(poem posted on 7/5/16)
At first, this poem may appear to be pure nonsense. It may not even look like a poem. It begins with an unfamiliar word taxonomy and looks like a list of unrelated and ridiculous statements. Who in their right mind would think this was a meaningful poem? Yet the poet must. There it is, on your digital screen. You can either click out or read on.
Good choice.
We humans like to organize. We organize our closets; shirts here, shoes there. We arrange our pantry shelves, never putting canned fish with boxed cereal. We alphabetize, classify, categorize. We make lists of related things. The 18th century Swedish scientist Carolus Linnaeus developed a biological taxonomy which we still use today in categorizing plants and animals.
Now you are dealing with a taxonomy of knowledge. How can we organize in a meaningful system all that can be known? This poem offers a list of 12 categories useful in organizing knowledge.
Ponder each line. Think of knowledge you use in everyday life that might fit into each category. Take line 11 for instance. Think of the things that occur in your daily rounds, (i.e. thinking, digestion, love) things you do without really knowing how you accomplish the task. You understand gravity well enough to successfully manage the earth’s gravitational pull. Isaac Newton understood it better than you. Three hundred years later Albert Einstein came along and understood it better than Newton. Yet neither Newton nor Einstein danced with gravity better than you. You understand it well enough to get by.
What other kinds of knowledge fit this category?
Pause and ponder each category of knowledge listed in this poem. Create your own taxonomy of knowledge to help you organize the way you understand your world.
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2016