Reflection on "Category"
The following excerpts deal with categorization and classification. George Lakoff's book sets the stage by underscoring the overarching significance of categorization in human experience. The writings of Genvieve Calame-Griaule and Michel Foucault bear witness-often dramatically-- to the diversity of human categorizing practices, and Stephen Asma makes it clear that some of this diversity has played a significant part in the shaping of that Western institution which, more than any other, implements our own cultural practice of categorization, the museum. How does your own insight compare with the insights offered in these readings? Return to the websites and search out images or texts that reflect the insights of these authors.
Women, Fire and Dangerous Things
George Lakoff, 1987, Univ. of Chicago Press
CHAPTER ONE
The Importance of Categorization
Many readers, I suspect, will take the title of this book as suggesting that women, fire, and dangerous things have something in common--say, that women are fiery and dangerous. Most feminists I've mentioned it to have loved the title for that reason, though some have hated it for the same reason. But the chain of inference--from conjunction to categorization to commonality--is the norm. The inference is based on the common idea of what it means to be in the same category: things are categorized together on the basis of what they have in common. The idea that categories are defined by common properties is not only our everyday folk theory of what a category is, it is also the principal technical theory--one that has been with us for more than two thousand years.
The classical view that categories are based on shared properties is not entirely wrong. We often do categorize things on that basis. But that is only a small part of the story. In recent years it has become clear that categorization is far more complex than that. ... One of our goals is to survey the complexities of the way people really categorize. For example, the title of this book was inspired by the Australian aboriginal language Dyirbal, which has a category, balan, that actually includes women, fire, and dangerous things. It also includes birds that are not dangerous, as well as exceptional animals, such as the platypus, bandicoot, and echidna. This is not simply a matter of categorization by common properties, as we shall see when we discuss Dyirbal classification in detail.
Categorization is not a matter to be taken lightly. There is nothing more basic than categorization to our thought, perception, action, and speech, Every time we see something as a kind of thing, for example, a tree, we are categorizing. Whenever we reason about kinds of things--chairs, nations, illnesses, emotions, any kind of thing at are employing categories. Whenever we intentionally perform any kind of action, say something as mundane as writing with a pencil, hammering with a hammer, or ironing clothes, we are using categories. The particular action we perform on that occasion is a kind of motor activity (e.g., writing, hammering, ironing), that is, it is in a particular category of motor actions. They are never done in exactly the same way, yet despite the differences in particular movements, they are all movements of a kind, and we know how to make movements of that kind. And any time we either produce or understand any utterance of any reasonable length, we are employing dozens if not hundreds of categories: categories of speech sounds, of words, of phrases and clauses, as well as conceptual categories. Without the ability to categorize, we could not function at all, either in the physical world or in our social and intellectual lives. An understanding of how we categorize is central to any understanding of how we think and how we function, and therefore central to an understanding of what makes us human.
Most categorization is automatic and unconscious, and if we become aware of it at all, it is only in problematic cases. In moving about the world, we automatically categorize people, animals, and physical objects, both natural and man-made. This sometimes leads to the impression that we just categorize things as they are, that things come in natural kinds, and that our categories of mind naturally fit the kinds of things there are in the world. But a large proportion of our categories are not categories of things', they are categories of abstract entities. We categorize events, actions, emotions, spatial relationships, social relationships, and abstract entities of an enormous range: governments, illnesses, and entities in both scientific and folk theories, like electrons and colds. Any adequate account of human thought must provide an accurate theory for all our categories, both concrete and abstract.
From the time of Aristotle to the later work of Wittgenstein, categories were thought be well understood and unproblematic. They were assumed to be abstract containers, with things either inside or outside the category. Things were assumed to be in the same category if and only if they had certain properties in common. And the properties they had in common were taken as defining the category.
