Words, Words, Words

Richard Feynman’s dad gave him an excellent example of confusing knowing the name of something with having knowledge about that thing:

“The general principle is that things which are moving tend to keep on moving, and things which are standing still tend to stand still, unless you push them hard. This tendency is called ‘inertia,’ but nobody knows why it’s true.”

In other words, “Inertia” is a term to describe observed behavior: it is not an explanation of the observed behavior. And yet most of us walk out of our physics class thinking we got an explanation!

Next, take this example of how terms we coin can then mislead us when we continue to use those terms beyond their original context. In his book, Climbing Mount Improbable, Richard Dawkins cites one objection that many throw at the theory of evolution: if evolution is so gradual and happens incrementally rather than in big jumps, why don’t we find fossils corresponding to the gradual change? Why do we have fossils of one species or the other but never of one in between the two? Yes, we know that not all species fossilize, but by pure statistics, surely we should have found at least some intermediates? The surprising refutation to this objection: naming conventions! Let Dawkins explain:

“No ‘missing link’, however precisely intermediate it was, could escape the terminological force majeure that would thrust it one side of the divide or the other. The proper way to look for intermediates is to forget the naming of fossils and look, instead, at their actual shape and size. When you do that, you find that the fossil record abounds in beautifully gradual transitions.”

And then there was Homer’s time, where they didn’t even have a word for a color as common as (hold your breath) ‘blue’! Apparently that’s why his description of the sky or the sea in his epics sounds (depending on your point of view) so descriptive or crazy.

As Obelix would say, when it comes to words, “These humans are crazy!”