Week 3 Session: Morphological classification
Four composite bodies taken apart into parts and counts. Two of them differ only in where a number sits, one disagrees with itself between its two records, and one is assembled out of no animal at all.
8 March 2027 · Phase 1, Build a system that works
The rule this week states
A composite body is assembled from a small closed set of parts, so the parts and not the whole are what a taxonomy can count.
What this week does#
Week 2’s comparison column, 其狀如 X, works when X is one animal you already know. The records worth arguing about put two or three animals into one body, and one of them puts no animal in at all.
So this week takes a composite body apart into parts and numbers, and tests that against the three cases most likely to break it:
- Two bodies whose inventories differ only in a number — 陆吾 and 开明兽, on one mountain, filed apart.
- One name whose count moves between its two records — 天吴, eight tails in one line and ten in the other.
- A body assembled from no animal — 帝江, shaped like a sack, with no face.
A section after those three collects the eight part-words all four records stay inside. That vocabulary is the artefact you leave with.
Example 1: two bodies that differ only in a number#
陆吾 (lùwú) guards 昆侖 (kūnlún), the mountain the text treats as the god’s lower capital.
Specimen
陆吾
Luwu novemcaudatum binomial assigned by this course, not by the text
- Kind
- 神, the word the record uses
- Form
- tiger's body with nine tails, human face, tiger's claws
- Habitat
- 昆侖之丘, the god's lower capital
- Record
西山經 · 西次三經 · 昆侖之丘Western Mountains · third western section · the Hill of Kunlun
神陸吾司之。其神狀虎身而九尾，人面而虎爪；是神也，司天之九部及帝之囿時。
The god 陸吾 administers it. This god is shaped with a tiger's body and nine tails, a human face and a tiger's claws. This god administers the nine regions of heaven and the seasons of the god's park.
Filed by office rather than by body: it is what it administers. 開明獸 stands on the same mountain with nearly the same body and is filed as a beast.
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.
开明兽 (kāimíngshòu) stands on the same mountain, in a different chapter.
Specimen
开明兽
Kaiming vigilans binomial assigned by this course, not by the text
- Kind
- the record never says
- Form
- body largely a tiger's, with nine heads, every one of them human-faced
- Habitat
- standing east-facing on 昆侖, in the inner west
- Record
海內西經Within the Seas, West
開明獸身大類虎而九首，皆人面，東嚮立昆侖上。
開明獸's body is largely a tiger's, with nine heads, every one of them human-faced. It stands facing east on top of 昆侖.
Shares a mountain and most of a body with 陸吾, and is a 獸 by its own name where 陸吾 is a 神. The difference is the job, not the anatomy.
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.
Take both bodies apart and write down only what the lines supply:
| part | 陆吾 | 开明兽 |
|---|---|---|
| body | tiger | tiger |
| face | human | human |
| claw | tiger | — |
| head | — | nine |
| tail | nine | — |
An em dash is the record not saying, which week 2 established is not the same as a zero.
Two of those five rows are identical. The rest is one number. The whole difference between these two bodies is that 九, nine, attaches to 尾 in one line and to 首 in the other.
So the part is not the character. The part is the noun the character is stated in, and the number is the character. That is the half of the rule you can act on today.
Anatomy is not what the text sorts them by
陆吾 is a 神, and its line says what it does: 司天之九部及帝之囿時, it administers the nine regions of heaven and the seasons of the god’s park. 开明兽 carries 獸, beast, inside its own name.
Same mountain, nearly the same body, filed apart. A parts inventory cannot see the difference, and this week does not fix that. Week 6 is spent on it.
Example 2: one name whose count moves#
天吴 (tiānwú) has two records, and they disagree.
Specimen
天吴
Tianwu octocipitum binomial assigned by this course, not by the text
- Kind
- 神, the word the record uses
- Form
- eight heads with human faces; eight feet and eight tails on a blue-yellow back in one record, a tiger's body and ten tails in the other
- Habitat
- the outer east, and the great wilds of the east
- Records
海外東經Beyond the Seas, East
其為獸也，八首人面，八足八尾，背青黃。
As a beast it has eight heads with human faces, eight feet and eight tails, and a blue-yellow back.
大荒東經Great Wilds, East
有神人，八首人面，虎身十尾，名曰天吳。
There is a god-person with eight heads and human faces, a tiger's body and ten tails. It is called 天吳.
A 獸 in the first record and a 神人 in the second, with the tail count changing between them. Eight heads is the only character that survives both.
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.
八首人面, eight heads with human faces, is the only thing both lines say. 海外東經 gives it eight feet, eight tails and a blue-yellow back. 大荒東經 gives it a tiger’s body and ten tails, and mentions no feet.
