A common indication of the essentialist attitude is an obsessive concern about defining the meaning of terms and concepts before the search for knowledge about them begins… In fact, this is exactly the opposite of the way scientists work. Before they begin to investigate the physical world, physicists do not engage in debates about how to use the word energy or whether the word particle really captures the essence of what we mean when we talk about the fundamental constituents of matter.
The meaning of a concept in science is determined after extensive investigation of the phenomena the term relates to, not before such an investigation. The refinement of conceptual terms comes from the interplay of data and theory that is inherent in the scientific progress, not from debates on language usage.
Or, Keith Stanovich, in How to Think Straight About Psychology (9e):