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category|ˈkætɪgərɪ|
[ad. L. catēgoria, a. Gr. κατηγορία accusation, assertion, predication, abst. n. from κατήγορ-ος accuser, etc.: see categorem.]
1. Logic and Metaph. A term (meaning literally ‘predication’ or ‘assertion’) given to certain general classes of terms, things, or notions; the use being very different with different authors.
a. Originally used by Aristotle, the nature and meaning of whose ten categories, or predicaments (as, after the Latin translation, they are also called) has been disputed almost from his own day till the present; some holding that they were ‘a classification of all the manners in which assertions may be made of the subject’, others that they were ‘an enumeration of all things capable of being named, the most extensive classes into which things could be distributed’, or again, that they were ‘the different kinds of notions corresponding to the definite forms of existence’. Hence many criticisms of Aristotle's classification, with modifications of it, or the substitution of new ‘categories,’ proposed by the Stoics, and later philosophers, according as they viewed them logically or metaphysically.
The ten ‘categories’ or ‘predicaments’ of Aristotle were: 1 Substance or being (οὐσία), 2 Quantity, 3 Quality, 4 Relation (πρός τι), 5 Place, 6 Time, 7 Posture (κεῖσθαι), 8 Having or possession (ἔχειν), 9 Action, 10 Passion.
1588Fraunce Lawiers Logike i. ii. 10 b, These generall heades of argumentes..sometimes..are called Categoremes, and the handling or discoursing of the same Categories. 1677Gale Crt. Gentiles II. iv. Proem 4 Objective Ideas or real Beings, considered in Logic, are reduced by the Aristoteleans..to Ten Categories or Predicaments. 1724Watts Logic (1736) 25 The famous ten Ranks of Being, called the ten Predicaments or Categories of Aristotle, on which there are endless Volumes of Discourses formed by several of his Followers. 1849Abp. Thomson Laws Th. §97 Logicians in almost every age have endeavoured to frame schemes of classification in which things should be arranged according to their real nature. To these the name of Categories..has been given. 1858Mansel Bampton Lect. iii. (ed. 4) 49 Existence itself, that so-called highest category of thought. c1866Grote Aristotle I. 144 We may illustrate the ten Categories of Aristotle by comparing them with the four Categories of the Stoics. Ibid. 149 Galen also recognizes five Categories; but not the same five as Plotinus. 1882E. Wallace tr. Aristotle's Psychol. 5 The first point..is to determine in which of the higher classes soul is included, and what is its generic character—whether, in other words, it is an individual thing and real substance, or a quality, or a quantity, or any other of the categories, as they have been distinguished. 1883Liddell & Scott Grk. Lex. s.v., The categories are a classification of all the manners in which assertions may be made of the subject.
b. Kant applied the term to: The pure a priori conceptions of the understanding, which the mind applies (as forms or frames) to the matter of knowledge received from sense, in order to raise it into an intelligible notion or object of knowledge.
1829Sir W. Hamilton Disc. (1853) 26 The Predicaments of Aristotle are..objective, of things as understood; those of Kant subjective, of the mind as understanding..In reality, the whole Kantian Categories would be generally excluded from those of Aristotle..as determinations of thought, and not genera of real things. 1856Meiklejohn tr. Kant's Crit. Pure Reason 64 In this manner there arise exactly so many pure conceptions of the understanding, applying a priori to objects of intuition in general, as there are logical functions in all possible judgments..These conceptions we shall, with Aristotle, call categories, our purpose being originally identical with his, notwithstanding the great difference in the execution. Table of the Categories. 1. Of Quantity: Unity, Plurality, Totality. 2. Of Quality: Reality, Negation, Limitation. 3. Of Relation: Of Inherence and Subsistence (substantia et accidens), of Causality and Dependence (cause and effect), of Community (reciprocity between the agent and patient). 4. Of Modality: Possibility—Impossibility, Existence—Non-existence, Necessity— Contingence. 1877E. Caird Philos. Kant ii. viii. 342 Certain general conceptions which are principles of relation for all the manifold of sense..these are the categories.
c. Hence in more general use (see quot. 1901). Also attrib.
