How Taxonomy Steals Reverence

Chapter 3 is about classification and the paradox of losing one's positive regard for a thing by being able to describe it well. The philosophy behind the need to recognize what matters constantly versus the curiosity to discover what matters even once has a long and anxious history in many cultures, several predating Western thought. This chapter posits that the human habit of looking at many unique individuals as more similar than different allows them to remember what they cannot bear to forget—at the expense of ignoring the essential differences they will never remember.