I grew up in the South, thought I knew mosquitoes. But a summer spent in Maine taught me a lesson. Go out at night, you didn’t need a swarm to carry you away. Just a couple could do the job.
The word dates back to the 1670s, some maintain the origin is the Latin phrase non compos mentis, but that’s controversial. Whatever, it’s a pretty sophisticated term, and we should give Calvin credit for using it.
By your logic, there is also no such thing as nature, and no such thing as motions and processes. Humans perceive and give names to what they perceive. We perceive what we call nature, we perceive what we call motions, and we perceive what we call processes. You’re getting into “tree falls in the woods” territory. We also assign names to concepts that are necessary for us to make sense of what we perceive and how it behaves. If time doesn’t elapse while I walk across the room — what does? And your last sentence — just how conceited does one have to be to speak for nature?
Sometimes when I overhear somebody making a terribly stupid comment, I think to myself: “That’s the person whose vote will cancel out mine.”