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.
Bu hikaye The New Yorker dergisinin May 13, 2024 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Bu hikaye The New Yorker dergisinin May 13, 2024 sayısından alınmıştır.
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GET IT TOGETHER
In the beginning was the mob, and the mob was bad. In Gibbon’s 1776 “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” the Roman mob makes regular appearances, usually at the instigation of a demagogue, loudly demanding to be placated with free food and entertainment (“bread and circuses”), and, though they don’t get to rule, they sometimes get to choose who will.
GAINING CONTROL
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REBELS WITH A CAUSE
In the new FX/Hulu series “Say Nothing,” life as an armed revolutionary during the Troubles has—at least at first—an air of glamour.
AGAINST THE CURRENT
\"Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!,\" at Soho Rep, and \"Gatz,\" at the Public.
METAMORPHOSIS
The director Marielle Heller explores the feral side of child rearing.
THE BIG SPIN
A district attorney's office investigates how its prosecutors picked death-penalty juries.
THIS ELECTION JUST PROVES WHAT I ALREADY BELIEVED
I hate to say I told you so, but here we are. Kamala Harris’s loss will go down in history as a catastrophe that could have easily been avoided if more people had thought whatever I happen to think.
HOLD YOUR TONGUE
Can the world's most populous country protect its languages?
A LONG WAY HOME
Ordinarily, I hate staying at someone's house, but when Hugh and I visited his friend Mary in Maine we had no other choice.
YULE RULES
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