The term "perfection" is actually used to designate a range of diverse, if often kindred, concepts. These concepts have historically been addressed in a number of discrete disciplines, notably mathematics, physics, chemistry, ethics, aesthetics, ontology and theology.

The term and the concept

The form of the word long fluctuated in various languages. The English language had the alternates, "perfection" and the Biblical "perfectness."

The word, "perfection" derives from the Latin "perfectio", and "perfect" — from "perfectus." These expressions in turn come from "perficio" — "to finish", "to bring to an end." "Perfectio(n)" thus literally means "a finishing", and "perfect(us)" — "finished", much as in grammatical parlance ("perfect tense").

Many modern languages have adopted their terms for the concept of "perfection" from the Latin: the French "parfait" and "perfection"; the Italian "perfetto" and "perfezione"; the English "perfect" and "perfection"; the Russian "совершенный" (sovyershenniy); the Croatian "dovershiti"; the Czech "dokonalost"; the Slovak "dokonaly" and "dokonalost"; the Polish "doskonały" and "doskonałość."

The genealogy of the concept of "perfection" reaches back beyond Latin, to Greek. The Greek equivalent of the Latin "perfectus" was "teleos." The latter Greek expression generally had concrete referents, such as a perfect physician or flutist, a perfect comedy or a perfect social system. Hence the Greek "teleiotes" was not yet so fraught with abstract and superlative associations as would be the Latin "perfectio" or the modern "perfection." To avoid the latter associations, the Greek term has generally been translated as "completeness" rather than "perfection."

1. which is complete — which contains all the requisite parts;

2. which is so good that nothing of the kind could be better;

3. which has attained its purpose.

Paradoxes

The paradox of perfection — that imperfection is perfect — applies not only to human affairs, but to technology. Thus, irregularity in semiconductor crystals (an imperfection, in the form of contaminants) is requisite for the production of semiconductors. The solution to the apparent paradox lies in a distinction between two concepts of "perfection": that of regularity, and that of utility. Imperfection is perfect in technology, in the sense that irregularity is useful.