Learning to classify - Part 4
At the end of Part 3, Fliba and Lagard decided that the skyscraper system was better than the globe system for classifying shapes. The next day, during biology class, their teacher told them that humans are a type of animal. A confused Lagard went up to Fliba straight after the class:
Lagard: Did she say that humans are animals? Is she nuts? Dogs and tigers are animals. We aren’t!
Fliba: Do you never learn? Didn’t we decide that squares are types of rectangles?
Lagard: What does that have to do with anything? This is biology and that was mathematics!
Fliba: But in both cases, what we are doing is classification.
Lagard: So? They are still different subjects.
Fliba: Let’s talk to your sister Glagalbagal.
While they get in touch with Glagalbagal, think if there is a relationship between the two questions - a square being a rectangle and a human being an animal.
Lagard: I don’t know why Fliba called you. You are studying mathematics so you know nothing about biology.
Glagalbagal: Why do you say that?
Lagard: You told me you didn’t really study biology in school and you haven’t taken any biology classes in college. Do you know what genus a crab belongs to? What about a duck?
Glagalbagal: You are right. I have no clue. But isn’t the question you have about classification? We already had a discussion on that, didn’t we?
Fliba: That’s what I told the fool.
Glagalbagal: To be fair Fliba, the way things are taught in school, you would think that there is no relationship between different subjects. There are many ways in which subjects are connected - this is an epistemological connection.
Lagard: An epist-em-o-what?
Glagalbagal: Forget that I said that word. All I meant was that the same tool, in this case classification, can be used in different disciplines.
Lagard: Show me how they are related.
Glagalbagal: Rather than that, let me help you compare the two classificatory systems. One where humans are not types of animals, which I will call Aristotle’s classification, and one where they are, which I will call Linaeus’s classification. Then, you can spot the connections.
Lagard: What is Aristotle and Linaeus?
Glagalbagal: Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and biologist amongst other things who classified humans as different from animals. Linaeus’s classification is what biology textbooks basically use till today. So, what your teacher said is a result of Linaeus.
Lagard: So, he was an idiot as well.
Glagalbagal: Even if he was wrong, he isn’t necessarily an idiot! But, for now, you have not even justified that he was wrong.
Can you argue for Linaeus’s classification over Aristotle’s the way we did for the skyscraper classification over the globe one for shapes? This is left to the reader.
This ends the series on classification. Share your thoughts in the comments below.