The Memory of What Is: Ontogenic Analysis and Its Relationship to Ontological Concerns in Knowledge Organization

Abstract

Indexing languages appear in multiple versions. This is because they are revised. For example, the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) is in its 23rd edition. This means that the editors of this particular indexing language felt they had to make changes to the classes, their numbers, and what they are called. Elsewhere I have looked at a particular subject in the DDC and charted its life through the various editions from its first appearance to the present day. The subject I examined was EUGENICS; and it has, what I might call, a strange life in the DDC (Tennis, 2012). When it first appears as a subject in DDC, in 1911, it is named a biological science by virtue of the number assigned to the subject, 575.6. Because of revision it is no longer possible, via Dewey’s guidance, to class books on Eugenics in the 500s, the natural sciences. The classifier is guided to other disciplines in the scheme. This life of EUGENICS is what I call its ontogeny. Ontogeny is a term borrowed from biology. It is the development of an individual from the time of conception through to full maturation. For example, human embryos have “tails,” but these change into other features as the fetus develops and are most often not present in a mature adult human. Subjects, like EUGENICS, can change substantially over the course of their life in an indexing language. In the case of Eugenics in DDC, it morphed from being a biological science to a topic studied in relation to social sciences and other disciplines.

Keywords: subject ontogeny