The Categories
On interpretation
by Aristotle · first published 1938
45% recommend55% neutral
Why HN recommends it
A short, foundational treatise on how things are classified and described. It serves as a starting point for metaphysics and for thinking about relations, and suits readers new to philosophy.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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The Stranger by Camus. Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre. The Prince by Machiavelli. Categories by Aristotle.
on “Ask HN: Life Changing Books?” ↗…argument rests on an univocation. I really don't have the time to discuss this topic to the length that it deserves so I'm just going to have to drop this. If you want further reading, you can try the Categories by Aristotle.
on “Parish priest argues rationally for shoplifting” ↗…world it can be hard cut through the work of its great thinkers. A sensible way to approach Wittgenstein is to start with a college level introductory book on Metaphysics to get the foundational ideas, Categories and Forms of Aristotle and Plato. Some modern philosopher writers can walk us through this nicely (Michale Loux from U of Chicago, his introductory writings or some other perhaps). What might be modern…
on “The relentless honesty of Ludwig Wittgenstein (2017)” ↗…(related to economic value) is based on relations as well -- to the producer or creator of an item or service, as well as the user or owner's use value. And these are not generally intrinsic. Aristotle's Categories are a good starting point for considering relations, even now.
on “Anna Karenina Principle” ↗I would recommend starting with Categories from Organon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categories_(Aristotle)
on “Hylomorphism” ↗…everything I'm saying. Sixth century authors, five centuries with almost nothing, then a return. Even the sixth century mentions they were unfamiliar with Aristotle's actual works, except maybe reading "Categories," the only work I can find Photius or Aretha's commenting on. And it mentions repeatedly that Plato had dominance, even saying Aristotlean views were near heresy at times.
on “Science and Tech of the Byzantine Empire” ↗…horse. Plato, I believe, then claims that these forms are perfect and timeless and the the actual world is inhabited by imperfect reproductions of these forms. Apologies to scholars of Plato. Aristotle's Categories, while superficially, quite different I think is tackling the same problem. His most universal abstract categories try to answer the question, "what is it that all things regardless of their nature have…
on “The limits of type theory: computation vs. interaction” ↗…when used on more complex concepts with more sophisticated audiences. It ignores millennia of knowledge of the subtlety of language, taxonomies and ontologies that go way back at least to Aristotle's Categories. Yet people jump to it really quickly. I had smart people pitch to me on two separate occasions, startup ideas that were specialized domain search engines where "get this, we would have two sliders that…
on “The Four Quadrants of Conformism” ↗Augustine does explicitly reference Aristotle's "Categories" in his Confessions, I believe. Not sure what other material of Aristotle's was available to Augustine, I'm not a scholar on the subject. Of course, even to us today, many of Aristotle's works are STILL…
on “Thomas Aquinas' works with English and original Latin presented in parallel” ↗…other number as its result, instead of 0, which demonstrates that the nature of 0 is the same as that of any other cardinal number, i.e. it is a quantity (term introduced already by Aristotle, in his "Categories", where the various kinds of concepts and the words that name them were classified by the kinds of questions to which they provide answers).
on “How the human brain contends with the strangeness of zero” ↗…called a statue is the form." Incidentally, Aquinas's short On the Principles of Nature (https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~DePrinNat) is a good overview of this theory, which is spread all over Aristotle (in the Categories, the Physics, and the Metaphysics). As far as οὐσία is concerned, I think this is the complete Greek for Parmenides's poem: http://philoctetes.free.fr/parmenidesunicode.htm. In the places where that…
on “Category Theory Illustrated – Natural Transformations” ↗…of which have evolved significantly over the life of the Library of Congress). The history of hierarchical information classifications is long and IMO fascinating, dating at least to Aristotle and his Categories, as well as numerous variants used in classifications of knowledge (such as Francis Bacon's) or encyclopedias, including Diderot's and Britannica.
on “Explore Wikipedia Like a Windows XP Desktop” ↗