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Talk with C., re. polythetic classification of Rodney Needham.

Wittgenstein & Vygotsky independently arrived at notion of ‘family resemblances’.

Family resemblances: 4 members of a family: look at eyes, ears, nose and mouth. All members share 3 of these.

Vygotsky: children increasingly gain the ability to group things that are less-concretely related. chain complex

Comte (came after Hume): 3 stages of civilization:

  1. theological. attribute causes to supernatural agents
  2. metaphysical. agents removed, but still have ‘big’ causes, anything Platonic…abstract entities
  3. positive. disregard all abstract entities and agents. just have stuff and laws that govern the stuff. shouldn’t even appeal to causes, this is just how things are

Final science is sociology: all science culminates “queen of the sciences”. used John Stuart Mill: good Comte (early, positivist) vs bad Comte (later, focussed on religion)

Comte mostly worked on justification of sociology, not much about using classification within sociology. Wanted to model society, “social physics” kind of like Asimov’s “psychohistory”

category: what is a christian?

Found a great article by Amanda Rees [1]

References