Classification, Max Müller informed us, is where true science begins. The principle of classification used by those who have adhered to the representational theory of knowledge is more often than not taxonomic, placing phenomena into hierarchically ordered, mutually exclusive classes, each of which had its defining attributes or essences. The reason for this, of course, is that taxonomies ‘mirrored’ the systems of objects supposed to exist ‘out there’. Again and again, scholars and officials have used taxonomies for the classifying of Others. They have decorated their world with ‘types’ of society (and of family, economy, political system, etc.) – the primitive and civilized, peasant and urban, agricultural and industrial, traditional and legal-bureaucratic, ancient and modern, feudal and capitalist, mechanical and organic (Inden 16).
Inden, Ronald B. “Knowledge of India and Human Agency.” Imagining India. Blackwell, 1990, pp. pp.7-43.