Note 72 — Chapter II · PRAGMATISM AND THE PRAGMATIST MOVEMENT

As an illustration of this “conceptual shorthand,” I take the following lines from Professor Needham’s book upon General Biology (p. 222) in respect of “classification” and its relative and changing character. “Whatever our views of relationship, the series in which we arrange organisms are based upon the likenesses and differences we find to exist among them. This is classification. We associate organisms together under group names because, being so numerous and so diverse, it is only thus that our minds can deal with them. Classification furnishes the handles by which we move all our intellectual luggage. We base our groupings on what we know of the organisms. Our system of classification is therefore liable to change with every advance of knowledge.”