Presented by Zia H Shah MD

Abstract

Across chemistry, biology, and psychiatry, “nomenclature” is not a casual habit of naming. It is a collectively governed technology: experts convene, argue over categories, write rules, open them to critique, vote, revise, and then teach the resulting conventions until they become second nature. This is visible in chemistry’s move from early reform efforts to the formal standards process of International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), including public-comment procedures and formal ratification steps that determine what counts as an “official” scientific name.  In biology, the same impulse appears as multiple “codes” (animals, plants, prokaryotes, viruses), each with its own governance mechanism and amendment pathway—often explicitly retroactive to a starting date chosen to stabilize the historical record.  In psychiatry, disease nomenclature in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) is repeatedly renegotiated via committees, evidence reviews, field trials, and formal institutional approval—sometimes under intense scientific and social pressure. 

Arabic offers a different—but related—lens on “organized naming”: its root-and-pattern morphology uses a constrained grid of verbal “forms” that systematically derive families of meanings from a triliteral root.  This kind of structure can be read in two ways: as a product of long cultural evolution and coordination, or (as many theistic traditions argue) as a sign that human symbolic capacity—language itself—was first bestowed and then unfolded over time. Medieval Islamic scholarship explicitly debated this question under the headings of tawqīf (divine bestowal) and iṣṭilāḥ (human convention). 

How chemical nomenclature becomes a shared language

Modern chemical nomenclature grew out of a practical crisis: chemists in different countries, subfields, and publishing cultures needed names that could travel reliably across languages, laboratories, and reference works.  That need repeatedly pushed chemistry toward international coordination rather than isolated local usage—first through meetings and congresses, and later through standing organizations whose explicit mission included “standardization of… names and symbols.” 

A pivotal historical step in this story is the late–19th-century push to connect names to structural representations. According to historical analysis of the 1892 Geneva nomenclature congress, a major outcome was the codification of rules that map structural formulas into names—making the name, in effect, a structured statement about the diagram.  That “diagram → name” ideal is not merely aesthetic; it enables indexing, retrieval, and unambiguous reference—especially when chemistry scales into massive literatures and databases. 

By the early 20th century, the motivations for standardization were being articulated institutionally, not just intellectually. IUPAC’s own history notes that even before IUPAC’s formal founding in 1919, a predecessor body—International Association of Chemical Societies—met in Paris in 1911 and listed “nomenclature of inorganic and organic chemistry” among core targets for international coordination.  In the same historical framing, the “Geneva Nomenclature of 1892” is described as an early international attempt at organizing organic chemical nomenclature, emerging from earlier international meetings (including one organized by August Kekulé in 1860). 

What makes chemical nomenclature especially revealing is that its orderliness is produced through explicit, traceable procedures—not vague “consensus” in the abstract. IUPAC publicly describes a pathway for “Provisional Recommendations”: draft recommendations circulate for a defined commentary period (IUPAC states “4 months”), after which authors incorporate feedback and then publish the final recommendations.  The underlying procedural document emphasizes the goal of worldwide comment and possible revision, while still enabling eventual approval and adoption “as rapidly as possible.”  These recommendations are then published (among other venues) in Pure and Applied Chemistry. 

A concrete, modern example of “agreement by design” is the naming of newly discovered chemical elements. IUPAC’s published procedure describes a multi-stage process: discovery must be established under agreed criteria, the discoverers are invited to propose a name and symbol, and the proposal is evaluated and then opened to public review/comment before final approval and publication (with the IUPAC Council explicitly involved in the final step).  This is not chance; it is governance.

Finally, chemical nomenclature is not static. An IUPAC-oriented nomenclature guide emphasizes that new classes of compounds force innovation, and that naming systems are continually extended and revised as chemistry evolves.  That dynamism is itself a kind of disciplined creativity: the “beauty” of the system lies not in never changing, but in changing without collapsing into disorder.

Biological nomenclature as rule-of-law for naming life

Biology faces a different naming problem than chemistry: its objects of reference are historically discovered populations and lineages, often with messy boundaries and competing classification philosophies. The result is not one universal biological nomenclature authority, but a plurality of codes—each a formal constitution for naming within a domain.

