I’m amazed by the way one word can fire off a whole line of thought.

This is a good one: quiddity.

The word “quiddity” (Latin quidditas) is one way to denote the idea of the real nature or essence of a thing, the very thing that makes it what it is. Literally, it translates as “whatness” or “what it is.”

That sounds very individualistic to an American ear, and “what is it” sounds like it might be referring to the truth about something. But it refers to what something has in common with other somethings of its type. It is the opposite of haecceity – the “thisness” of someone or something that makes it an individual being, separate from any other.

But quiddity has another meaning, and it is a strange one. How could a word that means the very essence of something, the very thing that sets it off from other types of beings – while still holding it in commonality with its own group – also be a quibble, a trivial objection, an academic point?

Maybe it’s a comment on itself. A quibble is also a narrative device that uses the precise literal conditions of an agreement in order to avoid the intended meaning.

Maybe all the searches for the essences of things, all the groupings – say, for example, stereotypes – are a kind of quibble. The labels and words that we use when we try to describe a unique thing tends to fall from haecceity to quiddity because individual words for individual beings would have no meaning between people. They cannot communicate anything more than some sort of group identity, even in the case of names (that signal species or nationality or history or paternity, etc.). Even names, unless they are very unique names, don’t communicate what is essential about a person or an animal. They are only signs.

And so they cannot carry the meaning of the “thisness” – only the “whatness.” We try to describe something essential – say, in a eulogy, or in trying to tell someone what makes them so special and unique – but we can only point to traits of commonality with others, and most of those are clichés anyway.

If you want to do statistical analysis – or a very literal biblical interpretation – or a phylogenetic diagram of the tree of life – then quiddity will serve to slice and dice your world. But in some circumstances, that’s a limited form of insight. That’s why I think stories and poetry do more for us, ultimately, than naming and organized sets.

Narrative and imaginative vision (music, painting, and so on) pull us together in a more essential way through our individual selves, whereas listing the commonalities (and assuming stable differences) sets us apart from one another – by group as well as by person.

So, lesson one for Adam was naming the animals, setting the categories based on… what?
I wonder what the upper lessons are (or would have been) in that story.