Luke's Working Notes

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Category

Definition

Category

/ˈkadəˌɡôrē/

ꜱᴇᴍᴀɴᴛɪᴄ

: a class or division used to group people, things, or concepts according to shared characteristics

// library classification systems, scientific taxonomies, Aristotle's categories, entertainment genres

Summary

Abstraction and analogy are the fuel and fire of cognition. We instinctively seek to understand by creating categories for the things we experience and learn.

Outline of Topics

On categories and semantics in language

On the connection between comparison and categorization

On natural vs. artificial categories

On prototype theory

On category mistakes

On the politics of categorization

On categories as tools for thought

On fuzzy categories vs discrete categories

On philosophical categorizations

Examples

Application Tags and Folders

E-commerce Product Categories

Library Classification Systems

Entertainment genres

Music playlists

Listicle blog posts

Color wheel

Social Media Hashtags

Scientific Taxonomies (Linnaean classification system)

User personas in design

Folksonomy Tagging

Aristotle's "Categories": Substance

Patterns

Overlapping Hierarchies

Venn Diagrams

Clustering Analysis

Cross-References

All Metaphor and analogy relies on abstraction and categorization.

References

Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking - Douglas Hofstadter & Emmanuel Sander

"The Order of Things" by Michel Foucault

"Metaphysics" by Aristotle (specifically the section on categories)

"Systema Naturae" by Carl Linnaeus (for scientific taxonomy)

"A New System of Classification" by Carolus Linnaeus

Referenced in