This classical theory was not the result of empirical study. It was not even a subject of major debate. It was a philosophical position arrived at on the basis of a priori speculation. Over the centuries it simply became part of the background assumptions taken for granted in most scholarly disciplines. In fact, until very recently, the classical theory of categories was not even thought of as a theory. It was taught in most disciplines not as an empirical hypothesis but as an unquestionable, definitional truth. In a remarkably short time, all that has changed. Categorization has moved from the background to center stage because of empirical studies in a wide range of disciplines. Within cognitive psychology, categorization has become a major field of study, thanks primarily to the pioneering work of Eleanor Rosch, who made categorization an issue. She focused on two implications of the classical theory:
First, if categories are defined only by properties that all members share, then no members should be better examples of the category than any other members.
Second, if categories are defined only by properties inherent in the members, then categories should be independent of the peculiarities of any beings doing the categorizing; that is, they should not involve such matters as human neurophysiology, human body movement, and specific human capacities to perceive, to form mental images, to learn and remember, to organize the things learned, and to communicate efficiently.
Rosch observed that studies by herself and others demonstrated that categories, in general, have best examples (called "prototypes") and that all of the specifically human capacities just mentioned do play a role in categorization.
In retrospect, such results should not have been all that surprising. Yet the specific details sent shock waves throughout the cognitive sciences, and many of the reverberations are still to be felt. Prototype theory, as it is evolving, is changing our idea of the most fundamental of human capacitiesùthe capacity to categorizeùand with it, our idea of what the human mind and human reason are like. Reason, in the West, has long been assumed to be disembodied and abstractùdistinct on the one hand from perception and the body and culture, and on the other hand from the mechanisms of imagination, for example, metaphor and mental imagery.
In this century, reason has been understood by many philosophers, psychologists, and others as roughly fitting the model of formal deductive logic:
Reason is the mechanical manipulation of abstract symbols which are meaningless in themselves, but can be given meaning by virtue of their capacity to refer to things either in the actual world or in possible states of the world.
Since the digital computer works by symbol manipulation and since its symbols can be interpreted in terms of a data base, which is often viewed as a partial model of reality, the computer has been taken by many as essentially possessing the capacity to reason. This is the basis of the contemporary mind-as-computer metaphor, which has spread from computer science and cognitive psychology to the culture at large.
Since we reason not just about individual things or people but about categories of things and people, categorization is crucial to every view of reason. Every view of reason must have an associated account of categorization. The view of reason as the disembodied manipulation of abstract symbols comes with an implicit theory of categorization. It is a version of the classical theory in which categories are represented by sets, which are in turn defined by the properties shared by their members.
There is a good reason why the view of reason as disembodied symbol-manipulation makes use of the classical theory of categories. If symbols in general can get their meaning only through their capacity to correspond to things, then category symbols can get their meaning only through a capacity to correspond to categories in the world (the real world or some possible world). Since the symbol-to-object correspondence that defines meaning in general must be independent of the peculiarities of the human mind and body, it follows that the symbol-to-category correspondence that defines meaning for category symbols must also be independent of the peculiarities of the human mind and body. To accomplish this, categories must be seen as existing in the world independent of people and defined only by the characteristics of their members and not in terms of any characteristics of the human. The classical theory is just what is needed, since it defines categories only in terms of shared properties of the members and not in terms of the peculiarities of human understanding.
To question the classical view of categories in a fundamental way is thus to question the view of reason as disembodied symbol-manipulation and correspondingly to question the most popular version of the mind-as-computer metaphor.
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences,
1970, pp. 34-7
Michel Foucault
In the sixteenth century, real language is not a totality of independent signs, a uniform and unbroken entity in which things could be reflected one by one, as in a mirror, and so express their particular truths. It is rather an opaque, mysterious thing, closed in upon itself, a fragmented mass, its enigma renewed in every interval, which combines here and there with the forms of the world and becomes interwoven with them: so much so that all these elements, taken together, form a network of marks in which each of them may play, and does in fact play, in relation to all the others, the role of content or of sign, that of secret or of indicator...
The study of grammar in the sixteenth century is based upon the same epistemological arrangement as the science of nature or the esoteric disciplines. The only differences are that there is only one nature and there are several languages: and that in the esoteric field the properties of worlds, syllables, and letters are discovered by another discourse which always remains secret, where in grammar it is the words and phrases of everyday life that themselves express their properties. Language stands half-way between the visible forms of nature and the secret conveniences of esoteric discourse...