The Linnaean “two-term” name is the cultural symbol of biological naming, but the deeper infrastructure is legalistic. In zoology, for example, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature fixes an explicit starting point: the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature specifies that 1 January 1758 is “arbitrarily fixed” as the starting point of zoological nomenclature.  The commission’s public-facing materials connect that date to Carl Linnaeus and his binominal naming in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae. 

In botany (and the organisms historically grouped with it), the International Association for Plant Taxonomy explains the deep historical roots of naming and marks 1753 (Species plantarum) as a landmark; it also traces later codification to Alphonse de Candolle’s 1867 rules and to successive editions of the modern code.  The current International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants explicitly treats valid publication as beginning at 1 May 1753 (tied to Linnaeus’s 1753 work), making the historical anchor part of the rule system itself. 

What matters for your theme—“agreements don’t happen accidentally”—is that these codes have formal amendment rules. Even in zoology, amendments are constrained: the code includes articles describing how changes must be proposed and adopted, rather than casually introduced.  In botany, the code is revised through formal congress procedure; recent documentation surrounding the “Madrid Code” notes that hundreds of proposals for change can be submitted and adjudicated, with acceptance/rejection outcomes recorded. 

Biological nomenclature also shows how “beauty” and “complexity” can generate controversy. A recent high-profile example concerns replacing longstanding scientific epithets judged derogatory: reporting on decisions around the term caffra emphasizes that changes implicate the stability principle of taxonomy versus the ethical impulse to remove offensive language.  Even here, the point remains: whatever one thinks of the outcome, the mechanism is not blind accident; it is a structured negotiation conducted under formal rules and institutions.

Finally, other biological domains have their own governance. Prokaryote naming is managed under a dedicated code and committee structure. An official statement from the International Committee on Systematics of Prokaryotes describes how the code was revised (with an editorial board compiling changes and the membership voting), and how the revised text was then published.  Viral naming likewise runs through a specialized authority, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, which evaluates and ratifies taxonomic proposals through an internal governance process rather than informal custom. 

Psychiatric disease nomenclature and its revisions over time

Psychiatric nomenclature is uniquely sensitive because the “names” do not merely label molecules or organisms; they shape social identity, legal judgments, insurance coverage, research funding, and clinical pathways. The history of the DSM shows a sustained attempt to make mental disorder classification rule-governed, consistently applied, and revisable under evidence and critique—while acknowledging that psychiatry’s objects are conceptually contested.

A historical review in Indian Journal of Psychiatry traces a pre-DSM lineage (including wartime classification systems and the inclusion of a mental disorders chapter in ICD-6 in 1949) and then identifies the institutional turning point: in 1950, American Psychiatric Association set up a committee on nomenclature and statistics, which published the first DSM in 1952.  The same review provides a clear revision timeline: DSM-II (1968), DSM-III (1980), DSM-III-R (1987), DSM-IV (1994), and DSM-IV-TR (2000), and it explains that DSM-5 was deliberately labeled with an Arabic numeral to enable incremental future updates (e.g., 5.1, 5.2). 

Crucially, DSM revision is not done by mere editorial whim. A description of DSM-5’s development history notes multi-year planning: conferences beginning in 1999–2000, a research agenda, and a sequence of international conferences co-sponsored with bodies such as National Institute of Mental Health and the WHO before the DSM-5 task force and work groups were assembled.  That same development account emphasizes the scale and structure of the enterprise (work groups, review processes, and conflict-of-interest vetting). 

The DSM-5 revision also included empirical testing in the form of field trials. A study describing DSM-5 field trial procedures states explicitly that, prior to the May 2013 release, the APA conducted field trials to examine feasibility, clinical utility, reliability, and (where possible) validity of proposed DSM-5 criteria and dimensional measures.  The earlier historical review similarly describes an intensive process that included field trials, repeated revision, feedback from stakeholders (including the public and patient groups), and eventual approval by the APA’s Board of Trustees, concluding with the DSM-5 publication on May 18, 2013. 

A vivid illustration of “nomenclature revised over years” is the changing classification of homosexuality. A detailed historical paper notes that in 1973 the APA removed “homosexuality” as a diagnosis from DSM-II after weighing competing theories (pathologizing versus normal-variation frameworks).  The same paper shows that even after that decision, intermediate categories appeared and were later removed (e.g., “ego-dystonic homosexuality” removed in DSM-III-R in 1987), underscoring that psychiatric nomenclature evolves through contested stages rather than a single clean break. 

