set of categories from the literary philosopher Jorge Luis Borges
example of poetic categories—taxonomy of the animal kingdom from the ancient Chinese encyclopedia Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge
Things are the simplest of all those crucial entities in the world, and components of knowledge, yet, there are so many things … One way to make sense of things is to group them into categories
Good categories:
sort most things into separate bins, not partially overlapping ones
easy to identify
be informative, tell us what they’re good for
reduce the enormous numbers of different things to a manageable number
basic-level categories like table and apple and shirt easy to identify also provide a wealth of information
superordinate categories like tool and vehicle
the essential features of basic-level objects are typically evident from their shapes and their parts
linked mentions for "categories and taxonomy":
who, what, and where are so fundamental that the brain has specialized regions for recognizing them, multiple for each: faces, bodies, objects, scenes. When is harder,
specific and abstract labels Calling ordinary things with more abstract or more specific labels sounds odd in ordinary situations. If I offer you a ride because I’ve brought my
linear structure narratives have a linear structure driven by time, theories have a linear structure directed by logic speaking is linear, one word after another,