As Goody argues, the process of constructing a thematic list ‘leads to increments of knowledge, to the organisation of experience’.15 It is a precursor to organised philosophical systems, and, eventually, to science. Centuries later, in the fourth century BC, Aristotle would turn the list format into the bedrock of his thinking by divvying up all of reality in his great work, the Categories.
The ability to categorize is a prerequisite of cognition, in Kantian terms.
