Abstract
We start with an assertion: human beings have the capacity to classify phenomena into groups. In principle every moment is novel, every situation is something that we have never encountered before, each object is slightly different. But in practice we do not see the world that way. We actually see the world as peopled by familiar objects, objects that we classify unproblematically and without question into conventional groups. There are men and women, girls and boys, birds and animals, fish and fowl. The capacity to classify is something that we all possess and it is something that we do routinely.
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Endnotes
H. Helmholtz, quoted by R. L. Gregory, The Intelligent Eye (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1970) p. 30.
This is adapted from D. H. Hubei and T. N. Wiesel, ‘Receptive fields, binocular interaction and functional architecture in the cat’s visual cortex’, Journal of Physiology, 160 (1962) p. 106.
Though we are constructing this argument in line with Mary Hesse’s network model readers who know the writing of L. Wittgenstein will immediately recognise this as a version of his concept of ‘family resemblance’. See L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1968) pp. 31–41.
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© 1984 John Law and Peter Lodge
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Law, J., Lodge, P. (1984). Classification. In: Science for Social Scientists. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17536-9_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17536-9_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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