When Melvil Dewey invented his decimal classification system, how did he decide the order for the main categories? I remember learning in elementary school that Dewey started with a thought experiment where a newly self-aware person started asking questions about himself and the world, and that the main categories followed the order of the questions. For example, the first three questions that such a person might ask–(1) Who am I? (2) Who made me? (3) What is this world like that I am in?–resulted in the first three non-general categories being 100 Philosophy & Psychology, 200 Religion, and 300 Social Sciences. Lately I have been looking, unsuccessfully, for a list of the questions, or at least for corroboration of this story. Does anyone know where I might find them?
Hmmm, an interesting question. I can’t find anything that agrees with the Melvil Dewey thought experiment that you mentioned, but I did find this interesting excerpt via google:
This would seem to indicate that Dewey did not come up with his ten broad categories all by himself, but rather drew on previous attempts to taxonomize human knowledge.
This site might help you, brianmelendez. And welcome to the SDMB!
Followed by the questions. Apparently from a 1961 school hournal. And yes, they taught us th’ same thing here in NZ.
And to this day, the Dewey Decimal Classification system (which is propietary BTW) is pretty Eurocentric.
The religion section 200-299 reserves 200-289 pretty much just for Christianity. 290-299 gets “the rest”.
The 400 section in nearly every library is pretty small, mainly language dictionaries and a few stray books on linguistics.
Bingo! and in half an hour, all after midnight. Thanks, folks. Now I can sleep!