#The Analytical Language of John Wilkins

[208tinyhorses]

[emporio-celestial]

"On those remote pages [of the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge] it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel's hair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance. - Jorge Luis Borges, The Analytical Language of John Wilkins

______________ Welcome. In this space we collect benevolent knowledge of all kinds, and we categorize it according to the categories established in the Celestial Emporium, we tend to our peryton, and apart from that, we do very little, because this is merely a sideblog.

[streamdone]

New top story on SPARTA NEWS: The Analytical Language of John Wilkins https://ift.tt/vMwTbDO

[pazodetrasalba]

Dimidius

Dear Caroline:

'Demi' is not a very common prefix in English (the only words that came to mind when seeing it were obvious French borrowings like demimonde and demi-glace). After having read your post and checked the etymology (latin dimidius, 'half', 'halved', but also 'incomplete', mutilated') I got the impression that demisexual was just a polite word for (partially) asexual. I don't know that much about 2015s Caroline, but I can't imagine why anyone would have called you that. Even in the definition you include, it does feel, as you say, an incredibly fuzzy term, and not that great as a self-imposed label one would feel proud of, and on a more critical note, it is of the type one would imagine being imposed on people holding to a less frivolous, more traditional and elevated view of sexuality and attraction than is the current norm.

Your parenthetical aside has almost made me blush, as I find myself perfectly reflected in yours because of this literary mise en abîme of mine, in which I spend a lot of time reading -and commenting on- things online that you wrote ten years ago. I guess this would also make me a Fake Demisexual - a less fortunate one at that, as I haven't enjoyed the blessing of two conversations with you.

A love for absurd categories brings to mind a famous quote from Jorge Luis Borges (arguably, my favorite Spanish-language writer ever) which I'll include at the bottom. As for the adjective, I can think of a few that suit you much better, if you will allow me to drape you with them: cute, adorable, lovely, lovable.

Quote:

These ambiguities, redundancies and deficiencies remind us of those which doctor Franz Kuhn attributes to a certain Chinese encyclopaedia entitled 'Celestial Empire of benevolent Knowledge'. In its remote pages it is written that the animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.

Jorge Luís Borges, The Analytical Language of John Wilkins

[parashoot]

Borges' Animals

In "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins," Borges describes 'a certain Chinese Encyclopedia,' the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, in which it is written that animals are divided into:

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.

This classification has been used by many writers. It "shattered all the familiar landmarks of his thought" for Michel Foucault. Anthropologists and ethnographers, German teachers, postmodern feminists, Australian museum curators, and artists quote it. The list of people influenced by the list has the same heterogeneous character as the list itself

https://multicians.org/thvv/borges-animals.html

[the-entangler]

In "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins," Borges describes 'a certain Chinese Encyclopedia,' the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, in which it is written that animals are divided into:

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.

[acommonplacepage]

These ambiguities, redundancies and deficiencies remind us of those which doctor Franz Kuhn attributes to a certain Chinese encyclopedia entitled The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. In its remote pages it is written that the animals are divided into

a. belonging to the Emperor b. embalmed c. trained d. pigs e. sirens f. fabulous g. stray dogs h. included in this classification i. trembling like crazy j. innumerable k. drawn with a very fine camelhair brush l. et cetera m. just broke the vase n. from a distance look like flies

The Analytical Language of John Wilkins by Jorge Luis Borges in Selected Non-Fictions

[baddreamland]

Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge

Fourteen categories of animals from "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins" by Jorge Luis Borges —

Those that belong to the emperor

Embalmed ones

Those that are trained

Suckling pigs

Mermaids (or Sirens)

Fabulous ones

Stray dogs

Those that are included in this classification

Those that tremble as if they were mad

Innumerable ones

Those drawn with a very fine camel hair brush

Et cetera

Those that have just broken the flower vase

Those that, at a distance, resemble flies

Source.

