Labeling

“ 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. ”

“ Even for purely scientific purposes we require a standard of comparison and classification, as in the arrangement of words in a dictionary, where we have to decide, for instance, whether to put the original of hear under ē, īe, ī or ȳ. ”

“ The systematic alone advances to the third.
Classification in the first sense, it is plain, is the same as “entry;” in the second {11} sense it is the same as “class-entry;” and in the third sense it is the same as the “logical arrangement” of the table on p. 12, under “Classed catalogue.”
It is worth while to ascertain the relation of subject and class in the subject-catalogue. Subject is the matter on which the author is seeking to give or the reader to obtain information; Class is, as said above, a grouping of subjects which have characteristics in common. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Let us next notice that the recognition of likeness and unlikeness, which underlies classification, and out of which continued classification evolves the idea of complete likeness—let us next notice that it also underlies the process of naming, and by consequence language. For all language consists, at the beginning, of symbols which are as like to the things symbolised as it is practicable to make them. The language of signs is a means of conveying ideas by mimicking the actions or peculiarities of the things referred to. ”

“ If the first broad outline of classification is made clear and simple, expressed in ordinary English words used in their natural sense, study and experience will presently show the worker the need for a fuller nomenclature, and he will welcome the technical words—life-casket, husk-myth, cumulative tale, and so forth—as he becomes acquainted with the ideas or the things they have been formed to describe. ”

“ INTRODUCTION. Classification lies at the foundation of the mental processes. Without the power of perceiving, recognizing resemblances, distinguishing differences in things, phenomena and notions, grouping them mentally according to those resemblances and differences, judgment is impossible, nor could reason be exercised in proceeding from the known to the unknown. ”

“ That orderly arrangement of objects called Classification has two purposes, which, though not absolutely distinct, are distinct in great part. It may be employed to facilitate identification, or it may be employed to organize our knowledge. If a librarian places his books in the alphabetical succession of the author's names, he places them in such way that any particular book may easily be found, but not in such way that books of a given nature stand together. ”

“ Here is a note Butler made about classification:
“Fighting about words is like fighting about accounts, and all classification is like accounts. Sometimes it is easy to see which way the balance of convenience lies, sometimes it is very hard to know whether an item should be carried to one account or to another.” ”

“ We have seen before that some kind of classification of expression must be found in every language. This classification of ideas into groups, each of which is expressed by an independent word-stem, makes it necessary that concepts which are not readily rendered by a single stem should be expressed by combinations or by modifications of the elementary stems in accordance with the elementary ideas to which the particular idea is reduced. ”

“ There is a sort of language very generally prevalent in these discussions, which seems to suppose that classification is an arrangement and grouping of definite and known individuals: that when names were imposed, mankind took into consideration all the individual objects in the universe, distributed them into parcels or lists, and gave to the objects of each list a common name, repeating this operation toties quoties until they had invented all the general names of which language consists ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 may be objected to our definition of an abstract name, that not only the names which we have called abstract, but adjectives, which we have placed in the concrete class, are names of attributes; that white, for example, is as much the name of the colour, as whiteness is. But (as before remarked) a word ought to be considered as the name of that which we intend to be understood by it when we put it to its principal use, that is, when we employ it in predication. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the understanding in the process of knowledge makes use of the universal form of synthesis, the judgment; intellectual function is essentially of the nature of judgment or the reduction of a manifold to unity through a conception. The specific or type forms of such function will, therefore, be expressed in judgments; and a complete classification of the forms of judgments is the key by which one may hope to discover the system of categories. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The formation of a morphological classification is therefore a logical process, the purpose of which is to throw the facts of structure into the smallest possible number of general propositions, which propositions constitute the definitions of the respective groups. ”

“ The first part of the classification, as published, contains the first six classifications and a combined index to them all. The seventh, the fullest classification, will have 10 sections. Five of them are published, each with its own index. Of two (Social sciences and Language and literature) about half is published. When these and the other three (Natural sciences, Industrial arts, Recreative and fine arts) are printed, a full index to the whole will be made. ”

“ There are thousands of possible matters of investigation, some of which are from time to time discussed, but before the catalogue can profitably follow its “specific” rule in regard to them they must attain a certain individuality as objects of inquiry, and be given some sort of name, otherwise we must assign them class-entry.
And it is not always easy to decide what is a distinct subject. Many catalogues have a heading Preaching. Is Extempore preaching a sufficiently distinct matter to have a heading of its own? ”

“ The validity of this order is to be subjected to a kindred test. Words after all are symbols, and the significance of the symbols varies with the knowledge and experience of the mind receiving them. The certainty of a description is always a matter of degree. ”

“ We express in language, by means of verbs, adjectives, and equivalent expressions, what, as to their qualities, things are, what they do, and in what relation they stand. But in addition to such expressions, by which we qualify, describe, compare, and distinguish the various objects that we observe and think about, we have certain other expressions by means of which we assert that given objects are, or are real, rather than are not, or are unreal. Now, in technical phrase, we shall hereafter call the expressions of the latter type the ontological vocabulary of our language. ”

“ It is one of the most valid recommendations of any classification to the character of a scientific one, that it shall be a natural classification in this sense also; for the test of its scientific character is the number and importance of the properties which can be asserted in common of all objects included in a group ”

“ But a structural value is to be seen also even in the vocabulary of a language—in the way in which, for the purposes of material as well as formal expression, the objects of thought are viewed and classified and selected: how, for example, the colors are distinguished and named, or the kingdoms and classes and genera of natural existences, or the parts and qualities of man, or numbers and their combinations ”

“ In former lectures we have confined our remarks to things and a description of their characters and relations, so that every entity of which we can conceive a thought, or concerning which we can form an expression, has been defined and described in the use of nouns and adjectives. Every thing in creation, of which we think, material or immaterial, real or imaginary, and to which we give a name, to represent the idea of it, comes under the class of words called nouns. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No catalogue, of course, can contain all the facts even of five minutes; every catalogue, however long and learned, must be not only a bold, but, one may say, an audacious selection. Bat if a great many facts are given, the reader gains a blurred belief that all the facts are being given. In a professedly personal judgment it is therefore clearer and more honest to give only a few illustrative facts, leaving the other obtainable facts to balance them. ”

“ To a person who has once comprehended the extreme significance and utility of the Logical Alphabet the indirect process of inference becomes reduced to the repetition of a few uniform operations of classification, selection, and elimination of contradictories. ”

“ You must have a wide genus with its fundamentum divisionis, and, within this, species distinguished by their several differentiæ.
Next, as to the verbal process, rules are commonly laid down mostly of a trifling and obvious character. That "a definition should state neither more nor less than the common attributes of the class," or than the attributes signified by the class-name, is sometimes given as a rule of definition. This is really an explanation of what a definition is, a definition of a definition. ”

“ Her varied productions are connected with one another by innumerable links and cross-links; and our systems of classification, even the most "natural," are but an imperfect human contrivance for bringing together those forms which present the most evident marks of resemblance or affinity. ”

“ Any name which belongs in common to all things of a class we call a +Common Noun+; and any particular name of an individual, distinguishing this individual from others of its class, we call a +Proper Noun+. The "proper, or individual, names" which in Rule 1, Lesson 8, you were told to begin with capital letters are proper nouns.
Such a word as wheat, music, or architecture does not distinguish one thing from others of its class; there is but one thing in the class denoted by each, each thing forms a class by itself; and so we call these words common nouns. ”