nomenclature: identifying versus classifying

[Curtis Clark]

At 10:35 AM 10/15/00, Richard Jensen wrote:
>I must be missing something here.  If names are completely separated from
>a system of classification, then they exist in an information vacuum.

What I mean by this is that a name is assigned to a "thing" s. lat., be it
a physical object or a group of objects or a group of groups, or whatever,
without the name carrying with it any information about the place of that
thing in a larger structure or the internal structure of the thing. The
best example is the automatic generation of an index field in a database,
with sequential numbers. Every number unambiguously refers to a record in
the database, but no other information is expressed or implied. The
database itself has structure--is a classification, if you will--but an
individual record number has meaning only in the context of the database.
And changes in the database will not cause the association between a
specific record number and its record to change.


--
Curtis Clark                  http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
Biological Sciences Department             Voice: (909) 869-4062
California State Polytechnic University      FAX: (909) 869-4078
Pomona CA 91768-4032  USA                  jcclark at csupomona.edu