[tracichee]

THE INVISIBLE EMPIRE’S TINY TAXONOMY OF PLANTS, VOLUME IV: FLOWERS by Traci Chee 2017 seed paper, waxed linen thread * Among humans, it is not known when the enterprising citizens of the Invisible Empire began their work on the Tiny Taxonomy—indeed, its origins are disputed even among renowned historians of the Empire—but in the millennia since its first recorded appearance, the Invisible Empire’s Tiny Taxonomy has become an authoritative and invaluable resource on the categorization of the natural world. Encompassing over 102 volumes, the Taxonomy classifies the multitudinous plants, shells, egg-laying mammals, mushrooms that may be used to poison a man, moths, &c. in a system so simple and inspired that no one (human or invisible) has yet been able to match it in accuracy, comprehensiveness, or elegance. * The fourth volume of the Tiny Taxonomy of Plants, “Flowers,” stands only 1-inch high (an appropriately oversize volume for the average citizen of the Empire) with perforated paper pages embedded with seeds. When planted, each page sprouts into seven varieties of wildflower. * Not all volumes of the Tiny Taxonomy are made of paper, however. The Tiny Taxonomy of Rocks and Minerals, Volume VII: Crystals, for example, is carved onto wafer-thin tablets of variegated gemstone, while one volume of the Tiny Taxonomy of Insects has covers made from the scintillating elytra of various species of beetle. * Copies of the Tiny Taxonomy are easily accessible through the Invisible Empire’s vast libraries, which are often nestled inside hollowed-out trees and the abandoned burrows of wild rabbits. Plant enthusiasts might spend hours poring over the Taxonomy’s tomes, curled up in reading galleries inside the trunks of towering redwoods or ancient gnarled oaks, while eager botany students might make miniature notes by the light of an obliging glow worm or bioluminescent fungi. * For those humans who would otherwise never have the opportunity to study the arcane classification systems of the Invisible Empire, the full text of The Invisible Empire’s Tiny Taxonomy of Plants, Volume IV: Flowers is reproduced, with the consent and good will of the Invisible Empire’s Most Illustrious Academy of Sciences, here: * THE INVISIBLE EMPIRE’S TINY TAXONOMY OF PLANTS VOLUME IV FLOWERS * 1) houses of spirits and sprites 2) resplendent 3) poisonous 4) fuzzy catkins 5) ineffable 6) whose fragrance lures the dead from their graves at night 7) that fall from maidens’ mouths 8) lining the paths of lovers who will never meet again 9) many 10) ground with the internal organs of jaguars as a potion against fear 11) at the center of the moon 12) listed in books 13) having recently emerged from the coffee-colored loam 14) that bloom only once every three thousand years * Traci Chee is a book-maker, word-wrangler, and New York Times bestselling author of YA fantasies THE READER & THE SPEAKER. She lives in California with her fast-fast dog. THE INVISIBLE EMPIRE’S TINY TAXONOMY OF PLANTS, VOLUME IV: FLOWERS is inspired both by the ancient and/or fictitious “Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge,” cited by Jorge Luis Borges in his essay, “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins,” and by the pin-sized books of Evan Lorenzen. * Want to win a copy of Volume IV of the Tiny Taxonomy of Plants? Head over to my Instagram! This giveaway is international and runs through Friday, September 8.

[iamdanw]

Animal Classifier by Shinseungback Kimyonghun:

The taxonomy is from the essay ‘The Analytical Language of John Wilkins’ by Jorge Luis Borges where he discusses arbitrarities of John Wilkins and writes “it is clear that there is no classification of the Universe not being arbitrary and full of conjectures. The reason for this is very simple: we do not know what thing the universe is.” It is referred as another example of faulty human schemes. 

Most of the current AI systems are basically classifiers, and they learn and work based on the classifications provided by humans, thus inevitably imperfect.

