How to cut the universe up into parts: the use of categorization and typologies
One of the things I like to think about is how to chop things up into sorts of things. I love attempts at categorization and constructions of typologies. I love the pictures of buildings sorted by Bernd and Hilla Becher, or the Faces of August Sander. I love catalogues and the way they are organized. They are deeply philosophical instruments, attempts at clarifying thought.
Aristotle came up with ten ways to cut up the universe on the basis of what you could say about things.
- Substance or οὐσία. That which cannot be predicated of anything or be said to be in anything: such as this particular man or this particular horse. I am not completely sure how this works, but I am working on it. What I understand, is that substance in the form of this particular man cannot be said of anything except itself. If that is the correct interpretation then I’m pretty well there.
- Quantity or ποσόν. How much of something there is: Are there two apples? Is it five metres long?
- Quality or ποιόν. Of what kind something is: the horse might be dappled, the sentence might be ungrammatical, the man might be Socrates, the poem might be Rilke’s.
- What is relatively so or πρός τι. How one thing relates to another: is the horse larger than the man, is the hair in your nose shorter than the hair on your scalp, is the whiskey a double?
- Place or ποῦ. Where something is: perhaps you could direct me to the lyceum?
- Time or πότε. When something took or will take place: was it yesterday? Will it be next year?
- Situation or κεῖσθαι. The position of things after action: are you lying down or sitting up?
- Condition or ἔχειν. Of having something: are you wearing shoes, are you wearing your armour? Do you have a disease?
- Action or ποιεῖν. Are you making a table or are you doing the washing up?
- Passion or πάσχειν. How you are affected by something: did you cut yourself? Were you bored by the lecture?1
Kant in his Kritik der Reinen Vernunft went a step further, coming up with four classes of things each containing three finer categories
- Quantity
- Unity (One) What’s the single most important thing here?
- Plurality (Many) What are the different parts, options, or perspectives involved?
- Totality (Whole) How does everything fit together as a complete picture?
- Quality
- Reality (Something is) What is actually there or happening?
- Negation (Not) What is missing, absent, or excluded?
- Limitation (Something but not everything) Where are the boundaries—what is it, and what is it not?
- Relation
- Substance & Accident (inherence and contingency) What is the core thing here? And what are features that could change without affecting what something is?
- Cause & Effect (Causality) What brought this about? And, what might follow from it?
- Reciprocity (Community) How do the different parts or people affect and depend on each other? How do things work together?
- Modality
- Possibility/Impossibility Could this even happen, or is it impossible?
- Existence/Non-existence Does this actually exist beyond our world of thought? Can it occur right now?
- Necessity/Contingency Does this have to be this way, or could it be otherwise?
But it is not just philosophers who like to cut things up with care. Butchers cut cows and pigs and chickens up with great flare and experience along anatomical lines. Jamaican and African cooks however, cut chicken and pork like bakers cut bread. Why do we cut bread up in the way we do? How should one cut a wedge of cheese into smaller bits without getting the host upset?
Then there are ways of sorting out kinds of animals and plants. We have eventually settled on Linnaeus’ taxonomy into Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species
but there are other ways… Here is the most beautiful of all classifications:
Jorge louis Borges, the Great Argentinian Librarian and Writer refers us to ‘a certain Chinese encyclopaedia‘ he came across, entitled The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge’ in which animals were divided into 14 classes:
- those that belong to the Emperor,
- embalmed ones,
- those that are trained,
- suckling pigs,
- mermaids,
- fabulous ones,
- stray dogs,
- those included in the present classification,
- those that tremble as if they were mad,
- innumerable ones,
- those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
- others,
- those that have just broken a flower vase,
- those that from a long way off look like flies.
With which he merely wanted to say: “there is no description of the universe that isn’t arbitrary and conjectural for a simple reason: we don’t know what the universe is”2
And this last is true. But that is not a reason to then rubbish all attempts at being thorough and accurate in one’s classifications and typologies. Classifications and typologies are not so much driven by the notion of being true representations of the universe (although many classifiers were hoping for exactly that); it is rather that classifications are useful to us, especially if the order they bring to our thinking help us achieve a measure of control over our lives.
This is why Borges’ fictional encyclopaedia is of such significance: so useful and so helpful. Once our categories and typologies have got too stuck in their ways and too automatic in their application and once we start believing in their truth (hypostatizing them), we need reminding of the dark abysmal Dionysian truth: all we can do is muddle along.
© jacob voorthuis, 2025. Please cite Jacob Voorthuis as the author, The Theoria Project as the title and the page address as the location. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially under the following terms: No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits. Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.