Between Names and Concepts: From 'Learn about' to 'Talk about'

Abstract

This lecture aims to shed light on the difference between names and concepts, i.e., between ‘learning from’ and ‘talking about’, based on the story that God taught names to Adam. Among the main results of the study: (i) if the names taught by God to Adam emanate from the knowledge of the essence of things, science, with its concepts and technical tools, does not really allow to penetrate the depth of things. (ii) If the so-called scientific concepts constitute an advance in the art of persuasion, they do not constitute an advance in the deepening of knowledge. Consequently, scientific conceptualization should not constitute the only horizon of the human being in the construction of his world (milieu, umwelt, fûdo 風土). As the progress of the philosophy of quantum physics has shown, science describes the human experience of reality, but not reality itself.