The previous section said the number is the character. This section says the number moves. Both lines name 天吳 and neither is a copy of the other, so the strongest character in the system is unstable across two records of one name.
There are three things you can do about that, and only one of them is honest.
You can pick a record and not say which. You can average them, which invents a
creature with nine tails that no line describes. Or you keep both records, each
in its own row, each citing the line it came from. The bestiary does the third.
Its entry for 天吴 carries two citations and a
form field that names both bodies.
Example 3: a body assembled from no animal#
帝江 (dìjiāng) is filed on 天山, further along the same western route as 昆侖. Its record breaks the comparison rather than the count.
Specimen
帝江
Dijiang anommatum binomial assigned by this course, not by the text
- Kind
- 神, the word the record uses
- Form
- like a yellow sack, red as cinnabar fire, six feet and four wings, a blur with no face
- Habitat
- 天山, on the third western route
- Record
西山經 · 西次三經 · 天山Western Mountains · third western section · the Heaven Mountain
有神焉，其狀如黃囊，赤如丹火，六足四翼，渾敦無面目，是識歌舞，實為帝江也。
There is a god there, shaped like a yellow sack, red as cinnabar fire, with six feet and four wings, a shapeless blur with no face. It knows song and dance. This is 帝江.
The limit case for a grammar of parts. Every other composite is built from recognisable animals; this one is built from none, and it still knows how to dance.
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.
Four clauses, four different problems:
- 其狀如黃囊. The comparison slot holds a sack. The slot works exactly as designed and points outside the animal kingdom, and nothing in the entry form notices.
- 六足四翼. Six feet, four wings. Still parts, still integers. The vocabulary survives the case it was least likely to survive.
- 渾敦無面目. No face. The distinguishing feature is an absence.
- 是識歌舞. It knows song and dance. Not a part, not a count, not a use.
Every other composite in this course is assembled from animals a reader has already met. This one is assembled from none of them, and its record is no shorter and no vaguer for it. The finding is about our method, not about the creature: recognition was never doing the work, so losing it costs less than it looks.
A stated absence is not a missing value
Week 2 gave three reasons a cell can be blank: the material says the value is nothing, the material does not say, nobody has checked. 無面目 is the first. 开明兽’s silence about claws is the second.
Written carelessly both come out as an em dash, and the one real finding in 帝江’s body is filed as an oversight.
The eight words the four records stay inside#
All four bodies in one table. Every cell is what a cited line supplies and nothing else:
| part | 陆吾 | 开明兽 | 天吴 | 帝江 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| body | tiger | tiger | — / tiger | sack |
| head | — | nine | eight | — |
| face | human | human | human | none, stated |
| claw | tiger | — | — | — |
| foot | — | — | eight / — | six |
| wing | — | — | — | four |
| tail | nine | — | eight / ten | — |
| back | — | — | blue-yellow / — | — |
| colour | — | — | — | yellow, red |
天吴 has two records, so where they differ the cell shows 海外東經 first and 大荒東經 second. 帝江’s body cell holds a sack because that is what the comparison supplies; it is the only cell in the table that is not an animal part.
Eight part-words — body, head, face, claw, foot, wing, tail, back — and colour, which is not a part but attaches to one. 背青黃, a blue-yellow back, uses both at once. Four records, five lines, and not one of them reaches for a word outside that list. The vocabulary is closed before the counting starts.
Four bodies side by side is a visual argument and prose cannot hold it. The slides draw the four inventories with the counts as labels. It is the only deck this semester, and this is the reason.
These eight words are ours
They are derived from four records chosen to make this week’s argument. The 山海经 (Shānhǎijīng, the Classic of Mountains and Seas) has no parts list of its own, and this is not a count over the eighteen 卷.
A fifth record can add a ninth word. When one does, that is a result about the vocabulary and gets written down as one. It is not a creature that does not fit.
What you leave with#
A parts vocabulary, agreed in the room. Write it down before anyone uses it. An unwritten vocabulary grows a word every time a body does not fit, and nobody notices the moment it stopped being closed.
This week’s specimen card is parts and integers only. Anything that will not decompose goes under a heading reading residue, and the residue is the part of the card that gets read first. 帝江’s 是識歌舞 is residue. So is 陆吾’s 司天之九部.
Two of this week’s four are filed on a route you can walk: 陆吾 and 帝江 are both in 西山經, a few mountains apart. The other two are in 海內西經 and the eastern 海經, which give no route at all. Next week is about what happens when one habitat column is asked to hold both.
The spec
What you bring to the session. Written so a reader can tell whether it has been met without asking you.
- you can write a composite body as parts and integers, with nothing left in prose
- you can name two creatures whose inventories differ only in where a number sits, and say how the text files each of them
- you can say what your inventory does with 帝江, in one sentence that does not excuse itself
Teaching team
- Marisol Quaye — convenor