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I agree. But my take on what RPF had in mind by what he said, was
1) He said quite explicitly "In order to talk to each other,
we have to have words, and that's all right." And although he
didn't mention it, he was quite aware that knowing "only" the
name of a bird allows you to go home and look it up, whereupon
you know quite a bit more.
2) OTOH he was intentionally making a virtue of not knowing
the names. He made the same point on other occasions ("the
map of the cat"). I disagree with this, especially when it
is taken out of context and exaggerated, as it so often is.
If forced to choose between knowing the name and knowing the
physics, it is better to know the physics -- but this is a
goofy and vacuous statement, because we are _not_ forced to
choose.