Classification.

This may be described as the oldest and simplest of scientific methods. The observation of similarities be­tween certain things, and classing them together, marks the earliest attempt to discover some kind of order in the apparently chaotic jumble of things that confront the human mind. Language bears witness to the vast number of classifications made spontaneously by pre-scientific man. For every common noun expresses the recognition of a class; and language is much older than science. The first classifications subserved strictly practical purposes, and had reference mainly to the uses which man could make of the things classified. They were frequently also based on superficial resemblances, which veiled deeper differences, or were influenced by superficial differences, which diverted attention from deeper similarities. But with the growth of the scientific spirit classifica­tions became more objective or more natural, attention being paid to the objective nature of the things themselves rather than to their human uses. Even now scientific classification rarely begins at the beginning, but sets out from current classifications embodied in language. It has frequent occasion to correct popular classifica­tions. At the same time it has difficulties of its own, and more than one science has been held up for centuries for want of a really satisfactory scheme or classification of the phenomena constituting its field of investigation. To recognise a class is to recognise the unity of essential attributes in a multiplicity of instances; it is a recognition of the one in the many. To that extent it is a dis­covery of order in things. And although it is the simplest method of science, and can be applied before any other method, it is also the fundamental method, inasmuch as its results are usually as­sumed when the other methods are applied. For science is not, as a rule, concerned with individuals as such, but with kinds or classes. This means that the investigator usually assumes the accuracy of the classification of the phenomena, which he is study­ing. Of course, this does not always turn out to be the case. And the final outcome of the application of other methods of science to certain kinds of phenomena may be a new classification of them.

Date: 2014-12-21; view: 971