Theory of Categories: Key Instruments of Human Understanding

Categorization is an essential and unavoidable instrumentality for conceptually navigating a world—indeed for being able to conceptualize a world to be navigated. Classification is a pivotal instrument for scientific systemization, featured as a basis for the philosophical understanding of reality since Aristotle, but classificatory concepts of sorts, types and natural kinds inevitably pervade our understanding of ourselves and our position in the social as well as the natural world at all levels. The authors argue that the character, purpose-, context-, and culture-relativity of categories and categorization have been widely misunderstood—that standard philosophical views are substantially correct in some respects but markedly mistaken in others. The book offers a comprehensive survey of basic principles of classification and categorization, a survey of relevant empirical work, and a multitude of illustrative examples accompanied by instructive analysis of ways and means. The work traces wide-ranging implications of the current approach for philosophical problematic and paradox in philosophy of mind, epistemology and metaphysics, philosophy of science, social philosophy and ethics. 

Table of Contents:
Preface; Chapter 1: The Nature of Categories; Chapter 2: The History of Categorization; Chapter 3: Empirical Issues in Categorization; Chapter 4: Categories in Science; Chapter 5: Category Mistakes and Philosophical Paradoxes; Chapter 6: Ethical and Social Categories; References; Index

About the Author :
Patrick Grim is known for wide-ranging research both within philosophy and beyond. This is his third collaborative volume with Nicholas Rescher. Nicholas Rescher, philosopher and polymath, is well known for a prodigious publishing career. A consistent focus in Rescher’s work is the dialectical tension between our synoptic aspirations for useful knowledge and our human limitations as finite inquirers.

Review :
“Grim and Rescher’s Theory of Categories is a philosophically sophisticated and historically informed study of categoricity in virtually all its aspects. It has insightful treatments of categories in metaphysics, scientific inquiry, philosophical analysis, and other areas, and it is particularly informative on specific issues such as the problem of induction and, throughout, in distinguishing defensible generalities from convenient stereotypes”— Robert Audi, John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, USA. “Patrick Grim and Nicholas Rescher wrote a fascinating and engaging book about every possible categorization aspect. Categories are fundamental tools of human understanding and thinking. The analysis starts with categories’ nature and category theories’ history. It unifies the perspective of philosophy, logic, and cognitive science. “Theory of categorization” is a scholarly book that helps us manage category mistakes and paradoxes”— Péter Érdu, Henry Luce Professor of Complex Systems Studies, Kalamazoo College, USA. “Categories, categories. Who needs them? Everyone, according to this book, complete with glossaries, taxonomies, diagrams, paradoxes, and, of course, categories. The authors shed light on many areas of classification, across various disciplines”— Paul K. Moser, Loyola University Chicago, USA.