Doug -Which is why I give you high marks for pragmatism! I have my own pragmatic side, which is why anybody ever pays me to do anything, but it is tempered (or sullied) by a certain sense of seeking and appreciating structure where I find (imagine?) it. Following Jack Horner's (Hi Jack! Welcome to the Fun-House.) Rubles-worth on Cladistics, I appreciate the simple adoption of classification schemes for their pragmatic value and agree that this may lead to "many" which are "equal" or at least whose value is entirely contextually dependent. I also appreciate the distinction between methods which (try to) reflect descent and modification and those who don't. Mendeleev's development of the Periodic Table (preceded by Dobriener's Triads and Newland's Octaves) was a "simple" taxonomy which has paid of richly, predicting function from structure long before the underlying "causes" were understood. I can pretend to know their various motives in conjuring these "patterns" in the first place, but in the final analysis, they turned out to be quite useful. I share Doug's frustration with abstracting the abstractions ad absurdium, though perhaps not as acutely... I suspect that there is a evolutionary/survival value in the almost obsessive-compulsive need some of us have to try to find structure in (impose on?) everything! I don't know if it has been discussed here, but a theory was recently put forward that Ausperger-Autistic Spectrum Disorders might have origins in a similar manner... a "latent" or "vestigal" survival trait that is near the surface, ready to be expressed at the drop of a significant change in circumstances. I'm not sure exactly where OCD or Autism is a hands-down survival quality for the individual, but it might very well be an important feature in the ensemble of characteristics in a group. Idiot-Savants and all that. - Steverino |
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