[yuissamidare]

wheres that post thats like 'whats the worst thing youve read for school' bc the analytical language of john wilkins is definitely... giving me grief

[micaramel]

Artist: Nazim Ünal Yilmaz

Venue: Exile, Vienna

Exhibition Title: Theological Time, Mean Landscape, Circumcision Throne, Burping Bird, Auto-censure, Nose as a Walking Stick, Tare, Nite Smoking, W15, Measuring the Corner, Dolphin with the Woman and The Big Fish, Small Fish.

Date: June 5 – July 11, 2020

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of Exile, Vienna

Press Release:

These ambiguities, redundancies, and deficiencies recall those attributed by Dr. Franz Kuhn to a certain Chinese encyclopedia called the Heavenly Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. In its distant pages it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the emperor; (b) embalmed ones; (c) those that are trained; (d) suckling pigs; (e) mermaids; (f) fabulous ones; (g) stray dogs; (h) those that are included in this classification; (i) those that tremble as if they were mad; (j) innumerable ones; (k) those drawn with a very fine camel’s-hair brush; (1) etcetera; (m) those that have just broken the flower vase; (n) those that at a distance resemble flies. Jorge Luis Borges: John Wilkins’ Analytical Language1

Organised in lists, departments, compartments, definitions, dictionaries, meanings, boxes, crates, files, folders, encyclopaedias, and memory drives lies everything you’ve ever described, known, felt, and seen. Borges’ nod towards the tautological absurdity of analytical philosophy can be summarised by the serious joke of Wittgenstein’s The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.2 In this vein, one recognises that language is both access to the world as well as a prison.

It is in this spirit that Nazim Ünal Yilmaz paints a sharp critique of the analytical universe, and the awkward moment where it comes into contact with the physical world. The title of the exhibition Theological Time, Mean Landscape, Circumcision Throne, Burping Bird, Auto-censure, Nose as a Walking Stick, Tare, Nite Smoking, W15, Measuring the Corner, Dolphin with the Woman and The Big Fish, Small Fish replaces the absurd encyclopaedic boxes for all the different types of animals quoted above. His subjects and colours, contours and shadowy purple hues continue the lineage of Borges’ magical realism through the narrative construction of painting and installation. A wave of chaotic eruptions, ever-moving evolutionary changes, biological degradation, and the will to break out of the confines of definition give his compositions explosions of colour – a proper parallel to the circular drama of a planetary society that lives from pain, survival, and death.

The whole exhibition is a cinematic construction. The succession of pieces builds a compilation of stories that tie a string from point A to point B. The first room introduces this logical formula through the connection between two large canvases of dolphin and human species. In Big Fish, Small Fish (2019), a chain of dolphins catches increasingly smaller dolphins in mid-air. Leaping from the waves, the dolphins appear choreographed and recall the use of dolphins in aquatic circuses or theme parks. As they catch each other with their sharp teeth, the spectacle becomes a circuit of violence inflicted from the outside on each and every member of this choreography of abuse. The image parallels the structure of our capitalistic society, all of us participants with no option but to grind to the rhythm of exploitation of this dog eat dog world.

Across the way is Dolphin with a Woman (2019). This painting follows the dolphin motif in a similar manner as the creature, itself a victim of exploitation, catches a nude woman in its powerful clutches. The woman, fleshy and full, is revealed to also be a participant in this violent entertainment business. Like the dolphins, it is the properties of her body that give her value to audiences to gape and gawk. This series of paintings reveals the oppressive regimes of physicality, the prisons of our bodies, and the classifications which make some of us uninteresting, and some of us valuable. Although at first glance both canvases are rife with violence, they also emit the coming of a new era, one of inter-species solidarity between the oppressed, the rejection of the label and the show, and the acceptance of the other. An insurrection is rising.

Unique in this selection of paintings is the absence of Yilmaz’s typical self-portraits. He is staunchly opposed to representing the other and normally insists on the gesture of self-portrait. In this room however, he is present in other forms. A pink carpet and a casual clothing line represent the stereotypically feminine labour of the interior. He creates gestures of the domestic space and transversal identification with his subjects. The critique of spectacle rests on the pillars of feminism, animal rights, and queer theory all of which demand an end to the exploitation of bodies and express a common lack of freedom.

