Book Review: “Classifying Reality,” by David S. Oderberg (ed.) (2013)

Frontiers in Psychology

Paul M. W. Hackett¹ 

关键词: classification;    categories;    mapping sentence;    facet theory;    mereology;    structural ontology;    psychological processes;    book reviews as topic;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00461

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Classifying reality is an ancient and fundamental ability. Even the most basic living creatures classify their world as do social collectives of living things, most noticeably, human beings through psychological processes. An example of the rudimentary nature of classification exists in the behavior of slime molds. When food is abundant many of the more than 900 types of slime molds exist not as slime but as single-cell organisms. However, if food is in short supply the cells agglomerate and move as a single body. As a collective, slime molds are able to identify food and experiments have demonstrated that through changing shape the mold can reach food in a maze: Branches of the mold that do not terminate at a food source “die off” resulting in an almost singular path to food. Remarkably, these single cell organisms can act as a collective and classify correct or incorrect, advantageous or non-advantageous turns in the maze. At this rudimentary behavioral level slime mold is able to classify reality in order to bring advantage to the collective. This example demonstrates the fundamental nature of classification as a behavioral and biological process. Within psychology classifying has featured large within many areas of the literature but perhaps mainly within developmental and cognitive sub-disciplines.

【 授权许可】

CC BY