SLOP6608: Cryptotaxonomy: A Linnaean System for the Shanhaijing
Build a classification system for any material, on a book that resists. The 山海经 (Shanhaijing, the Classic of Mountains and Seas) files hundreds of creatures by where you would meet them and never says what any of them is a kind of. Twelve weeks: build it, strain it, rebuild it.
What you leave able to do
Choose characters
Decide which features of a thing can be compared across every case, and say why the ones you rejected do not qualify.
Build the hierarchy
Nest those characters so that a claim made high up holds for everything underneath it, and nothing has to be restated.
Name the limits
State where your own system fails before anyone else finds it. Every system has an edge. Declaring it is the difference between a taxonomy and a guess.
The last thing you hand in runs your own system on material this course never gave you, and asks which of its characters the new material does not supply.
Three phases, four weeks each
Weeks 1 to 4
Build a system that works
Characters, ranks, two-part names. You apply them to the cleanest records in the book and they fit, which is the part that should worry you.
Weeks 5 to 8
Push it until it strains
Omens, medicinal uses, the line between a god and a beast. Each one is a candidate character that turns out to fail a different test.
Weeks 9 to 12
Take it apart and rebuild
One name over many creatures, one creature under many names. Then other traditions, and then a system of your own for material nobody has sorted.
The training set
The Classic of Mountains and Seas files hundreds of creatures by where you would meet them and never says what any of them is a kind of. It is a good training set precisely because it resists: a book that sorted itself cleanly would teach you nothing about choosing characters.
帝江
陆吾
毕方
夫诸
九尾狐
并封
- 12
- weeks
- 25
- creature records
- 18
- chapters, all read
- 26
- mountain routes
- 1
- edition, cited in full
Every quoted line comes from one edition, 山海經 (the Classic of Mountains and Seas), 四庫全書本，郭璞注 — the Siku Quanshu text with 郭璞's (Guō Pú) commentary. No page writes a line of its own. Where a line cannot be found, the entry says so and claims nothing after that. The binomials are this course's inventions and every page that prints one says so.
One record, in full
This is a single entry, printed the way every week prints its own. Read the fields and you have read the raw material of the whole course.
Specimen
狌狌
Xingxing albiauritum binomial assigned by this course, not by the text
- Kind
- 獸, the word the record uses
- Form
- like a 禺 with white ears, going on all fours and running upright; and, in a second record, like a pig with a human face
- Habitat
- 招搖之山, the first mountain of the first route; and west of 舜's burial
- Use
- 食之善走 — eat it and you run well
- Records
南山經 · 南山經之首 · 招搖之山Southern Mountains · first southern section · Mount Zhaoyao
有獸焉，其狀如禺而白耳，伏行人走，其名曰狌狌，食之善走。
There is a beast there, shaped like an ape but with white ears. It goes on all fours and it runs like a person. It is called 狌狌. Eat it and you will run well.
海內南經Within the Seas, South
狌狌知人名，其為獸如豕而人面，在舜葬西。
狌狌 knows people's names. As a beast it is like a pig with a human face. It lives west of Shun's burial place.
海內經Within the Seas
有青獸，人面，名曰猩猩。
There is a green beast with a human face, called 猩猩.
Three records, three bodies, two spellings. The first beast in the book is also the first proof that a name does not fix a creature.
Quoted from 山海經 (the Classic of Mountains and Seas), 四庫全書本，郭璞注 — the Siku Quanshu text with 郭璞's (Guō Pú) commentary. Interlinear notes removed; the base text is otherwise unaltered.
Where to go next
- The twelve weeks
Each week's rule, the creatures it is tested against, and what the week leaves you with.
- Assessment
Five pieces of work. What each is worth, and what the final one asks for.
- Week 3 slides
Morphology. The one week whose argument is visual, so the one week with a deck.