While the ground floor introduces the intersection between gender and species-based exploitation, the exhibition as a whole has the form of an expanded film. While criticising the spectacle, Yilmaz is conscious of the history of painting with its loaded implications and its role as image-making.

One of painting’s most painful associations for him is that to the Catholic church. Religious organizations have been at the forefront of persecution of otherness for centuries, but the Catholic church also gave rise to the most famous compositions and artists whose legacy in painting is undeniable. How to confront this inner contradiction to denounce exploitation through a medium which has benefitted from its implementation?

Moving up the stairs, a minimal room presents the painting Theological Time (2014), one of the namesake pieces of the exhibition’s title. Yilmaz describes of this painting as a symbol of the crossroads between truth, reality, religion, fiction, and the cycle of life. It reveals the depth of each canvas which traverses the social structures from today back to the dawn of time. The painting shows the still hands of a clock stuck in time.

In the time of the Ancient Egyptians, time was believed to be kept by the destruction of energy. Time based on the oscillation between night and day, digestion, life, and death, came from theological principles and became science. As a result of the industrial revolution, capitalist time took on a strikingly similar meaning described as secular wear and tear.3

Today, seconds are based on the vibration frequency of the cesium atom in the construction of an atomic clock. Here, Yilmaz sees a reversal of thought processes in which science comes first, and Christian and Muslim theologies try to prove the existence of God through scientific fact. The silent clock hands in Theological Time neither create nor destroy energy. They are frozen on Duchamp’s staircase in reference to his nude which recurs in Yilmaz’s symbolic reservoir. These stairs go neither up nor down. For Yilmaz, it is a symbol of stoppage and flow, the coexistence of heaven and hell, the cycle of life and death. In this painting, all life happens at once without any trace of linear progress.

The relation of theology to everyday life is consistent in all of Yilmaz’s works, and it is from where this void emerges. Although it is said we live in a secular world, traces of theology remain rooted all around us, and Yilmaz dissects and questions this lineage that still surrounds our everyday.

The final room presents a series of canvases arranged like stills of a film. Hung tightly together, the installation incentivizes a narrative reading to the chosen selection. Each painting acts like a short story within a compendium of tales. Here, recurring signifiers in Yilmaz’s work collide off each other.

The rapid succession of wild drooping paint sets the film reel in motion. The compendium simultaneously compresses and expands each individual short story into a contemporary Decameron 4 or Canterbury Tales 5.6

The title of the exhibition is a simple list but the content of the paintings expands its meaning into the boundless possibilities of short narration. If the compression of time into a constant and the strange coexistence between queer theory, popular culture, and the Catholic Church, existed within one person, it could well reside in the camera-holding, film-making, tableau-vivant of Pier Paolo Pasolini.7 A thinker too complex to define in any straightforward way. Delicate philosophical criticism and an eye for raw aesthetics of popular life proliferate his cinematic sequences, as do the short stories of Borges. Full of contradictions and interspersed with jokes, these are stories that speak of the true qualities of poetry – creating not the simplicity of dry analysis, but the infinite complexity of life’s imagination.

If the title of the exhibition is a replacement of the absurdity of categories, it is then the singularity of painting which ends this exhibition in the form of the brilliant sunset of the apocalypse. All the boxes explode into one. Art has become the religion of modern times. The very medium of painting, in its art historical uniqueness, as the pinnacle of what is called Art and enmeshed in its dramas of image-making and power is the format chosen in which the broken human and animal marionettes of the individual tumble. Broken and unhealed, they plummet towards the audience.

Àngels Miralda, The Brown Mountain, 2020

  1 Jorge Louis Borges “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins” 1952 (https://www.crockford.com/wilkins.html)

2 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1921.

