Taxonomy- the art of classification.

I will admit it I am confused, I came across this word in… some book that I am reading, and since looking it up in the dictionary I have decided that it describes much of the mental processes of humanity. (Another one of my expertly clueless and uneducated decisions)

How else would we learn? A child learning to speak points and names things, classifies them and shows that he/she has learnt. As we progress we go from labelling the small to the bigger and the greater. We label people, we label things, we label rooms and other places. We label dendrites and axons, neoliberalism and post-modernism, string theory, geniuses, idiots. We make up our own labels and bring up old labels. From the tangible we go to the intangible and we continue to build on that. Objects intertwine to become mechanisms, mechanisms intertwine to become new labels. And as we learn we are simply labelling infinitely complicated things. The labels that we understand, use and carry define us and our world around us.

“Humanity” it has been said “is simply trying to pixelate a fractal world”. Look at any Google satellite map and note the difference between the natural and the man-made. It is beautiful.

What is labelling? Yes it is making sense, it creates communities, it creates boundaries. But we all know that these boundaries are never precise, often the more you learn the less you actually “know”.

Research, it seems to me likes to box things in. Like trying to capture a river in a drinking glass. Perhaps you can fill the glass to them brim, hold it in your hands, analyze it, drink from it. You can call it yours if you like, feel accomplished and powerful. But in the same way you will never be able to hold every aspect of the world in your mind, you will never be able to capture the entire river… Anyways who would ever want to drink an entire river? Why not just swim in it?