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When I was young, and out walking with a friend, he suddenly asked
"What kind of Bird is that?"
"I haven't the slightest idea"
"It’s a brown throated thrush, your father doesn't teach you anything!"
But it was the opposite. He had already taught me "See that bird? It’s a Spencers Warbler" (I knew he didn't know the real name) "Well in Italian it’s a Chuto Lapittida. In Portuguese it's a Bom da Peida. In Chinese it’s a Chung-long-tah, and in Japanese it's a Katano Tekeda. You can know the name of that bird in all the languages of the world, but when you've finished, you will know nothing whatever about the bird. You'll only know about humans in different places and what they call the bird. So lets look at the bird and see what its doing - that's what counts"
What a wonderful debunk of pseudo science! How often language is used to obscure rather than clarify!
Richard Gleick’s biography of Richard Feynman is full of such wonderful insights.
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