Talk:diagnosis

What does the cause have to do with diagnosis? You can be diagnosed with a disease for which the cause is not known. I would say that diagnosis has to do with relating symptoms to a known disease.

Babylonian Etymology
There are numerous references to the word "diagnosis" referring to Babylonia, and I cannot help but notice the word Gnosticism as the root. Is there a connection?

Twillisjr (talk) 14:35, 2 December 2012 (UTC)


 * The words are related, but not so much the concepts. When you diagnose something, you're figuring out what it is by learning what sets it apart from other things it might be: dia- is from the Greek for "apart" and gnosis is from the Greek for "knowledge". Gnosticism gets its name from the esoteric spiritual knowledge it claims to provide. Both have to do with knowledge, but of a completely different sort.Chuck Entz (talk) 23:10, 2 December 2012 (UTC)