1901Baldwin Dict. Philos. I. 161/2 The term category, in post-Kantian philosophy, comes to mean any relatively fundamental philosophical conception. 1938G. Ryle in Proc. Arist. Soc. XXXVIII. 206 ‘Quality’, ‘state’, ‘substance’, [etc.]..we could call..‘category-words’. 1949― Concept of Mind i. 16 A category-mistake..represents the facts..as if they belonged to one logical type or category..when they actually belong to another. 1960J. O. Urmson Encycl. Western Philos. 79/2 Today the word ‘category’ is used by philosophers, if at all, for any supposedly ultimate type, without any settled convention about what it is a type of.
2. a. A predicament; a class to which a certain predication or assertion applies.
1678R. Barclay Apol. Quakers v. xxvi. 187 He that cannot hear a thing, as being necessarily absent, and he that cannot hear it, as being naturally deaf, are to be placed in the same Category. 1855Macaulay Hist. Eng. IV. 228 Any offender who was not in any of the categories of proscription. 1856Miss Mulock J. Halifax (ed. 17) 382 Lord Ravenel's case would hardly come under this category. 1880Nat. Responsib. Opium Trade 24 To place opium in the same category as alcohol and tobacco.
b. A class, or division, in any general scheme of classification. spec. in Linguistics (see quots.).
1660Jer. Taylor Duct. Dubit. i. v, Doubts..must be derived from their several heads and categories. 1818Hazlitt Eng. Poets v. (1870) 129 With him there are but two moral categories, riches and poverty. 1856Emerson Eng. Traits, Race Wks. (Bohn) II. 24 We must use the popular category..for convenience, and not as exact and final. 1871Tyndall Fragm. Sc. II. xiv. (1879) 349 The body..falls into the category of machines. 1883Ld. Granville Circular in Pall Mall G. 9 July 7/2 The following specimens of bad English..have been taken from despatches recently received at the Foreign Office..‘category’ for class. 1933Bloomfield Language xvi. 270 Large form-classes which completely subdivide either the whole lexicon or some important form-class into form-classes of approximately equal size, are called categories. Thus, the English parts of speech (substantive, verb, adjective, and so on) are categories of our language. 1964Halliday et al. Ling. Sciences ii. 23 Grammar deals with closed system choices, which may be between items (‘this/that’..) or between categories (singular/plural, past/present/future). Ibid. 24 The four theoretical categories that are required if we want to account fully for the kind of patterning in language that we recognize as the level of grammar..class and system..unit and structure. 1965N. Chomsky Theory of Syntax ii. 68 The notion ‘Subject’..designates a grammatical function rather than a grammatical category.
¶ ‘An accusation.’ Obs.
1613in R. C. Table Alph., and other 17th c. Dicts.
Add:3. Math. A generalized mathematical entity consisting of a class of abstract objects sharing some property together with a class of morphisms, associative under composition and including an identity morphism, which preserve that property.
1945Eilenberg & MacLane in Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. LVIII. 237 We introduce a notion of ‘category’ which will embody the common formal properties of such aggregates. From the examples ‘groups plus homomorphisms’ or ‘spaces plus continuous mappings’ we are led to the following definition. A category 𝔘 = {ob}A,α{cb} is an aggregate of abstract elements A (for example, groups), called the objects of the category, and abstract elements α (for example, homomorphisms), called mappings of the category. 1966Math. Rev. XXXI. 41/1 If A is a semi-simplicial set and 𝔘 the category of its simplices, then H(𝔘op; F) becomes ordinary homology with local coefficients F. 1979Proc. London Math. Soc. XXXVIII. 237 Let {scrS} denote the category of sets and functions and {scrT} the category of topological spaces and continuous maps. |
