What next?

  Sethren, that’s the Jeroan taxonomy dealt with.  So what? you will say.  Just stood up like that, it don’t amount to a can of beans.  Why you should say that in an American accent, sethren, I do not know, but you do, you do.  And I have no quarrel with a can of beans.

  Taxonomies are powerful things.  None more powerful than Linnaeus’s, who gave us the whole kingdom of biological life, laid out just so.  And from the other end of the telescope, Mendel, who gave us something just this side of nothing, but an infinitesimal so powerful that it can anatomise all that Linnaeus named.

Moi

  And then there is Jorge Luis Borges.  Here is his taxonomy of animals, which I’m sure you know, but has that strange quality, that every time you come across it, there seems to be something there that was not there before, while the list is no longer, and nothing is missing:

(a) belonging to the emperor,

(b) embalmed,

(c) tame,

(d) sucking pigs,

(e) sirens,

(f) fabulous,

(g) stray dogs,

(h) included in the present classification,

(i) frenzied,

(j) innumerable,

(k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,

(l) et cetera,

(m) having just broken the water pitcher,

(n) that from a long way off look like flies.

  This may at first seem unscientific.  However its purport is to demonstrate that a constant of all taxonomies is fallibility.

  I have suggested

Demon    thing    act    concept    map narrative    praxis    Culture

and you, sethren, could well ask, but then, what kind of thing in your taxonomy is a scientific law, or a mathematical proof, or a rule of thumb such as that of a good man of Cork, John Punch: “entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem”.

  I could try, sethren, like the scholasticists of old, or like Procrustes, to fit these succinct, recognisable, bounded and coherent cells of the metaverse into the Jeroan taxonomy, thus:

  A scientific law is the sequential coupling and obligate linkage of  a series of concepts, any of which may and probably will themselves be composed of a series of concepts, possibly recursively until, once you get down to simple enough concepts, demons begin to appear; ergo, a concept (in the sense of the Jeroan taxonomy).

  Same goes for a mathematical proof.

  And for a rule of thumb.

  But that is all trivial circularity, sethren.  What we need to do next is to explore the ways in which the descriptees of this taxonomy, collectively evoculture, co-exist with and within the collective of human organisms.  The space that they configure is the metaverse, which is continuous, through the nexus of all functioning human neural substrates, with the rest of the universe.  Evoculture must account for not just stone knapping and sewing, but family, friendship, art and science, agriculture and warfare, love and hate.  All right, all right, sethren, do not flee.  Quite right, this is the work of ages, and I do not intend to even attempt it, especially as summer has now been deferred until at least July and we may all die of vitamin D deficiency before the sun shines again.  While our fuckhead Prime Minister talks of more wars and his soft pink lust for fracking.  Evoculture must account not only for the wonderful in humankind, but also for the criminals who have superseded bankers, and the political class.

  What I shall try to do, sethren, and that very briefly, is to delineate, not with a fine camel hair brush, but with a yard broom dipped in road grime, some ways in which evoculture might account for human nature a lot better than sociology or religion does.  And I am too pessimistic (though not about the political class), for tomorrow the sun shines.  A pic-nic, maybe, sethren.  Away with you, while I call up Fortnum & Mason upon my phone.

A taxonomy

Etching, Encylcopaedia Britannica 1911

  I pause here.  I worry.  Will we ever nail a demon?  It is so very small.  It is perhaps like a bacterium before the days of microscopes.  We must perhaps search about and about.  There is a danger.

  An old friend found Nasruddin in the street, walking up and down disconsolately.  “What are you doing?” he asked.  “Looking for the key to my house,” said Nasruddin.  “You dropped it somewhere here?”  “No,” said Nasruddin, “I dropped it in my shed.”  “Then why are you looking for it out in the street?”  “Because here it is light.  In my shed is pitch dark, and I will never be able to find it.”

  So, sethren, we must first know where to look.

  If we were looking for an animal…

  “King Philip came over from Greece smiling.”  So says Jonnie Hughes, he of On the Origin of Tepees fame, though not fame enough for our purposes, for he spoke unto the gentiles, and they listened not, or not as deeply as one would have hoped.

  King Philip…  It’s an acronym.   Kingdom phylum class order family genus species.  Good God!  Did someone say Linnaeus.  No, ‘twas but the derisive fart of a departing bus.  But we are not dismayed.  Linnaeus it is.  His taxonomy of animals.  Beautifully ordered as a hierarchy, so each superordinate category contains all and only the categories next on down.

But culture is what we are examining, and in the light of culture, we on this island, and particularly you lot in the northern half of the next continent moving leftwards, are weird.  Let us look elsewhere, initially to the southern half of that continent, but more importantly to the major fraction of mankind who do not think as we do.

  Categories of animal:

(a)       belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.

  Now we’re talking, sethren. This is what that almost manic fan of all formulations Encyclopaedic, Jorge Luis Borges, attributes, through doctor Franz Kuhn, “to a certain Chinese encyclopaedia entitled 'Celestial Empire of benevolent Knowledge'.”

  Here we have a taxonomy in an entirely different style from that of the rational Linnaeus. Here things may be included in several categories, or none (depending on the place of (l) et cetera in the hierarchy which does not exist).

  Who could ask for more.

  So, for the analysis of culture I propose a taxonomy not Linnaean, not Borgean, but Jeroan.  And here, my dears, I lay it out on the grimy pavement before you.

  Brother Jero’s taxonomy of the Metaverse (or “The Jeronaean taxonomy”.)

  Culture      praxis            map               concept         action           thing              demon

  Take it away with you sethren.  Let me know what you think about it.  Tomorrow, we may catch a demon.