My mind is going berserk

[imdow123]

The following situation happens to me regularly and makes me go crazy. I don't know if it will make sense but please try to read it and help me. It really makes me go crazy.

 

I was reading an etymology book. One of the chapter's name was "words about common ideas". This started a train of thought. What does "common ideas" refer to? I realized that there can be a lot of ideas. Then I stared asking that how can you classify or organize all ideas? I looked up list of academic disciplines on wikipedia. The way it classifies knowledge is into Humanities, Social Science, Formal Science and Natural Science. On what basis have we classified knowledge like this? Can we do something similar to classify ideas? And my mind is filled with all these questions that I have no answers to.

 

Then I stared reading each chapter's name from the book's index. The chapter names were "words about common ideas", "words about common phenomena", "words about everyday attitude". I started wondering what is the difference between "ideas", "phenomena" and "attitude"? How do we classify words into these three categories? A phenomena can be an idea and attitude can be a phenomena. So how does the book categorize words into these three chapters? And my mind is filled with all these questions that I have no answers to.

It took me a lot of introspection to find out what's bugging me inside my head. I guess my problem is about organization and classification.

Hope my questions make sense. Please give me an answer that can make my mind peaceful again.

[Strange]

On what basis have we classified knowledge like this?

 

A combination of historical accident, convention and usefulness. Like any categorization, it is at least partly arbitrary.

 

You might also want to look at the Dewey Decimal system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Decimal_Classification

 

 

I started wondering what is the difference between "ideas", "phenomena" and "attitude"? How do we classify words into these three categories? A phenomena can be an idea and attitude can be a phenomena. So how does the book categorize words into these three chapters?

 

I assume they are distinguishing between concepts in the mind (ideas) and external events (phenomena). But I doubt the distinction is particularly well defined. It is more likely to have been a fairly arbitrary choice so that they could break the book up into manageable chunks.

 

 

I guess my problem is about organization and classification.

Maybe you need to study taxonomy or ontology?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomy_%28general%29

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_%28information_science%29

[imatfaal]

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, © 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.

 

Jorge Luis Borges provides a taxonomy allegedly taken from a translation of an antique chinese document (he made it up) in an satirical attempt to demonstrate the arbitrary nature of language, nomenclature, and taxonomies

 

http://www.alamut.com/subj/artiface/language/johnWilkins.html

THE ANALYTICAL LANGUAGE OF JOHN WILKINS

Jorge Luis Borge