3 In a long passage quoting Lardner, Marx discusses the progress of time on the constant capital of machinery this section introduces the need of maintenance and, complementary, additional labour power. There is a striking similarity with the ancient Egyptian understanding of the “destruction of energy” and their quest to build monuments that could last into eternity. Karl Marx, Capital: Volume II, Penguin Classics. (pg. 260)

4 Boccaccio, The Decameron, 1353. 5 Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, 1392.

6 In an exhibition I curated in January 2020, I set up the metaphor of curator as compiler. Based around the figure of Pier Paolo Pasolini and his series of films under the title The Trilogy of Life. The Sea Monster, The Bear, (Jüri Arrak, Nadia Barkate, Vytenis Burokas, Beth Collar) lítost, Prague. January – March 2020. (https://litost.gallery/en/ programme/smb/)

7 Pasolini’s profile has persistently puzzled academics, as a queer communist, he was awarded by the Vatican for his filmic interpretation of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew – regardless of the fact that the Church had officially excommunicated all communist sympathisers. He created for himself an awkward yet forceful position both antagonising and recognising the Catholic church for its sins and for its cultural importance.

Link: Nazim Ünal Yilmaz at Exile

from Contemporary Art Daily https://bit.ly/3igqkmV

[raelsketchbook]

Jorge Luis Borges - The Analytical Language of John Wilkins

ANALIZA TEKSTA

napisani članak nije temeljen na originalnom radu

Borges primjećuje odsutnost Johna Wilkinsa u četrnaestom izdanju Encyclopedie Britannice, obrazloženje je trivialnost članka napisanog o Wilkinsu koja nije opravdana s obzirom na njegov rad

članak započinje komentarom kako ljudi raspravljaju o prikladnim imenima za pojedine objekte, primjerice mjesec - ‘moon’ - ‘luna’

univerzalni riječnik, kojeg je u 17.st. napisao Wilkins, svaka riječ definira samu sebe

potaknut primjernom jednostavnosti imenovanja i učenja pisanja brojeva (decimalni sustav mjerenja) odlučio je sastaviti univerzalni jezik, svojim radom započeo je 1664.

razvrstao je svemir u 40 kategorija, koje sadrže pod kategorije

ideja je bila da su imena svih objekata što jednostavnija

Wilkinsonova kategorizacija podsjeća na ‘Celestial Empire od benevolent Knowledge’ koja djeli životinje u skupine

na slično možemo naići u podjeli svemira na 1000 djelova koju je napravio The Bibliographic Institute od Brussel

na temelju pročitanih primjera koji su došli od različitih autoramožemo zaključiti da ne postoji klasifikacija svemira i da ista nije moguća, barem ne na temelju pretpostavki i proizvoljnosti, a razlog tom eje vrlo jednostavan; ne znamo što svemir zaista jest

"The world - David Hume writes - is perhaps the rudimentary sketch of a childish god, who left it half done, ashamed by his deficient work; it is created by a subordinate god, at whom the superior gods laugh; it is the confused production of a decrepit and retiring divinity, who has already died"  -  'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion', V. 1779

možemo sumnjati kako svemir ne postoji u ograničeom, jedinstvenom smislu

unatoč tome i dalje možemo plairati i stvarati svoje ideje i uzorke

klasificiranje u Wilkinsonovu djelu je kontradiktorno i nejasno

same riječi nam ne daju informaciju o samome objektu koji ide uz istu, ne znamo boju, oblik, namjenu, starost itd.

u teoriji nije nemoguće razmišljati ili smisliti jezik u kojem bi ime svkog objekta davalo informaciju o svim detaljima sudbine, prošlosti i budućnosti istoga.

Moje mišljenje je da takav jezik u praksi nije moguć iz razloga što bi neki predmeti imali toliko dugačko ime da bi pojedine rečenice trajale minutama, ako ne i satima. Takav opis riječima bi više odgovarao kada bi se pridodao nkom apstraktnom i eksperimentalnom prikazu.

