[Sigia-l] RE: "General" as a category

[Marc Rettig]

These sorts of conversations always remind me of a favorite (and probably
well-known to the IA crowd) passage from Borges:

. . . .
These ambiguities, redundancies and deficiencies remind us of those which
doctor Franz Kuhn attributes to a certain Chinese encyclopaedia entitled
'Celestial Empire of benevolent Knowledge'. In its remote pages it is
written that the animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the emperor, (b)
embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray
dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j)
innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m)
having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like
flies.
. . . .

Given that classification scheme, I'd have to place myself in (n).

You can find the whole piece online:
Jorge Luis Borges
The Analytical Language of John Wilkins
http://www.alamut.com/subj/artiface/language/johnWilkins.html

To continue the topic drift, if you're interested in Wilkins, The Royal
Society, early attempts to make it possible to find what you're looking for
in large collections, and the invention of binary codes, all these things
are among the *many* threads woven into the plot of Neal Stephenson's
trilogy-in-progress / trilogy-of-really-fat-books, known collectively as the
Baroque Cycle. Some people hate 'em, some people can't put 'em down. I'm in
the latter category.

Grins,
Marc Rettig