Elucidions

Elucidions are a fictional or speculative class of informational quanta posited to mediate the spread of understanding within systems of inquiry. In thought experiments they are described as particles that move through networks of data, ideas, or neural connections, carrying small packets of explanation or clarity. They are not claimed to exist in the physical world; rather, they provide a conceptual tool for modeling how explanations may propagate.

The term draws on the root elucidare, meaning to make clear. In some fictional or theoretical frameworks, elucidions are imagined as boson-like quanta that interact with cognitive states and symbolic representations without introducing substantial disturbance to the surrounding information. They are often described as massless or nearly massless and capable of traveling at a speed associated with the pace of reasoning or inference. When absorbed by a computing agent or a thinking being, elucidions are said to increase the agent’s coherence about a relationship or mechanism.

Historically, elucidions appear in speculative philosophy and science fiction as a device to explain rapid insight, interdisciplinary transfer of ideas, or the transparency of AI processes. They are used to discuss how explanations might diffuse through communities or systems of thought, and how signals of understanding could be distinguished from noise.

Criticism emphasizes that elucidions are metaphorical rather than empirical, offering a heuristic rather than a real mechanism. Proponents argue they help formalize intuition about explanation and cognitive communication, while detractors caution against conflating metaphor with mechanism.

See also: epistemology, explanation, information theory, cognitive science, philosophy of science.