|
|
|
|
|
|
|
in the world, but the number of lines on Austrian census forms. If too many diseases got identified then there would be no way of maintaining and analyzing registers of causes of death, as the technology would not hold more information. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In addition to this inheritance, there is a practical Occam's razor. When doctors come to code causes of death they are frequently faced with a set of difficult judgments (which may require an autopsy and further diagnostic work). They can simply go for the easiest way, by using a generalized 'other' category. They can then get back to dealing with their live patients (Fagot-Largeault 1989, chapter 3). So the classical beauty of the Aristotelian classification gives way to a fuzzier classification system that shares in practice key features with common sense prototype classificationsheterogeneous objects linked by metaphor or analogy. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The powerful habits of practice with respect to the humble tasks of filling out forms are often neglected in studies of classifying. Goodwin (1996) provides an elegant description of working student archaeologists matching patches of earth against a standard set of color patches in the Munsell color charts. He argues that earlier cognitive anthropological work on color assumed a universal genetic origin for color recognition, but failed to examine the kinds of practices that informed the ways in which color tests were designed and carried out in the course of this research. He notes: |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Rather than standing alone as self-explicating textual objects, forms are embedded within webs of socially organized, situated practices. In order to make an entry in the slot provided for color an archaeologist must make use of another tool, the set of standard color samples provided by a Munsell chart. This chart incorporates into a portable physical object the results of a long history of scientific investigation of the properties of color. The version of this chart that archaeologists bring into the field has been tailored to the distinctive requirements of their work situation. (1996, 66) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The archaeologists constantly compare the pieces of earth against the chart, negotiate with each other, and transform their everyday terms for the earth into the formal numbered categories on the chart. The uncertainties they face along the way are removed once the numbers are selected and reported: "The definitiveness provided by a coding scheme typically erases from subsequent documentation the cognitive and perceptual uncertainties that these students are grappling with, as well as the work practices within which they are embedded" |
|
|
|
|
|