Categories Are Your Frenemies
When I was a kid, there was a tween game where you sat in a circle and clapped and called out “Categories! Names Of!” and then someone shouted a category and you had to keep on shouting out examples of that category or you lost the game.
The nature of thought requires us to divide things into categories. This is good, because it facilitates learning. We need categories to begin to understand the multivalence of our world. To this extent, categories are our friends. As our understanding progresses, we begin to see the limitations – the false boundaries – of categories. As we grow, categories become our enemies.
Architectural history is a good example. We begin by learning styles and periods. Federal, Italianate, Queen Anne, Richardsonian Romanesque, Beaux-Arts, Craftsman, Art Deco. We study the defining characteristics of each of these styles and pretty soon we are able to survey buildings in the streetscape and categorize them.