Classification

“ What interpretation is to be put on these truths of classification? We find that organic forms admit of an arrangement everywhere indicating the fact, that along with certain attributes, certain other attributes, which are not directly connected with them, always exist. How are we to account for this fact? And how are we to account for the fact that the attributes possessed in common by the largest assemblages of forms, are the most vitally-important attributes? ”

“ Throughout, however, there must necessarily exist a certain classification of things according to their properties—a classification which is either organically registered in the system, as in the inferior creation, or is formed by experience, as in ourselves. ”

“ If the classification has misled no less a person than its original exponent herself, and made her change her conceptions about the nature of the various principles from time to time, it is pretty nearly certain that the classification itself must be held responsible for all the confusion it has created. ”

“ Without the help afforded by classification he would be overwhelmed by the immense number of facts brought before him and without the aid of classification he would never have known of evolution, the guiding star of modern investigation. ”

“ Is it not wonderful enough, that organic impressions merely should have been transmitted so fresh and entire, as to admit of classification, equal in scientific precision to that of the families of living things? ”

“ DISCRIMINATION BY CLASSIFICATION. The intricacies of classification afford boundless opportunity for favoritism. Classification is always more or less arbitrary by necessity, and is frequently more arbitrary than necessary. ”

“ The Method of Natural Classification consists in classing cases, not according to any assumed Definition, but according to the connexion of the facts themselves, so as to make them the means of asserting general truths. ”

“ It is frequently said that classification is a mere affair of convenience. This assertion is true in one sense, but not if its meaning be, that the most proper classification is that in which it is easiest to say whether an object belongs to one class or to the other. The use of classification is, to fix attention upon the distinctions which exist among things; and that is the best classification, which is founded upon the most important distinctions, whatever be the facilities which it may afford of ticketing and arranging the different objects which exist in nature. ”

“ When a classification is once established upon a logical basis, it need not undergo dissolution to be reclassified, for when the germs of classification are established on a logical basis it has but to grow with increasing knowledge. ”

“ But classification consists in detecting resemblances of all degrees of generality, and ascertaining exactly how far such resemblances extend, while assigning precisely the points at which difference begins. It enables us, then, to generalise, and make inferences where it is possible, and it saves us at the same time from going too far. A full classification constitutes a complete record of all our knowledge of the objects or events classified, and the limits of exact knowledge are identical with the limits of classification. ”

“ In Book I, Chapter II, I have adopted a new definition of ‘Classification’, which enables me to regard the whole Universe as a ‘Class,’ and thus to dispense with the very awkward phrase ‘a Set of Things.’
In the Chapter on ‘Propositions of Existence’ I have adopted a new ‘normal form,’ in which the Class, whose existence is affirmed or denied, is regarded as the Predicate, instead of the Subject, of the Proposition, thus evading a very subtle difficulty which besets the other form. ”

“ Nor need you care for methods of classification any more than for the origin of classes. Leave the physiologists to invent names, and dispute over them; your business is to know the creature, not the name of it momentarily fashionable in scientific circles. What practical service you can get from the order at present adopted, take, without contention; and as far as possible, use English words, or be sure you understand the Latin ones. ”

“ The Classification thus obtained, depends neither upon the faculties of the mind to which the separate parts of our knowledge owe their origin, nor upon the objects which each science contemplates; but upon a more 137 natural and fundamental element;—namely, the Ideas which each science involves. The Ideas regulate and connect the facts, and are the foundations of the reasoning, in each science: and having in another work more fully examined these Ideas, we are now prepared to state here the classification to which they lead. ”

“ THE Classification of Sciences has its chief use in pointing out to us the extent of our powers of arriving at truth, and the analogies which may obtain between those certain and lucid portions of knowledge with which we are here concerned, and those other portions, of a very different interest and evidence, which we here purposely abstain to touch upon. The classification of human knowledge will, therefore, have a more peculiar importance when we can include in it the moral, political, and metaphysical, as well as the physical portions of our knowledge. ”

“ Although the chief purpose of classification is to disclose the deepest and most general resemblances of the objects classified, yet the practical value of a system will depend partly upon the ease with which we can refer an object to its proper class, and thus infer concerning it all that is known generally of that class. ”

“ In this way classification, analysis, and association go hand in hand as the necessary methods of studying survivals. Without analysis we cannot properly arrive at a classification; without classification we cannot work out the association of survivals. ”

“ This "unless—or unless" may suggest caution in using dichotomy as a short cut to the classification of realities.
4. No Sub-class must include anything that is not comprised in the class to be divided: the Genus comprises all the Species. We must not divide Dogs into fox-terriers and dog-fish.
§ 6. The process of Inductive Classification may be represented thus:
Given any multitude of individuals to be classified:
(1) Place together in groups (or in thought) those things that have in common the most, the most widely diffused and the most important qualities. ”

“ With the help of a guiding system of classification, you were able to see the connection between the separate facts, to arrange them according to their mutual relations, and thus to ascend to the great general laws under which the material world has been constructed. With all attainable thoroughness in the mastery of detail, you have been taught to combine a breadth of treatment which enables you to find and keep a leading clew even through the midst of what might seem a tangled web of confusion. ”

