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Memories of the 28th Century

Lumping or Splitting

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Don't Box Me In


On a board that I am a member of someone casually and largely sarcastically posted that philosophy is dead. I protested that just because he didn’t call things philosophy didn’t mean that philosophy is no longer. The discussion started with respect to the subgenres of Science Fiction and Fantasy. These subcategories are just conveniences for publishers and suggestions to booksellers as to where particular books should be displayed.

When you look back at books published in the 1950's (that wasn't very long ago) most were just called fiction or non-fiction; although some had indications that they were intended for children. Bookstores back then usually filed books the way that libraries did: fiction by authors name and non-fiction by category. Sometime in the 1960's Mysteries, Science Fiction and a few other categories started to get their own sections in bookstores.

When you look back just a few hundred years (and that wasn't very long ago) Philosophers of all sorts were Philosophers. Isaac Newton was a Mathematician, Physicist, and Astrologist. Great scientists such as Tycho Brahe were also Alchemists along with Paracelsus and other conartists. Alchemy was a legitimate science, and it did lead directly to modern Chemistry. If those same people were being assigned to professions now, then they would end up as Scientists of some sort, and Paracelsus would be called a criminal.

Knowledge was regarded as a spectrum of things, rather than as a collection of discrete fields. Apparently some people like to create categories, while others are comfortable with there being many related matters. An Anthropology professor a few years ago mentioned in regard to the varieties of humans through the millions of years since the genus Homo first separated from the other great apes (and that wasn't a sudden and complete separation; it took perhaps a million years for the earliest hominids to stop back breeding). She said, "Some people are splitters and others are lumpers." I'm a lumper in regard to hominids and branches of Philosophy. I see no inconsistency in thinking that Neanderthals (as just one example) never died out; they just back bred into another bunch of hominids. Some people call every set of human fossils as a different species, even though they were living right next to another bunch of hominids, and we know what happens when there are men and women in the same area.

Some people seem to think that there are fundamental differences in all systems of classification; although many of the classes were defined simply to make it easier to keep track of things. That isn't to say that Linnaeus didn't do a wonderful thing by setting up the basics of the classification of species of animals and plants; keeping track of things is a good idea. But applying a set of classifications to things does not change the fundamental nature of those things. Physics is still a branch of Philosophy, even if the universities did set up separate departments to teach it. The highest academic degree in Physics is still Doctor of Philosophy. There may be people who would like to see those degrees changes to Doctor of Science, but they probably also want the term "doctor" changed to something else also.

Similarly, when a publisher calls a book Fantasy, that doesn't change the book; it simply tells booksellers what section might be appropriate to it, but it doesn't mean that no one who isn't an enthusiast of Fantasy can read it. Authors should also remember that the sub-genre names are not straight jackets; they don't have to write to the category. If something is good, then it will be published as something. And, if they have been writing for a particular category, they can improve their writing by pulling in features from other categories.

The matter of sorting things into boxes seems to be universal among humans, and it is useful for learning, and it may be how the human brain indexes things in memory, so I don't want to abandon it completely, but the classification is not the thing. Even the list of Philosophers is divided into specialty. I haven't examined it carefully, that should lead to multiple listings for many people. After all, how can one be an Epistemologist without also being a Metaphysician and a Logician?

As I stated above, I am a splitter, but I understand the uses of splitting knowledge. Where do you come down on this issue, or do you? Some people successfully span the two, because they are complements rather than opposites.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_philosophers


I write like H. P. Lovecraft according to https://iwl.me/.

Comments

  1. North Star's Avatar
    Eh, Paracelsus a criminal? Maybe you'd like it if instead of modern medicine, pharmacology and toxicology we'd still treat illnesses with bloodletting and cleansing of the putrefied juices. Dosis facit venenum, to quote Paracelsus. Perhaps you have just had too much of him.


    The fossil bit reminds me of this: https://xkcd.com/1211/
  2. PeterL's Avatar
    "Paracelsus devoted several sections in his writings to the construction of astrological talismans for curing disease, providing talismans for various maladies as well as talismans for each sign of the Zodiac. He also invented an alphabet called the Alphabet of the Magi, for engraving angelic names upon talismans." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus

    Paracelsus was a man of his times, and what he sold as good medicine probably was poison in many cases. But putting that aside, the matter of his talismans is enough. I could have found better examples of people working from no knowledge, but his name came up quickly. I could have mentioned John Dee instead, but many people called him a criminal during his lifetime.