Furthermore: Where the Headlines Take You

Putting Things in Order

The American Psychiatric Association is working on a new revision to its massive catalog of mental disorders, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). This time around, proposed revisions include eliminating a hard-and-fast distinction between Asperger's syndrome and autism, revising the criteria for some eating disorders, and offering a new tool for suicide risk assessment.

We humans are very interested in categorizing and classifying our world. Art and cultural historians, doctors, biologists, librarians, and many other thinkers have used classification as a tool (however flawed) to bring order where there appeared to be chaos. The news about revisions to the DSM has reminded me of several fascinating books about how we have managed (or mismanaged) this sort of tidying, and how to use classification systems to our advantage:

In Naming Nature, New York Times science journalist Carol Kaesuk Yoon outlines anthropological evidence that naming systems to describe plants and animals are universal among humans; as well as scientific research that indicates there is a special part of the brain used for naming natural objects, different from the part of the brain that we use to name inanimate or human-made objects! Yoon's narrative is readable and thought-provoking, particularly when she discusses the depth of meaning in traditional taxonomies, and argues that when we discard these traditional naming systems in favor of systems based on evolution, genomes, or chemical structures, we lose something meaningful. Folk taxonomies, she asserts, have a certain je ne sais quoi scientific taxonomies will never attain.

Take a look at the traditional names we use for plants and animals, though, and you might start to get confused. Is it a hawk, or a falcon? A moth, or a butterfly? What's the difference between corn and maize? Or mushrooms and toadstools? Answers to all these questions, and more, are to be found in This is Not a Weasel: A Close Look at Nature's Most Confusing Terms. In this helpful but entertaining reference, Philip B. Mortenson explains the history and etymology of common names of plants and animals – but even better, he looks carefully at the differences between confusingly similar organisms. Readers will leave Mortenson's tutelage with a clearer understanding of what makes a mammal a mammal, the differences between spines and thorns, and so on.  Useful knowledge indeed.

Of course, science is not the only place we employ classification systems. Per Mollerup illustrates this vividly with Marks of Excellence: The History and Taxonomy of Trademarks. The book is large, colorful, and richly illustrated, but it is more than a visual reference. Mollerup first presents an intelligent history of trademarks, their use, their ideal function, and their cultural role. Then, he lays out a detailed taxonomical structure for trademarks, with branches for different types. For example, at the roughest level, there are graphic marks, and non-graphic marks.  Among graphic marks, a further division can be made between letter marks, and picture marks.  Each element of this taxonomy is described in the text, and illustrated with specific examples of real-life trademarks. Marks of Excellence is fascinating to leaf through, but Mollerup's explanations and history are so interesting that they would be worthy of attention even if the illustrations were not so many, so varied, and so beautiful.