Psychiatric nomenclature also interacts tightly with the ICD, which is a global standard maintained by the World Health Organization. The WHO’s description of ICD-11 emphasizes that it is a legally mandated health data standard and notes that ICD-11 has been “in effect from January 2022,” reflecting the modern role of classification as a digital, interoperable infrastructure.  For the mental disorders chapter specifically, WHO communications in 2024 highlight the release of a new clinical manual intended to support diagnosis of the ICD-11 mental, behavioural and neurodevelopmental disorders—an example of continuing refinement even after ICD-11’s activation. 

Finally, the DSM itself has moved toward “living document” dynamics. The APA’s public description of DSM-5-TR says it incorporates scientific-literature updates with contributions from hundreds of experts and includes new diagnoses and criterion modifications across many disorders.  A technical overview of DSM-5-TR clarifies that the 2022 text revision combined (1) an ongoing, iterative revision mechanism that began soon after DSM-5 (2013) and (2) a complementary text revision process that began in 2019, with review groups and cross-cutting equity-focused review. 

Arabic verb derivation and Arabic language organization

Arabic displays a kind of internal “nomenclature” that is not primarily institutional but morphological: a disciplined way of generating meaning through patterned derivation. In A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic, Arabic is described as having a “ten-form template,” a verb grid into which a triliteral root can (theoretically) interlock to yield ten derived variants—each with a related core meaning but a different semantic slant.  The grammar also notes that additional derived forms (XI–XV) exist but are much rarer, reinforcing that the system is both structured and statistically constrained in real usage. 

A key feature of this tradition is formal modeling. Arabic grammarians historically used a model root—represented by the consonants f–ʿ–l (faaʾ–ʿayn–laam)—as an abstract template to illustrate patterns (awzān, “weights/measures”). This practice is described as centuries old and still used today, enabling speakers and learners to reason about morphology by mapping any root into a known pattern.  In the same account, “Form I” is presented as the morphologically simplest (“stripped,” mujarrad), while Forms II–X are “augmented” (mazīd). 

Twelve examples of triliteral derived verb forms

The list below is meant to make the system visible—not as an abstract claim, but as a set of patterned transformations that recur across the language. The forms and example verbs are drawn from Ryding’s reference grammar (transliteration and glosses follow that source’s conventions). 

Derived form	Pattern intuition (very rough)	Example verb (as cited)	Gloss
Form I	baseline lexical action/state	baHath-a / ya-bHath-u	“to discuss”
Form I	baseline lexical action/state	katab-a	“to write”
Form II	intensification/causation often via consonant doubling	sabbab-a / yu-sabbib-u	“to cause”
Form II	derivation with systematic internal change	Sawwar-a / yu-Sawwir-u	“to photograph”
Form III	often relational/interactive nuance	Haawar-a	“talk, debate, argue”
Form IV	often causative/“make/do” nuance via prefixing	√arsala	“to send”
Form V	often reflexive/inchoative counterpart of Form II	taghayyar-a / ya-taghayyar-u	“to change (intr.)”
Form VI	often reciprocal/intransitive counterpart of Form III	tashaawar-a / ya-tashaawar-u	“to deliberate; consult one another”
Form VII	often intransitive/result state of Form I	fa-nfataH-a (after “I opened… and it opened”)	“it opened”
Form VIII	often involves infixed t and nuanced derivation	ixtaar-a / ya-xtaar-u	“to choose”
Form IX	strongly associated with colors/defects/stative changes	iswadd-a / ya-swadd-u	“to become black”
Form X	often seeks/considers/requests via ista- prefixing	istankar-a / ya-stankir-u	“to disdain; detest”

What is striking—especially for someone thinking philosophically about “chance”—is that this is not a loose set of idioms. It is a partially productive system: a restricted inventory of templates repeatedly applied to roots, with compositional semantics often (though not always) allowing meanings to be reasoned about from “root meaning + template meaning,” even when historical drift sometimes obscures the transparency. 

Arabic institutional language planning

Arabic also has external organization—language planning that parallels scientific standardization. The Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo describes its origin in a formal 1932 decree establishing the academy and stating goals such as preserving the integrity of Arabic and making it adequate for the needs of science and arts, producing a historical dictionary, and studying modern dialects.  The founding decree further indicates that the academy publishes lists of expressions to adopt or avoid and explicitly “accepts public discussions and suggestions,” again echoing the procedural logic of standards bodies. 

