Taxonomy of Historical Experience

I. Consciousness, world views, mentalities, Weltanschauungen, thoughts & feelings about the world
--A. Psychology, ethics, mores; national character
--B. Esthetics; art
--C. Religion; myth, spiritual life
--D. Theologies, philosophies, ideologies, science, law (formal thought about what’s real & right)

II. Institutions, formal structures of governance, administration, and management
--A. Churches, censors, schools, the media, law courts [institutions variously responsible for I. above]
    1. Church & state
    2. Public & elite education
    3. Censorship
    4. Priests and pundits (public intelligentsia)
    5. Judges
--B. The state (central, sovereign authority):
    1. Embassies and military
    2. Domestic law enforcement (police)
    3. Legislation
    4. Tax; budgets, tributes, plunder, tithes [cf. IV below]
      a. graduated income tax & tax farming
      b. state property
      c. procurement (esp. military procurement)
      d. welfare
      e. finance, treasuries, banks [GO IV.B below]
      f. businesses, corporations [GO IV.B below]

III. Social structure; classes [cf. Dozen Categories], large, replicated, often hierarchical formations
--A. Tight social hierarchies = social estates with strict distinctions, e.g., aristocrats & commoners
--B. Looser but very real social classes = the rich, the poor, bourgeoisie and proletariat
--C. Labor (bound labor, servile labor, wage labor, etc.)
--D. Indigenous peoples and ethnic "minorities"
--E. Women; gender issues
--F. "Civil society" [ID] (e.g., "public", leisure, sports)

IV. Economy, production and distribution of things of value [cf. II.B.4 above].
--A. Agriculture (villages, farms, "feudalism", latifundia estates, corporate farming)
--B. Industrialization (mercantilism, laissez-faire, trans-national corporatism, managerialism) [GO II.B.4.e above]
--C. Urbanization, markets, trade
--D. Material culture
--E. The "ecosystem" (i.e., the physical and biological environment)
--F. Geography...........

The final entries, "E. The ecosystem" and "F. Geography", probably should be a separate roman-numeral category "V". The generous meaning of the word geography here encompases topography, climate, flora & fauna [including populations, demographic data], all of which are fundamental components of any "economy". However, geography as point "F" indicates a transition from "Taxonomy of Historical Experience" to a new organizational category. In other words, vertical point IV, Economy, flattens out to form a lateral platform, the geo-physical plain (GEOGRAPHY) on which all events -- points I through IV -- take place. Particularly it is here in the realm of point "V" that the diplomatic/military activities of centralized government (II.B.2 above) concentrate, e.g., frontier and imperialist expansion.

Economy (section IV) at the bottom of the vertical list can also be thought to bend around to touch mentalities at the top of the list. As Economy digs into the material culture of daily life it attaches itself to the upper reaches of the TAXONOMY, to ways of seeing the world, where daily behavior, customary "going about" links intimately with the fluid and complex dynamics of human consciousness in folk behavior, customs, culture, ritual, and beliefs.

Taken together, sections III and IV describe the way peoples organize themselves or are organized by circumstances to produce, distribute and consume the things they need and value. The whole TAXONOMY could be called the economy if we seek to understand the concept economy not simply as income and expenditure data (as in micro-economics) but as functioning people in relationship to actual conceptual, institutional, social and physical environments (macro-economics). Considered together, world views, institutions, society and economy were the subject matter in that grand 19^th century tradition called "political-economy" [EG]. Political-economy seeks to understand how civilizations function, in the biggest possible frame of critical or analytical understanding.

THE TAXONOMY IS A MOBILE, EVEN KALEIDOSCOPIC, BEAST

This suggestive organizational TAXONOMY is dynamic with respect to the interior relationships up and down the deceptively stiff-looking outline. The taxonomic categories are themselves fluid and intertwined with one another. Remember these words of caution about "taxonomies".

For example, sometimes it appears that everyday life decides the way people think, while at others it appears that the way people think determines their daily life. Arguments about crime and poverty, for example, often hang on this point. Criminality and poverty are thought by some to be created by circumstances of everyday life. Others think criminality and poverty are created by character traits of the criminals and the poor themselves, and therefore everyday life circumstances of criminals or dangerous classes of people follow from the way they think or are the result of character traits.

Historians might often consider each possibility, and they also like to ask if these situations are the same for all people, up and down the social hierarchy, or in many different places over the globe, or in all periods of historical time.

Of course, there is change over historical time. CHRONOLOGY works as if TAXONOMY rolled constantly to the right. Nothing is fixed, up and down the four sections or from geographic place to place, and now we are reminded of the horizontal movement of the whole loose structure over time.

Furthermore, we notice in the record of historical experience that various sections and subsections of the taxonomy above seem to rotate rightward (i.e., change over time) at widely different and irregular speeds. Some aspects of human experience seem to change quickly, then not at all, then very slowly, while others seem never to change. We sometimes detect "retrograde motion". Clothing styles, technology, etc., seem very fluid, while certain basic values seem stable. Yet the changing and the apparently changeless dimensions of historical experience are all intertwined. And the whole package is unquestionably rolling forward in time. Such is the four dimensional kaleidoscope of history.

But what sets this squirming kaleidoscope in motion?