Tao te Ching: 1

How is it outside? 68, still, misty and darkly overcast.

The Tao (Way) that can be told of is not the eternal Tao;
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth;
The Named is the mother of all things.
Therefore let there always be non-being so we may see their subtlety,
And let there always be being so we may see their outcome.
The two are the same,
But after they are produced, they have different names.
They both may be called deep and profound (hsüan),
Deeper and more profound,
The door of all subtleties!

Lao Tzu (Laozi is a nother translation) says that the things that you can name and describe aren't the actual thing. I can tell you all about me, I can tell you my name, but it still isn't me. The unnamed thing is the thing.

There is an everything, the one, the Tao and it exists. When you name things, you separate them from the whole. It has become an individual entity. Naming Heaven and Earth separates them from the Tao, and still the thing called Heaven and the thing called Earth aren't really those things. Perhaps, they're not only those things. Still, Taoist philosophy isn't the only one that holds to this. Echos of this reside in Genesis, for instance. Let there be light. Let there be water and land. Let there be stars.

Once we start naming things, we have to name them all, or else how will we know what we're talking about? The Latin word for this is quiddity, which means something's "whatness" or "what it is." From the Tao is nameless, and from that are Heaven and Earth, the first of the named things. We begin to name things.

What is that? That is a chair.

This continues past quiddity into haecceity, which is the quality of "thisness."

What is this? This is my chair, with armrests, that I made. There is no other chair like it.

Haecceity ever increases. Soon it isn't just my chair, but it becomes "this concept" or "this collection of molecules" or "this binding of superstings and subdimensions." The door of all subtleties indeed.