We explain what normality is, why it depends on the point of view and its social use. Also, other uses of the term.
What is normal?
We understand normality as the condition of everything that is normal, that is, everything that conforms to the rules or responds to common expectations, that which is not extraordinary in any measure (neither positive nor negative).
This can mean, as the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy suggests, that the normal is what "is in its natural state", or that "is habitual or ordinary", or that "serves as a norm or rule".
The word normality comes from normal, and this in turn comes from standard, a word that in Latin was used to name the square used by masons and carpenters, with which they could verify that their works followed the desired measurements (that is, the measurements regular, predictable, habitual). This word seems to be a loan from the Greek voice we ignore: "what is well known" or "what is fully known".
The normal, however, (and therefore, the normality that can be constructed from it) is never an absolute and universal term, but rather depends on the point of view and the context.
For example, it is normal for a wild animal to eat its food raw, while the human being consumes it cooked; so that if we see a wild animal cooking or a human being devouring another animal raw, we can say that we are in the presence of something unusual or infrequent, that is, something abnormal.
Thus, there is a parameter of normality for almost everything and all areas of human knowledge, always related to the expectations we have of these matters.
Thus, for example, in medicine and public health this term is used to describe a relative health situation of a patient or a population, which does not mean that there are no diseases or that no one is dying; but compared to the outbreak of an epidemic, certain margins of illness and death are considered normal.
In other areas it is more problematic to speak of normality. For example, when it comes to the formation of couples in most societies, the normal is associated with heterosexual couples, despite the fact that homosexual couples have always existed in the history of humanity: in the Ancient Greece, without further ado, male homosexuality was completely normal.
This means that views of normalcy vary widely over time, and that it is always problematic to take strict stances on it in social and human affairs.
The French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984), in fact, wrote an important theoretical work on the way in which the idea of "normality" has been used over time to discriminate certain individuals and impose certain moral and political parameters, with the excuse of fighting something "abnormal" or "unnatural".
Even today there are "conversion therapies" and other dangerous practices with which some conservative sectors seek to "cure" or "normalize" homosexual people, usually causing irreparable damage in the process.
That is why in many cases the word "normed" is used to differentiate this relationship between behaviour human and social rules of the normal, that is, of the habitual state in which things occur by themselves in nature.
Other uses of the term normal
In the field of chemistry, the term Normality (expressed with the sign N) or Normal Concentration is used to express the concentration ratio that exists in a dissolution between solute and solvent. This relationship is expressed in chemical equivalents (EQ) or gram-equivalents of solute per liter of solution, and depends largely on the type of chemical reaction involved.