No less an authority than Aristotle urged that before embarking on any serious study, it would behoove one to have a definition of the topic at hand. The Stagirite's advice (as per usual) is sound, commonsensical even. Following that advice, rather, is anything but simple. For Aristotle, a good definition lies not in the mere disclosure of a word's “meaning”—what philosophers call its nominal definition—but in the discovery of the very “essence” (that is, “the what it is to be”) of the thing the word signifies—known, by contrast, as its real definition. The quest for essences is alive and well within certain branches of scientific inquiry—focused, for instance, on unraveling the fundamental natures of matter, time, and space—and it thus makes sense as an operative principle within the contrived setting that the laboratory (uniquely) provides. It ultimately fails, however, as a reliable guide to lived human realities, shaped as they...

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