Categories - Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything - page 45

dia, binary opposition can be a good place to start but a terrible place to end. Benchley's Law -
there are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in
the world, and those who don't - points us in the right direction. To collaborate, we must admit
ambiguity and complexity, and avoid premature classification.
For instance, teamwork is possible through greater awareness of how we (can) organize
ourselves. The classic default is the bounded set of the childhood sandbox. There's a clear
boundary and things are in or out. We use it because it's easy, but that doesn't make it right.
Spatial ordering of physical objects isn't how ontology works. Wittgenstein famously debunked
this classical theory by questioning the category of “games.” It has no clear boundary as no com-
mon properties are shared by all games. Some involve skill, others luck, some you can win, oth-
ers you cannot. Instead the category is united by overlapping similarities or family resemb-
lances. It's hard to define a game, but we know one when we see it.
Fuzzy sets have a center and periphery. Some members are better than others. A robin is a better
bird than an ostrich. An orange is a better fruit than a tomato. Madonna is a better singer than
Bill Clinton. Terror is a better feeling than detachment. Most sets are bounded on the surface but
fuzzy beneath. We think we can define them until we can't. In this failure lies freedom. When
we admit they're not sets in stone but embodied in cognition, we're able to classify creatively.
Figure 2-23. Multiple theories of categorization.
Paul Hiebert, the world's leading missiological anthropologist, did just that when he invented
the concept of centered sets. His work as a missionary in India led him to ask the question “Can
an illiterate peasant become a Christian after hearing the Gospel only once?” xli By tradition, the
church was organized as a bounded set with clear definitions of membership and carefully cir-
cumscribed beliefs and values. Hiebert proposed a more inclusive, dynamic way to form cat-
egories by defining a center, and by paying more attention to direction than location. In his
model, a Christian is anyone who moves towards Christ. Some are closer to the center in know-
ledge and maturity, but all are equal members of the set. It's an ontology that values openness,
change, diversity. It amps up permeability and softens the boundary between us and them.