In its original form, when it was given to men by God himself, language was an absolutely certain and transparent sign for things, because it resembled them. The names of things were lodged in the things they designated, just as strength is written in the body of the lion, regality in the eye of the eagle, just as the influence of the planets is marked upon the brows of men: by the form of similitude. This transparency was destroyed at Babel as a punishment for men. Languages became separated and incompatible with one another only in so far as they had previously lost this original resemblance to the things that had been the prime reason for the existence of language. All the languages known to us are now spoken only against the background of this lost similitude, and in the space that it left vacant. There is only one language that retains a memory of that similitude, because it derives in direct descent from that first vocabulary which is now forgotten; because God did not wish men to forget the punishment inflicted at Babel; because this language had to be used in order to recount God's ancient Alliance with his people; and lastly, because it was in this language that God addressed himself to those who listened to him. Hebrew therefore contains, as if in the form of fragments, the mark of that original name-giving.......But though language no longer bears an immediate resemblance to the things it names, this does not mean that it is separate from the world; it still continues, in another form, to be the locus of revelations and to be included in the areas where truth is both manifested and expressed.. True it is no longer nature in its primal visibility, but neither is it a mysterious instrument with powers known only to a few privileged persons. It is rather the figuration of a world redeeming itself, lending its ear at last to the true world. This is why it was God's wish that Latin, the language of his Church, should spread over the whole of the terrestrial globe. And it is also why all the languages of the world, as it because possible to know them through this conquest, make up together the image of the truth. Their interlacing and the space in which they are deployed free the sign of the redeemed world, just as the arrangement of the first names bore a likeness to the tings that God had given to Adam for his use. Claude Duret points out that the Hebrews, the Canaans, the Samaritans, the Chaldeans, the Syrians, the Egyptians, the Carthaginians, the Phoenicians, the Arabs, the Aracens, the Turks, the Moors, the Persians, and the Tartars all write from right to left, following 'the course and daily movement of the first heaven, which is most perfect, according to the opinion of the great Aristotle, tending towards unity'; the Greeks, the Georgians, the Maronites, the Serbians, the Jacobites, the Copts, the Poznians, and of course the Romans and all Europeans write from left to right, following 'the course and movement of the second heaven, home of the seven planets'; the Indians, Cathayans, Chinese, and Japanese write from top to bottom, in conformity with the 'order of nature, which has given men hands at the tops of their bodies and feet at the bottom'; 'in opposition to the aforementioned,' the Mexicans write either from bottom to top or else in 'spiral lines, such as those made by the sun in its annual journey through the Zodiac.' And thus' by these five diverse sorts of writing the secrets and mysteries of the world's frame and the form of the cross, the unity of the heaven's rotundity and that of the earth, are properly denoted and expressed" (M. Foucault 1970: 37).
by G. Calame-Griaule
pp. 8-10
The Arabic term aduno has been adapted in Dogon to mean universe, the whole of creation, the work of a creator God acting through the power of his "word." In a world so created, everything becomes a "sign" and nothing exists without cause, that is to say, closed inside each particle of matter is a message intended for man. The human is a creature placed in a universe fashioned in his own image, where each element corresponds with the vision he holds of himself and his own problems. Dogon culture is indeed a "humanism." Man seeks his reflection among the many mirrors of an anthropomorphic universe in which every blade of grass, each tiny fly, is the bearer of "speech." The name Dogon give this is aduno so:, "word of the world," symbol.
The word for the Dogon, then, is like a book whose message must be deciphered or "decoded," and man is constantly concerned to interpret the "signs" around him. He begins by adapting himself to material reality with a patient, meticulous, and detailed observation of elements that can be used to sustain him. This worldly labor results in an ordered system for classifying living and nonliving things in which every component is related to every other by a symbolic bond. Clearly, this archive of "words of the world" is not a random composition achieved through arbitrary selection, but made instead in accord with certain lines of force that pervade the Dogon mentality.
