categories.
like marie kondo talks about, putting stuff into like-piles that go together can be very helpful. at the same time, remembering that these categories are just one way to group ‘stuff’, that we could take a different perspective and group them in a different way – this is so important!
these buddies in california reminded me of how exciting – and how not concrete – this category game is. some scientists in california just ran into a group of somebodies and the scientists don’t know what category to put them in.
molecular biologist cédric feschotte notes, “even the more mundane interpretations show how little is known about the categories of genetic diversity in nature. It highlights a need ‘to start thinking about different genetic entities [on] a continuum…
the boundary between these different genetic entities is actually fluid’…
on the gradient or continuum of these elements, banfield’s team ‘may have found something that’s a little bit intermediate between, say, a chromosome and a virus,” or a chromosome and a plasmid.’”
too, along with thinking about different categories, it’s super fun to feel. like, where do i feel like “i” end? where else in nature, in life, do i feel continuums?
thank you, buddies.
–
Richard Feynman, “Nature does not care what we call it, she just keeps on doing it.”
Relational Awareness 