ABSTRACT
A name can act as a myth … as the declaration and charter of a readiness to act. Lots of subjects in natural science, as well as social science, begin as names, claims on areas and methods of which we are in fact yet ignorant, promises and programmes to which credence can be attached. And names, too, are fences – devices by which people can be excluded as illegitimate, trespassers on a territory staked out as private property, even if not, in fact, explored and tested for ore.