We find constant expressions of this anthropomorphic vision that conceives the world as a gigantic human organism and its parts as so many larger or smaller reproductions of the same image. From this perspective a connection is made between various mineral categories and human body organs: varieties of earth are compared to the "internal stomach organs," rocks are likened to "skeletal bones," red-colored clays are identified with "blood." Stretching the comparison to greater detail, body parts are suggested by different kinds of pebbles, stones, and rocks: a rock balanced on another becomes the image of a "chest," the small, lightcolored pebbles found in river bottoms symbolize "toes," and so on. Such, briefly sketched, is the mineral picture of the human body. We may consider its vegetable image in much the same way. Every plant or seed is seen as a living thing with a human form, and its reproductive cycle is linked with human fertility. Flowering and fruiting become a reproduction of the menstrual cycle and childbirth. Can a tree bear fruit without first displaying its flowers? It is, then, a "sign" showing that a woman cannot conceive a child following a birth until she resumes her menstrual flow. So are the great laws of nature interpreted as functions of man, down to the smallest structural details. A seed, for example, is composed of discrete parts which the Dogon call "heart" (kine dono, the interior of the seed, the cotyledons), "mouth" (kene, the area that opens to allow the sprout to emerge), "nose" (kinu, the sprout, since the nose is the organ for breathing and hence the source of life), and so on. Seeds even have a symbolic "speech," which is their germination. The Dogon say, "the word comes out by following the nose of the seed" (so dene kinu digou go:se). ' Because they are constructed like human beings, seeds are also capable of birth, and it is a common saying that "the millet is pregnant" (yu: bere ay, literally, "the millet has got a stomach" ).
This simple example shows how symbolic thinking works on the level of language; terms referring to parts of the human body are applied directly to their symbolic counterparts in the seed. The same procedure extends to manufactured objects whose aprts are otherwise compared to the parts of a living organism, not because such objects are taken to be intrinsically animate, but because man by creating them has imbued them with his life 21 and lent them a human significance in a universe seen as a function of man. Thus one may speak of the "heart" (kine) of an iron hoe when referring to its thickest part; to the "mouth" (kene) or blade of the same hoe; to the "nose" (kinu) of a pointed object; to the "head" (kil;) or "nape" (dodjro) of tools that have a bulge; of a "neck" (kokolo) or a "throat" (yogo) for tools that narrow before the bulge, and so on. This tendency to "humanize" objects also accounts for distinctions of sex between them made using criteria intrinsic either to their shape or their mode of manufacture.
Such is the humanist message that the "word of the world" imparts to the Dogon. It has a divine origin, since God placed it within the things he created, and yet it is intended for man and would have no value were he not there to receive it. With speech, man received the faculty to translate this silent word meant for him. A wise man, the "man of the world," the "expert in the word," perceives the message and makes a reply.
In conducting their search for "words of the world," the Dogon do not merely observe material things in order to distinguish between the symbolic ("in words of the world") and the real ("not in words of the world"). In their view, language too is a divine gift having a symbolic intention that demands interpretation. For this reason they devote themselves to the study of language through mental exercises where verbal similarities are interpreted in light of the latent symbolic associations held in their vision of things. The Dogon are familiar with etymological exploration, and while the lexical connections they propose are rarely acceptable to a linguist, they are always worthwhile for studying their process of thought. Such "plays on words," often reminiscent of Greek wordplay, emerge naturally from this constant watch for the appearance of "signs." A Dopgon will link a signifier with the thing it signifies by measuring its resemblance to other, similar, signifiers which are themselves joined by a symbolic bond whose "proof" is found in material reality. The resulting network of correspondences may seem complex, pehaps, but nonetheless precise, for it encloses the entire world and justifies it in Dogon eyes.
Stephen Asma, 2000
Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums.
