To name something—to separate it from the rest of existence and bestow a label on it—is a foundational act. It is the beginning of understanding and control...God brought him creatures 'to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.'
Psychologists say that we intuitively treat categorical distinctions—whether among fruits, emotions, or ethnic groups—as if (in Plato's famous metaphor) they carved nature at its joints...
No sector of human activity is as serious about naming, or as intent on respecting natural kinds, as science. Across centuries of debate and revision, fields such as physics, chemistry, and biology have refined nomenclatures to better align with the natural order... Psychiatry, at first, looks like another success story. Years of research and clinical observation have yielded catalogues of presumed mental dysfunction, culminating in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM.
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