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The science of naming.

Started by Kai, August 18, 2009, 08:43:37 PM

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Bruno

They have their fields of expertise, such as mycology, and tye-dyeology, but apparently entomology arthropology bugology isn't one of them.
Formerly something else...

Kai

Quote from: Jerry_Frankster on August 22, 2009, 04:42:26 PM
They have their fields of expertise, such as mycology, and tye-dyeology, but apparently entomology arthropology bugology isn't one of them.

Entomology comes from the greek en-tome, meaning cut into, essentially to be jointed or segmented. It covers all arthropods except arachnids (Arachnidology) and crustaceans (Carcinology), although these groups often fall under the umbrella of Entomology in academics.
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Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
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ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞

I've been plagued by a very similar problem—if not the same one—for quite some time now.

Recently I've come across Sorites Paradox, which really is a set of similar ideas. It goes, "Would you call 1 grain of wheat a heap?" ... "How about 2 grains?" ... "When does it become a heap then?"

The link has some interesting responses to it:

Quote from: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The inclination to validate all the premises of a sorites argument (along with the inference pattern employed, which the Stoics accepted) was to be explained via ignorance—more exactly, the unknowable nature of the relevant sharp semantic boundary.

In this way the threat of wholesale scepticism urged by the Sceptics was met by the limited scepticism arising from our inability to know the precise boundaries to knowledge. 'Nothing can be known' was rejected in favour of 'The precise boundaries to knowledge itself cannot be known'.


and especially this one:

Quote from: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

In the second half of this century there have been a number of attempts to develop non-classical logics of vagueness, a major constraint being the provision of a solution to the sorites paradox. The extent of the proposed logical innovation varies.


Do any of the responses to the sorite's paradox relate to the competing taxonomic systems you discussed?
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