Book Review: “Classifying Reality,” by David S. Oderberg (ed.) (2013)

Classifying reality is an ancient and fundamental ability. Even the most basic living creatures classify their world as do social collectives of living things, most noticeably, human beings through psychological processes. An example of the rudimentary nature of classification exists in the behavior of slime molds. When food is abundant many of the more than 900 types of slime molds exist not as slime but as single-cell organisms. However, if food is in short supply the cells agglomerate and move as a single body. As a collective, slime molds are able to identify food and experiments have demonstrated that through changing shape the mold can reach food in a maze: Branches of the mold that do not terminate at a food source " die off " resulting in an almost singular path to food. Remarkably, these single cell organisms can act as a collective and classify correct or incorrect , advantageous or non-advantageous turns in the maze. At this rudimentary behavioral level slime mold is able to classify reality in order to bring advantage to the collective. This example demonstrates the fundamental nature of classification as a behavioral and biological process. Within psychology classifying has featured large within many areas of the literature but perhaps mainly within developmental and cognitive sub-disciplines. Notwithstanding the seminal nature of the process of classifying in human life, contemporary books published on the subject of classification are uncommon and I believe that psychologists could benefit from considering the broad perspective assumed in Oderberg's book. His edited volume is a concise collection of writing by contemporary scholars in which each of the six chapters is concerned with an aspect of identifying the structure of reality. Realism proposes that some entities do not need conceptual systems, beliefs, or our linguistic practices, etc., and may be thought of as objectively real. This contrasts with conventionalism, which posits entities are constituted on social agreement. The book contains an eclectic assemblage of writing from authors drawn from a realist perspective as, ". .. realism about classification stands its ground: all major lines of criticism available to the extreme conventionalist can be addressed. " Tahko (2013, p. 60). The central question posed in Oderberg's book may be summarized as: Is it possible to classify reality? Here he makes the not universally accepted point that in order to be able to classify reality it is necessary that we establish that reality has …