Freshman year at St Ignatius means world history. I had Mr Kelley. He had a dry sense of humor and would drop little jokes in his lectures that kept me laughing the whole 50 minutes.
Every night we had to do some reading and make an outline. Nearly every day we had a quiz where we could only use our notes for reference. Answers were marked wrong if they were written in the passive voice.
It’s safe to say we were learning more than world history in Mr. Kelley’s class.
One of the things I remember him stressing 20(!) years ago was the importance of generalization. Generalizations, the commonalities between different instances, are the evidence of historical principles. For example: civilizations sprang up near rivers.
What does this have to do with outlines?
The hierarchy in outlines is perfect for expressing this sort of knowledge:
- Civilizations spring up near rivers
- Mesopotamia
- Indus Valley
- The Yellow river in China
- Egypt and the Nile
- Chicago
A similar type of outline structure you see a lot is categorization:
- River Civilizations
- Mesopotamia
- Indus Valley
- The Yellow river in China
- Egypt and the Nile
- Chicago
- Mountain Civilizations
Categorization is somewhat out of fashion right now. In this interview (around 3:30) Stephen Fry, actor, tweeter and all-around erudite guy, says that while Aristotle was obviously a great genius – the inventor of logic after all – there’s a black mark on his resume where he’s responsible for the role of categorization in western thought.
My response is “If categorization is so horrible, why is it so common?”
Now that you’ve read this post you’ll start to notice how often conversations boil down to questions of categorization. For example, in the news today a lot of people are talking about recent changes to the way mental illnesses are categorized, specifically changes to the descriptions of autism spectrum disorders.
Categorization is ubiquitous because it’s a powerful way to make generalizations and generalization is a fundamental tool for understanding things.
How do you get into trouble with a generalization? You try to smash an instance into the general template. This fatal flaw of generalization is most obvious when applied to people, but it’s really true for anything. It’s what people mean when they say you shouldn’t make generalizations.
Similarly, when you categorize things, you have to accept that things won’t always fit in your scheme. You want things to be either a mammal or a bird. But sometimes you encounter a platypus. (Check out this hilarious presentation it’s about problems software developers have with modeling, but it’s full of of great examples of how rigid hierarchies break down in funny ways)
Categorization and generalization are critical thinking tools. They are very powerful for understanding things, but you should be aware of when you’re invoking them so that you use them wisely.
