toward a perceptual model of folk biological classification1
- 1 August 1976
- journal article
- Published by Wiley in American Ethnologist
- Vol. 3 (3) , 508-524
- https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1976.3.3.02a00080
Abstract
The notion of taxonomic structure has played a central role in recent descriptions and analyses of folk systems of biological classification. The increasingly apparent inadequacies of that notion as a model of folk classification processes justify a fundamental theoretical reorientation. Reasonably interpretable and formally adequate definitions of inductive classification (Postulate I) and of dissimilarities in a classification space (Postulate II) are more adequate than the taxonomic model for understanding patterns observed in folk biological classification systems. A non‐rigorous extension of this “perceptual model” deals with the key problem of taxonomic ranks.This publication has 18 references indexed in Scilit:
- Unique Beginners and Covert Categories in Folk Biological TaxonomiesAmerican Anthropologist, 1974
- Folk Systematics in Relation to Biological Classification and NomenclatureAnnual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 1973
- General Principles of Classification and Nomenclature in Folk BiologyAmerican Anthropologist, 1973
- Speculations on the growth of ethnobotanical nomenclatureLanguage in Society, 1972
- WHICH CAME FIRST, THE CHICKEN OR THE EGG-HEAD?Published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH ,1970
- Covert Categories and Folk TaxonomiesAmerican Anthropologist, 1968
- Finite linnaean structuresBulletin of Mathematical Biology, 1967
- Zoological Classification System of a Primitive PeopleScience, 1966
- Semantic Structures in Northwestern California and the Sapir‐Whorf Hypothesis1American Anthropologist, 1965
- The Language of TaxonomyPublished by Columbia University Press ,1954