Feynman's brown-throated thrush anecdote isn't saying that names don't serve a valuable purpose. As you've shown in your examples names are a tool to help us reference knowledge, but they are not the knowledge itself. Unfortunately people don't always make the distinction. This way of thinking may lead them to collect many references but very little real knowledge. That's the point I think Feynman was trying to make.

I find this point the trivial one. The surprising point is that names really do matter. I had no idea how many sycamore trees there are in NYC before I had a name for them; having a name also meant having a set of characteristics that let me label a tree as a "sycamore" - being able to apply a name to a thing also means recognizing the thing, and being able to communicate about it.

(Actually, probably London Plane trees, but don't let my ignorance get in the way of my point.)

He wasn't making a comment that the names don't matter - he was trying to rationalize why he gained an interest and appreciation for the deep-knowledge of science - not just how to look up reference material.

Names obviously matter - language and communication matter if we're going to collaborate on anything - but when it comes to science, to make new discoveries, the ability to look something up in a book is useless without the ability to understand how things actually work and fit together... and sometimes, books, and even the majority of people, are actually incorrect...

It's disingenuous to take that Feynman quote out of context and argue that it's an argument against naming... it's certainly not.

Exactly, here's the story Feynman told on the matter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05WS0WN7zMQ

Indeed. In Darwin's youth, he was obsessive about collecting and cataloging insects. I wouldn't exactly attribute his theory of evolution by natural selection to naming things, but certainly he would never have arrived at it if he was only able to name one kind of beetle. He had to be able to differentiate between thousands of beetles before he could see how they were connected.

> You get an identifier by which to look up all the collected knowledge of humanity on the brown-throated thrush

Judging from Google, the collected knowledge of humanity on the brown-throated thrush consists only of this Feynman anecdote in different variations.

I think Feynman's quote is meant that you should not learn only the name of things and pretend to understand what they are.

There's also another anecdote written by Feynman where he describes creating his own notation for trig, or maybe calc. At some point he had to abandon it because no one else understood him. The anecdote is not as quotable, but it correlates with what you said -- it gives you the ability to talk about it with other people, so Feynman is not ignorant of this.