ABSTRACT
In 1903 Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss formulated one of the central propositions of the sociology of knowledge. They said that the classification of things reproduces the classification of men. In proposing that our classificatory activities reproduce the pattern of social inclusions and exclusions, Durkheim and Mauss offered us a bold, unifying principle. Unfortunately Durkheim and Mauss's monograph De quelques formes primitives de classification raised more doubts than it settled. It was criticized in an influential series of papers by Gehlke, Dennes, Goldenweiser, Schaub, Benoit-Smullyan, and Worsley. The criticisms can be grouped under three heads: empirical, theoretical, and logical. The different sorts of object in a system of classification can be thought of as related together by elementary laws, like "fire is hot" or "wood floats." In one respect the laws may be said to assert the copresence or coabsence of those features of the world to which we have selectively attended.
