Guiding Principles for Classifying Phenomena

1. Integrative levels. The physical world is divided according to the concept of ‘integrative levels.’ At the level of human science, individual-level phenomena are distinguished from societal-level phenomena.

2. Individual-level and societal-level phenomena are organized in a handful of logically distinct categories.

3. Wherever possible, these logical main classes are denoted by the first letter of the class title. Physical libraries are free to choose how they distribute main classes physically. For digital libraries, the mnemonic benefit of this strategy imposes no organizational challenge. Mnemonics are also used for subclasses when possible.

4. Within each main class, subdivision occurs in terms of ‘type of’ though occasionally ‘elements of.’ It is almost always clear which is the appropriate operative principle (and thus the two need not be distinguished notationally). Subdivision in terms of ‘elements of’ is much more common in natural science, but occurs also in Technology and Science and Health and Population.

5. Subdivision is grounded in both an ontological and epistemological understanding.

6. Subdivision occurs logically. Existing classification systems often abuse hierarchy by including e.g. “applications of x” as hierarchical subdivisions of “x.” In this classification, these inappropriate subclasses are instead captured through compound

terminology, generally in the form of causal links.

7. The classification is grounded in the table of the phenomena studied by human scientists developed in Rick Szostak, A Schema for Unifying Human Science (2003) and reprised in his Classifying Science (2004). These works describe in detail the rationale for the broad outline of the classification. It was extended (largely inductively) for the present purpose. It incorporates ideas from the Integrative Levels Classification www.iskoi.org/ilc

8. Notationally, main categories and the first level of subdivision are denoted by capital letters, the next level by single-digit numerals, and further levels by lower case letters.