Pp. 85-113
The word taxonomy is derived from two Greek words: taxis, meaning "arrangement," and nomos, meaning "law." And while we eventually want to focus on the biological traditions of taxonomy, we must recognize that the lawful arrangement of things by human beings is an older and more fundamental practice than the science of biology itself. Jorge Luis Borges, in his piece "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins," tells of a humorous taxonomic system that carves up the world in a very peculiar way. Borges cites a fictional Chinese encyclopedia entitled Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, in which it is written that animals are divided into the following categories:
(a) belonging to the Emperor
(b) embalmed
(c) tame
(d) suck[l]ing pigs
(e) sirens
(f) fabulous
(g) stray dogs
(h) included in the present classification
(i) frenzied
(j) innumerable
(k) drawn with a very fine camel-hair brush
(1) et cetera
(m) having just broken the water pitcher
(n) that from a long way off look like flies
Michel Foucault reiterates this passage and claims that as he was laughing at the beautiful absurdity of this exotic system, it crept into his mind that he could not be sure that his own taxonomy of the world was not equally skewed. Perhaps you and I are so accustomed to our categories that they seem utterly natural, certain, and beyond question. But are they? To follow the development of modern museum collecting is to
follow the evolution of European classification, and we must follow this in order to understand three things. First, we want to explore the relativity of taxonomic systems, that is, how they change over time and adjust to social and intellectual developments. Second, we want to understand how Hunter's and Cuvier's curatorial practices fit into this larger story of classification. And last, we want to see how these same issues, of theoretical taxonomic dispute and practical museology, play themselves out in our post-Darwinian era.....
(A little further along in the chapter Asthma writes: ) .It could be argued that in the early days, before the Royal Society began, the collections were almost exclusively about hidden text. In addition to the curiosity cabinets, which sought to manifest God's fecundity and elicit awe, there were moralizing and occult systems of organization. The medieval period was permeated by a rather symbolic understanding of nature, and this perspective remained vestigial in the Renaissance, the modern period, and beyond. The heavens, for example, were not comprised of material clumps hurtling through space; they were spiritual entities that had direct correlates with parts of the human body. Physicians and astrologers were one and the same. If your zodiac sign was Aries and you were unwell, it meant that you should probably be bled from somewhere on your head; if you were a Cancer, then you should be bled from the chest; a Pisces, from the feet; and so on. The four elements, earth, air, fire, and water, bore relation to the four bodily humors, bile, blood, phlegm, and choler, which in turn formed a connection with the four corners of the earth and the four seasons. How these correlations were originally configured is entirely mysterious, but it is clear that these ordering systems and categorical frameworks ruled the day.
At the end of the sixteenth century in Perugia, Italy, a scholar named Cesare Ripa wrote a symbol-decoding manual called the Iconologia (fig. 3.3)- This popular treatise (which over a period of more than two hundred years was published in multiple editions in Italian, French, Dutch, German, and English) provides us with a window into the symbolist mind. Here Ripa sets out the traditional correlations between visual images and their hidden meanings. He states that "[t]he figures that are made to express a thing different from that which we behold with our eyes, have no surer nor more common rule than the imitation of thoughts." And Ripa explains to his readers which visual images conjure which ideas and why. The image of the lion, to use one of Ripa's more obvious examples, conjures magnanimity. A column or pillar is a code for emotional strength. And one can even symbolize the "Art of Eloquence" by drawing (or viewing) a sword and shield, "[f]or as these instruments defend the soldier's life and hurt his enemy; so the Orator, by his proofs, maintains his good cause and puts back the contrary party." Animals, in particular, were displayed and contemplated not for their own sake, but for some higher meaning. Ripa blended together ancient sources such as Pliny's Natural History with bogus hieroglyphic speculations in order to establish animal symbology. For example, the crane symbolizes vigilance because "the crane is supposed to sleep with a stone in its claws to use as a weapon if surprised." Or the goat, being "the most potent and easily aroused of animals," is a visual representation of "lewdness" (impudicitia). Or the stork is a manifestation of gratitude because (according to Pliny) "it is very kind to its parents in their old age, building them a home, tending their plumage, and finding food for them." The Iconologia is frequently mistaken as a narrow facet of art history, but it's really more of a cultural dictionary for understanding the dialogue between postmedieval Europe and the ancient Mediterranean.
I considered making use of some of these other sites that you have recommended, but am not sure about their value as learning objects.