A couple of Larry Wall quotes, from the 3rd State of the Perl Onion:
You know, behavior can be reduced to biology, biology can be reduced to biochemistry, and biochemistry can be reduced to chemistry. Chemistry, in turn, can be reduced to physics. And physics, of course, can be reduced to theology.
…
Actually, as a linguist, I don’t believe in etymological meanings. The meanings of words depend on many contexts, but all of the real contexts are in the present language, and true etymology is only in the past. On the other hand, part of the current context is what you think the etymology of a word is. That’s why people like me keep trotting out etymological arguments, even though they’re relatively meaningless, not to mention wrong half the time.