More broadly, a study of Arabic scientific terminology notes that contact with Western scientific modernity created pressure for lexical reform, and it describes a proliferation of language academies across Arab countries; it also reports efforts to coordinate this work, including a summit conference of academies and later the creation of a coordination bureau for Arabization.  In short: Arabic’s beauty includes both an internal morphological architecture and an external institutional architecture.

Reading order and structure as evidence

Your prompt presses a philosophical claim: systems this organized—scientific nomenclatures agreed through institutions, and Arabic morphology with its patterned derivations—“cannot be accidental and blind.” The evidence assembled above supports at least one firm conclusion: these systems are not random. They arise through intentional agency—human minds coordinating over time through explicit procedures, institutional memory, and disciplined abstraction. In chemistry, IUPAC’s published public-comment process, technical review pathway, and formal ratification mechanisms are direct evidence of non-accidental coordination.  In biology and psychiatry, starting points, codes, ballots, field trials, and versioned revisions serve the same function: they convert disagreement into workable conventions. 

The deeper question is whether human agency is the final explanation, or whether human agency itself points beyond itself. Here, two long-standing interpretive frameworks emerge.

One framework is conventionalist and cultural-evolutionary: complex conventions can emerge when groups repeatedly coordinate, stabilize successful practices, and transmit them across generations. In this view, the “order” is real, but it is the emergent product of social learning, institutional constraint, and cognitive capacities for pattern extraction. (The scientific cases above strongly fit this model, because we can observe the governance and revision processes directly.) 

A second framework is theistic: the very capacity to generate systematic symbolism—and especially the fit between language, reasoning, and the structured world—may be read as a sign of prior intention. Islamic intellectual history explicitly debated the origin of language in these terms, contrasting tawqīf (language as divine bestowal) with iṣṭilāḥ (language as human convention). A modern scholarly summary of medieval discussion explains that proponents of tawqīf appealed to the Qur’anic statement that God “taught Adam the names,” while advocates of iṣṭilāḥ argued that language emerged via social agreement; the same source notes that later scholarship often treated both views as plausible. 

Importantly, these frameworks need not be mutually exclusive if one adopts a layered picture: humans may build conventions over generations (as the historical record of nomenclature clearly shows), while also believing that the cognitive “blueprint” that makes such building possible—concept formation, abstraction, symbol grounding, moral conscience—was ultimately bestowed by an All-Knowing Creator. The historical facts do not force that conclusion, but they do make one point unavoidable: the world of naming is a world of mind, purpose, and cumulative order.

Epilogue

Names are bridges: from the unseen structure of a molecule to a string of syllables; from the tangled branching of life to a two-part Latin label fixed to a type specimen; from the suffering of a patient to a diagnostic category whose criteria have been debated, tested, revised, and (sometimes) repented of. 

In chemistry, the bridge is built by committees and comment periods, by procedures that invite the whole world to argue over a draft before it becomes authoritative.  In biology, the bridge is anchored to chosen historical starting points, as if the community says: “From here onward, we will speak one accountable language about life.”  In psychiatry, the bridge is rebuilt again and again, because the terrain is human, and humans are never merely technical objects; DSM history shows that what was once “named” as disorder can later be unnamed, renamed, or reframed as understanding deepens and conscience awakens. 

And Arabic—through its triliteral roots and measured templates—suggests that language can be at once disciplined and generative: a finite lattice that yields an effectively infinite expressiveness.  The same tradition that treasures that lattice also asked, early on, whether language is fundamentally “gift” or “agreement”—tawqīf or iṣṭilāḥ—and recognized that either way, language is not trivial. It is the precondition for teaching, for covenant, for science, for poetry, for law, for prayer. 

If one reads the world theistically, all this coordinated order becomes more than human cleverness: it becomes a sign—of a Consciousness behind consciousness, of an All-Knowing origin behind our incremental knowing. If one reads it naturalistically, it remains a profound witness to the human mind’s power to impose structure, to inherit structure, and to refine structure without end. Either way, the facts converge on a single theme: naming is never accidental. It is an act of mind—patient, communal, and, in its best moments, beautiful. 

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