"He knows that there are in the soul tints more bewildering, more numberless, and more nameless than the colours of an autumn forest... Yet he seriously believes that these things can every one of them, in all their tones and semitones, in all their blends and unions, be accurately represented by an arbitrary system of grunts and squeals. He believes that an ordinary civilized stockbroker can really produce out of this own inside noises which denote all the mysteries of memory and all the agonies of desire"  - Chesterton -  G. F. Watts, page 88, 1904

[setnet]

Have to write an essay about theoretical frameworks in history writing. Very tempted to just answer with a series of quotes from Stoppard, Borges, Bujold, Siken. 

Once we have defined Wilkins' procedure, it is time to examine a problem which could be impossible or at least difficult to postpone: the value of this four-level table which is the base of the language. Let us consider the eighth category, the category of stones. Wilkins divides them into common (silica, gravel, schist), modics (marble, amber, coral), precious (pearl, opal), transparent (amethyst, sapphire) and insolubles (chalk, arsenic). Almost as surprising as the eighth, is the ninth category. This one reveals to us that metals can be imperfect (cinnabar, mercury), artificial (bronze, brass), recremental (filings, rust) and natural (gold, tin, copper). Beauty belongs to the sixteenth category; it is a living brood fish, an oblong one. 

These ambiguities, redundancies and deficiencies remind us of those which doctor Franz Kuhn attributes to a certain Chinese encyclopaedia entitled 'Celestial Empire of benevolent Knowledge'. In its remote pages it is written that the animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.

Borges, “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins”

VALENTINE: Well, it’s all trivial anyway. BERNARD: What is? VALENTINE: Who wrote what when... BERNARD: Trivial? VALENTINE: Personalities. BERNARD: I’m sorry -- did you say trivial? VALENTINE: It’s a technical term. BERNARD: Not where I come from it isn’t. VALENTINE: The questions you’re asking don’t matter, you see. It’s like arguing who got there first with calculus. The English say Newton, the Germans say Leibnitz. But it doesn’t matter. Personalities. What matters is the calculus. Scientific progress. Knowledge.

Stoppard, Arcadia, 2.1

. . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

Borges, “On Exactitude in Science”

History repeats itself. Somebody says this.           History throws its shadow over the beginning, over the desktop, over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters.                                                          History is a little man in a brown suit          trying to define a room he is outside of. I know history. There are many names in history                                                                              but none of them are ours.

Siken, “Little Beast”

HANNAH: It's all trivial – your grouse, my hermit, Bernard's Byron. Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final.

Stoppard, Arcadia, 2.7

[emojitakeover]

Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge

is a fictitious taxonomy of animals described by the writer Jorge Luis Borges in his 1942 essay "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins" 

Wilkins, a 17th-century philosopher, had proposed a universal language based on a classification system that would encode a description of the thing a word describes into the word itself—for example, Zi identifies the genus beasts; Zit denotes the "difference" rapacious beasts of the dog kind; and finally Zitα specifies dog.

In response to this proposal and in order to illustrate the arbitrariness and cultural specificity of any attempt to categorize the world, Borges describes this example of an alternate taxonomy, supposedly taken from an ancient Chinese encyclopædia entitled Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge.

The list divides all animals into 14 categories:

Those that belong to the emperor

Embalmed ones

Those that are trained

Suckling pigs

Mermaids (or Sirens)

Fabulous ones

Stray dogs

Those that are included in this classification

Those that tremble as if they were mad

Innumerable ones

Those drawn with a very fine camel hair brush

Et cetera

Those that have just broken the flower vase

Those that, at a distance, resemble flies

I simply enjoy this list and how one could categorise things into a language....

[welearnttoomuch]

On those remote pages it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel's hair brush, (l) other, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance.

A portion of Jorge Luis Borges’ “comprehensive” classification of animals that he fancifully attributes to an ancient encyclopaedia known as the ‘Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge.’ Borges, well known for his opinions of the simple efforts of human beings in trying to create order in an obviously chaotic world, makes a mockery of classification in his book ‘The Analytical Language of John Wilkins.’