On 6/5/07, Tim Spalding <tim_at_librarything.com> wrote:
>
> >(Mike) Huh? Arbitrary? Only if you consider the whole decimal system of
> >counting to be just "arbitrary".
>
> Of course decimal counting is arbitrary. It's advanages have nothing
> to do with the shape of knowledge and everything to do with creating
> tidy-looking numbers. You see it over and over in Dewey—shoe-horning
> arbitrary complex subject divisions into a decimal scheme. A
> well-designed tree can have different numbers of leaves on every
> branch. Dewey can't. It's ten ten ten until the cows come home.
> States? Apostles? Flavors in Heinz katsup? Stuff them in as best you
> can, and make sure to leave a "junk drawer" heading. Let a 19c.
> provincial 20-something design a subject system and you end up with
> Buddhism in the junk drawer of a junk drawer.
>
But any division scheme is fundamentally arbitrary. Things and events
aren't really, physically utterly divided, they interrelate in creative and
surprising ways. Every "piece of matter" affects every other piece of
matter.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't develope organizational schems, only that we
should always be aware that any formal organization is artificial and
intended for a use, and not to be confused with the actual physical reality
of things.
So of course division by tens is artificial, but it's easy to understand and
use for most of us, and that gives it a leg up, one would think. Slicing
things into twelves or sixteens would be just as rational but more difficult
to use because we're used to the decimal number system because of the
accident of having five fingers on each hand.
--
Ed Seedhouse
Received on Tue Jun 05 2007 - 10:24:19 EDT