• reddig33@lemmy.worldEnglish
    28·
    18 hours ago

    That whole section of the Dewey system is strange. Programming, computers, journalism, library science, then witchcraft, the unexplained, fung shui, tarot.

    Like why aren’t the computer books sorted next to science and math topics? Or electronics? Who decided this? (Dewey was long dead before people started writing computer books).

    • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      33 minutes ago

      The low 000s are all generally pretty meta subjects, how we interact with and organize knowledge in general. Journalism and library science deal with reporting and classifying information, computers and programming deal with processing generic data, unexplained phenomena deals with things that can’t be assigned to a specific subject by their very nature.

      Witchcraft, Feng Shui, and Tarot are all generally found in 133 (Parapsychology and Occultism), although I could imagine particularly high-level books to be sorted into 003 (Systems), since they are supposed to be comprehensive systems.

      Books about computer hardware would be next to electronics. Computer science is where it is because it’s a more abstract topic about general information processing. If anything, I’d argue that fundamental mathematics belongs in the 000s with it.

    • BCsven@lemmy.ca
      16·
      17 hours ago

      That classification is the general information section, and deals with info and not how its used. Seems like when computers came about they saw them as information storage systems.

    • raman_klogius@ani.socialEnglish
      6·
      17 hours ago

      Mr Dewey is definitely the type who’d call tech support for a problem that can be fixed by “turning it off and on again.”

    • Wildmimic@anarchist.nexusEnglish
      3·
      17 hours ago

      Just Nerd Things? It’s the only explanation i can come up with, at least when taking the time when this was decided into account