Some 40 years ago I had a colleague named Helm (can’t recall his first name) who only half in jest proposed Helm’s Law: name it and it will go away. For example:
Mother: My child doesn’t speak. What is wrong with him?
Doctor: He is autistic.
Mother: Oh, now I understand.
The physicist Richard Feynman recalls his father (also a brilliant man, though only a tailor) teaching him that knowing the name of a bird tells you absolutely nothing about the bird itself. It only tells you the word that people in a given culture apply to animals that look like that.
I was once hospitalized for an intestinal problem that was eventually diagnosed as “idiopathic ileitis”, a fancy Latin name that essentially means “something unknown wrong with the digestive system”. But it had a name, so now it was understood…..
Helm’s Law seems to be applied in some fields more than in others. Psychotherapy is a rich source of examples, as is economics. Political science also provides some good examples. My own observation is that Helm’s Law seems to get used more in fields where fundamental understanding is in short supply.
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