ABSTRACT
Totalization plays an important role in certain kinds of empirically oriented scientific activity. Even the most rudimentary acts of totalization are formed in some degree by the higher degrees of abstraction, formalization and transcendental abstraction. This chapter assesses the role of the nervous system in the act of totalization, and looks at what the theory implies about the product of totalization – something which leads to engage the old debate on universals. Totalization depends on a pre-conceptual, connatural knowledge of taxis rooted in social structure, and more specifically in the participation in definite social categories. There is a kind of 'category of totality', the existence of which Durkheim attributes to the experience of inter-tribal relationships, which is represented in a kind of vague and remote 'Great Spirit'. Cladistics has over phenetics the advantage that it is rooted in a real biological process which yields real biological relationships.
