To name something-to separate Tit from the rest of existence and bestow a label on it is a foundational act. It is the beginning of understanding and control. In Genesis, the first thing God did after splitting light from darkness was to call the light "day" and the darkness "night." After Adam was created and let loose in the Garden of Eden, his original job was human label-maker. God brought him creatures "to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name."
If Adam was like most people, he probably set about attaching names to "natural kinds"-groupings seemingly dictated by inherent features of the natural world. Referring to a group of animals as "pigs," he would have assumed that the critters so designated all shared properties that differentiated them from every other non-pig animal. 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.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May 13, 2024 من The New Yorker.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
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هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May 13, 2024 من The New Yorker.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
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President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.