“ It is then perceived that the classification is certainly a simple labour of preparation, arbitrary, convenient, and nominalistic, but that the true end of the natural sciences is not the class but the law. ”

“ Classification of Functions.—Attempts to classify the Vital Functions of man were made at an early period, and have been repeated in great number up to modern times. The task of classification is exposed to the same difficulties, and governed by the same conditions, in this as in other subjects. Here, as in the case of other things, there may be many classifications which are moderately good and natural, but there is only one which is the best and the true natural system. ”

“ There is no impropriety in saying that of these two classifications, the one answers to a much more radical distinction in the things themselves, than the other does. And if any one even chooses to say that the one classification is made by nature, the other by us for our convenience, he will be right ”

“ The requisites of a classification intended to facilitate the study of a particular phenomenon, are, first to bring into one class all Kinds of things which exhibit that phenomenon, in whatever variety of forms or degrees ”

“ This discovery is made by means of comparison and classification. We cease to study each flower for its own sake; and by continually enlarging the sphere of our observation, we try to discover what is common to many and offers those essential points on which groups or natural classes may be established. These classes again, in their more general features, are mutually compared; new points of difference, or of similarity of a more general and higher character, spring to view, and enable us to discover classes of classes, or families. ”

“ When we take phenomena in which the leading Idea is Resemblance, and resolve them into precise component Facts, we obtain some kind of Classification; as, for instance, when we lay down certain Rules by which particular trees, or particular animals are to be known. ”

“ Classification is the means by which the mind is able to master a subject, but it is not the subject itself. To classify originally it is necessary to understand the relations of things, and the investigators by whom classes are defined must of course be thoroughly well informed in regard to the facts upon which arrangement is based. The ordinary student is constantly in danger of accepting the formal schedule instead of the truths which it represents; of filling his mind with nomenclature instead of principles; of being, in a word, satisfied with system in place of knowledge. ”

“ The process of classification enables us to resolve these combinations, and refer each one to its place according to one or other of the elementary circumstances out of which it was produced. We restore nature to the simple conditions out of which its endless variety was developed. ”

“ To overcome this difficulty we must understand the resemblance upon which classification is based to include resemblance of Causation, that is, the fact itself of descent from common ancestors. For organic beings, all other rules of classification are subordinate to one: trace the genealogy of every form. ”

“ Classification and books are but a faulty means of getting a clear insight into nature and human life or society. Knowledge should not only be mastered in its scientific classifications but also constantly referred back to things as seen in practical life and closely traced out and fixed in those connections. ”

“ It is manifest that the sum of human knowledge in all its departments and ramifications can be arranged in a variety of ways, and that all kinds of methods of classification can be devised to suit the basis selected, be it supernatural, physical, ethnological, philosophical, historical or other. ”

“ In this way the second or classificatory leads us naturally to the third or final stage—the theoretical, or metaphysical. If the work of classification is properly carried out, it teaches us that nothing exists in nature by accident; that each individual belongs to a species, each species to a genus ”

“ The phrase Natural Classification seems most peculiarly appropriate to such arrangements as correspond, in the groups which they form, to the spontaneous tendencies of the mind, by placing together the objects most similar in their general aspect; in opposition to those technical systems which, arranging things according to their agreement in some circumstance arbitrarily selected, often throw into the same group objects which in the general aggregate of their properties present no resemblance, and into different and remote groups, others which have the closest similarity. ”

“ A classification, then, as formerly observed, represents a cross-section of nature as developing in time: could we begin at the beginning and follow this development down the course of time, we should find no classes, but an ever-moving, changing, spreading, branching continuum. ”

“ This shows, more strongly than ever, how extensive a knowledge of the properties of objects is necessary for making a good classification of them. And as it is one of the uses of such a classification that by drawing attention to the properties on which it is founded, and which, if the classification be good, are marks of many others, it facilitates the discovery of those others; we see in what manner our knowledge of things, and our classification of them, tend mutually and indefinitely to the improvement of each other. ”

“ Since the common properties of a true Kind, and consequently the general assertions which can be made respecting it, or which are certain to be made hereafter as our knowledge extends, are indefinite and inexhaustible; and since the very first principle of natural classification is that of forming the classes so that the objects composing each may have the greatest number of properties in common; this principle prescribes that every such classification shall recognize and adopt into itself all distinctions of Kind, which exist among the objects it professes to classify. ”

“ The usual mode in which an investigator proceeds to form a classification of a new group of objects seems to consist in tentatively arranging them according to their most obvious similarities. Any two objects which present a close resemblance to each other will be joined and formed into the rudiment of a class, the definition of which will at first include all the apparent points of resemblance. ”

“ It is also to be borne in mind that a classification is a system whose parts are arranged according to a hierarchy. There are dominating members and others which are subordinate to the first; species and their distinctive properties depend upon classes and the attributes which characterize them; again, the different species of a single class are conceived as all placed on the same level in regard to each other. ”