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January 02, 2006

Classification by crocodile

An illustration that you can never tell how people are going to want to classify things:

When Bernard P. Grenfell, Arthur S. Hunt and J. Gilbart Smyly discovered the mummies of the "papyrus enriched" holy crocodiles in Egyptian Tebtunis, they sensibly decided to include in the first volume of their publication a "classification of papyri according to crocodiles," for papyri in the belly of the same animal might reveal relationships reflecting their administrative provenance and an original arrangment.

In Ernst Posner, Archives in the Ancient World (The Society of American Archivisits: Chicago, 1972) p. 5 [Tags: EverythingIsMiscellaneous taxonomy crocodiles egypt]

Posted by D. Weinberger at January 2, 2006 01:04 PM

Comments

Trees vs. piles of leaves

The comparison betwen trees vs. piles of leaves reminds me a lot of the opening of "A Thousand Plateaus" and the comparison between aborescent & rhizomatic structures.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0816614024/qid=1136253562/002-4318674-8288868

Aborescent = hierarchical, tree-like structure.
Rhizome = underground, laterally-connected, assemblage.

Deleuze & Guattari lace their writing with poisonous amounts of jargon but the underlying metaphor is very similar.

The main difference between a rhizome and a pile of leaves is that a rhizome still has connections between its component parts.

Posted by: Matt Moore | January 2, 2006 09:03 PM

Matt, Thanks. I've tried many times to read D & G, to no avail. I can't even understand the books that explain D & G. Sigh.

Yes, the comparison seems apt. With leaves, the connections grow rapidly, so they become rhizomal right away.

Posted by: David Weinberger [TypeKey Profile Page] | January 2, 2006 10:09 PM

You must be a fan of MASH, and especially the filing system of corporal Radar O'Reilly.

Posted by: Branko Collin | January 3, 2006 08:56 AM

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