The writer/philosopher
Jorge Luis Borges wrote an essay titled "
The Analytical Language of John Wilkins"
wherein he attributes the following, somewhat startling,
animal taxonomy to an ancient
Chinese encyclopedia,
the
Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge:
- those that belong to the Emperor
- embalmed ones
- those that are trained
- suckling pigs
- mermaids
- fabulous ones
- stray dogs
- those that are included in this classification
- those that tremble as if they were mad
- innumerable ones
- those drawn with a very fine camel's hair brush
- others
- those that have just broken a flower vase
- those that resemble flies from a distance
You can draw what conclusions you like from such an
ordered list. That was certainly the intent of its use by Borges. He was interested in order and how ultra-order can become
opaque, even
disorderly. For example in his story "
The Library of Babel" the encyclopedia contained not only entries for everything known, but also for everything that could be known. There was so much information, and such an earnest attempt to
anticipate information, that it veered into
nightmare. Regarding taxonomies and the example of the Chinese encyclopedia, Borges says "it is clear that there is no
classification of the
Universe not being arbitrary and
full of conjectures. The reason for this is
very simple: we do not know what
thing the universe is."
There is some disagreement as to the
authenticity of "the list". Borges obliquely encouraged doubts as to its origins. It is suggested even that he might have
fabricated it himself whole-cloth, attributed the first citation to a certain
Doctor Franz Kuhn to wash his hands on the question, and went about the important
business of making his
point. Prof.
Daniel Balderston has written concerning Franz Kuhn, who certainly was a real person, and was queried on this matter of “the list” by a Mr.
Jeremy Ahouse some years ago, in a letter I found in a
newsgroup. The professor related that although Borges would indeed appear to conveniently attribute some useful facts to other writers it often turns out that, after deeper research, many of these rumored “attributions of convenience” are verifiable at the source.
With that bit of
indirection in hand, the reader is left, again, to draw their own
conclusions. No doubt Borges would be pleased.