The Contribution of The Existing Classifications Systems to The Acquisition of New Knowledge

“The principal object of your reading should be for the acquisition of useful knowledge , and the strengthening, refining, and ennobling of your character”, Grenville Kleiser.

Nowadays, in a world of constant change and progress, knowledge is spread on every corner. If this is true, then the acquisition of new knowledge is the last step, after spending time reading, searching, and analyzing information about an specific topic. Libraries attempt to organize books on different sections, each section is divided in more branches. This order facilitates the person that is seeking for an specific type of book. This example illustrates the way classification systems work, which is the distribution of items into an organized structure, that allows further understanding for many areas of knowledge. If classification system is an organized structure as defined above and they are all around us, what is its purpose? On this case, this claim states that classification systems steer the acquisition of new knowledge, the word “steer” means to lead or direct a course, so basically the point of this concept is to give an adequate order to specific information in order to access it in an efficient and timely method with a lower level of stress.

The Arts

The arts, is an area of knowledge that has various forms of classification systems according to its type. Music genres classification is a simple and clear example, each genre have specific musical features such as melody, intensity, timber, texture, pitch, intensity and variation of harmonics. Even the historical and geographical origin shapes the style of music it belongs to. African music has many distinct forms but it has a powerful meaning on Africans daily life, they considered music as a symbol of tradition that has passed orally from generations to generations. However, since it has different forms, it has many classifications, for example the Sub-Saharan African music, has features like no other African region, because of its polyrhythmic counterpoint, where in two or more locally independent attack patterns are superimposed, is realized by handclaps, xylophones, rattles, and a variety of tunes and non-tuned drums.

Music features have been discovered over time, meaning that the music parameters that exist today aren't the ones who will exist in ten years, however the ones who do exist are constructively building paths of new knowledge that help seek for new information that may bring up unknown music features in the future. Nowadays, music genres classification systems have evolved, technology has created the automatic music genre classification (AMGC), this method analyzes almost instantly the different parameters of music and categorizes them in an online platform. Songs are deliberately uploaded and distributed online such as apple music and spotify, music platforms that deliver music to all kind of music preferences. The methodology behind this platforms are classification systems that offers an order to the consumer, in other words the classification of music offer the opportunity to seek among the different styles that exist, consequently new information can be acquired by looking through that platform.

Conversely, the writer Langston Hughes once stated "Perhaps the mission of an artist is to interpret beauty to people - the beauty within themselves." In other branches of art classification systems are more complex, in the case of literature, another branch of art in which authors use words and language in order to portray something that could be seeing from different perspectives. For example, Alfonsina Storni, an Argentinean writer who is known by by her sad and melancholic poems. She portrayed her depression and all the feelings that this disorder cause into her writing. However, if you examine a group of people, and you give them the task to analyze one poem of her, some may state that the title is literal and the others may say is symbolic. Whether one option is right or no, is up to people points of view and arguments to say what they consider the right answer. This might be a limitation to the classification systems in this area since there are different perspectives that don't necessarily belongs to one hierarchy as there is in music.

Natural Sciences

On the other hand, in the natural sciences, taxonomies examines morphological, behavioral, genetic and biochemical factors on organisms such as plants, microorganisms and animals in order to classify them into groups that share similar characters. Factors such as weather, habitat, amount of water and sunlight shapes the way organisms develop, as a result a certain kind of specie is form depending on those factors. Is also important to mention that geographical factors caused either by nature or human actions, create barriers that separate species, as a result they start to develop new skills and adaptations as a way of survival, this process called speciation leads to the formation of a new specie.

My point here is to reflect how species are constantly changing due to different aspects, even more in a world where climate change is a big issue that has a drastically effect on the environment. But there comes, Carolus Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy, the one who created during the mid-1700 a classification system that have been used until now. The word taxonomy means “arrangement law”, this methodology works by a binomial language process, in which two Latin names are given to organisms, the first word is the original name of the specie, the second word is the name that attributed to the different aspect that differs that specie from the original one. Linnaeus created an opportunity to differ species from others in a very efficient way, it not only is consider a big step for the area of the natural sciences but it has make it easier for anyone who want to recognize a specie abilities or features just by identifying its name. However, despite its benefits, a recent study that analyzed the DNA of giraffes located in Africa shows that in fact there are four different species of giraffes that were labeled under the single specie of giraffes. Giraffes didn't have any sub specie named before, but this study showed that there were certain features that differs one giraffe to the other. In one hand you may considered that in this given case, taxonomies are not a hundred percent efficient due to the constant evolvement of the species. However, the single label or category of giraffes, give direction to a new discovery that have changed our knowledge about the world. I

Conclusion

To conclude, I consider that existing classification systems contributes to the acquisition of new knowledge. The art is made out of simple and complex classification structures, one on side, music genres have specific musical features that classifies songs into the style it belongs. On the other hand, literature, has the objective to use language in order to portray something that could be seeing from different perspectives. Authors share the common interest of providing literary messages that express certain emotions, in which can be perceived by its readers in mismatched opinions of the same work. On the area of the human sciences, taxonomies give an arrangement to the examination of the morphological, behavioral, genetic and biochemical factors on organisms in order to classify them into groups that share similar characters. This two areas, the arts and the natural sciences shows that each classification system have its own purpose of establishing a logical and systematic division of knowledge, which allows the human brain to perceive that information in a synthetic way. It enhances our ability to navigate through that data, generating more inquiries about different topics that soon will lead us to visualize information in a different way. Classification structures are more than a way of arrangement, it is a way of perceiving the world, that is why is important to understand how our existing knowledge about those structures can reveal future knowledge.