What does classification have to do with knowledge?

We construct our areas of knowledge using our own ways of knowing. Our emotions, observations, faiths, deduction, intuition and language provide of ways of knowing. How we classify our world around is unique to every being. The big question we need to ask ourselves is how accurate are the categories we create? In categorising we will generally use observation, social convention and judgements but how can we now that these are most precise? Human sciences and history study the way that human construct their categories. Both areas of knowledge will deal with "social construct", which is the classification that we create socially or culturally, but that we do not observe. Categories carries implications of how we think and act in the world. Take for example gender and race classifications, both of them involve social power. Scientists say that categorisation of human differences have attached humans to certain judgements and emotions. The world "nigger" was used to classify black people, however the word itself carried much more power than a simple classification, it carried judgements and prejudice. Classification schemes have properties that enable representation and reflect knowledge of the object being classified. The subject that is master at classifications is Science (biology), more specifically the biologist Carl Linnaeus who aimed to classify all the elements in the natural world. He made a system of classification which consisted of: domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, specie. The ways of knowing that Linnaeus used to classify the natural world is significant, he must have used knowledge in different forms such as: reason, dedication, observations, intuitions and language. We will classify things into categories that seem reasonable to what we know. Each person has unique knowledge, therefore classification systems and schemes will vary from person to person. In the activity we did in class each group had to classify a series of objects according to what they thought as the best fit. From group to group the results varied a lot. One group decided to classify the objects by function, while the other thought that it was best to classify it by weights or by material. The schema, mindset, of each person would influence how they would categorise and express their knowledge about the object. Culture also plays a fundamental role in classification systems, in the brazilian culture wooden stick is used to stir coffee, while in the american culture this wooden stick is most likely to be seen as a popsicle stick since spoons are used to stir coffee. If you told a brazilian to put the wooden stick under a category he could classify it by function and say that its function is to stir, while the american would say its function is to hold a popsicle. Categories will vary from culture to culture, since the way we view and object will differ. This is when shared and personal knowledge come in. We live in a world were categorisation is used all the times to make things easier and simpler. For example; when we walk in a supermarket all the sections of the supermarket are organised into categories so the consumer can go to the section that most interest him/her. However, classification is only true when logic is used in the process of determining its class.