I: Listen, Tim, I am a gentleman who has always lived on a desert island on which there are no birds, only dogs, cows, and fish, but no birds. Finally I am about to come here, and I ask you to explain to me what a bird is, so that I can recognize one if by chance I should see one….
TIM: Well, it has a little meat, but it is small in the breast, and it has little feet and a tiny little head and a little breast, and its wings are little too, and a few feathers on its breast and … and then it flies with these feathers and….
(As can be seen, the child has his own idea of birds, he is probably thinking of the only birds he has seen on the balcony at home, sparrows, and this could suggest a few ideas in the discussion that will follow about prototypes; but it does not enter his head to say that a bird is a flying biped.)
I: All right. Now listen. I am a gentleman who has always lived on the top of a mountain, where I quenched my thirst by eating fruit, but I have never seen water. Now could you explain to me what water is like?
TIM: What it’s like?
I: Yes.
TIM: I don’t know what water is like, because nobody has ever even explained it to me …
I: Have you never seen it?
TIM: Yes, when you put your hands under the water…
I: But I don’t know what water is like, so how can I put my hands under it?
TIM: But under the water that wets … first you put your hands under the water, then you take the soap, and you put it on, and then you rinse it away with the water…
I: You have told me what I must do with water, but you haven’t told me what water is. Maybe it’s that red thing in the stove that burns?
TIM:…Nooo! Water is … is….
I: What do I see when I see water? How can I know it is water?
TIM: You get wet when you put your hands under the water!
I: But what it does it mean that it wets you? If I don’t know what water is, then I don’t know what wetting means….
TIM: It is transparent….
I: Oh, is it that stuff in the windows that lets you see what’s on the other side?
TIM: Nooo!
I: You said it was transparent….
TIM: No, it’s not glass, glass doesn’t wet you!
I: But what does to get wet mean?
TIM: Getting wet is um … ehm….
ANOTHER ADULT, breaking in. That gentleman should know what wet means if he always eats fruit on that mountain….
TIM: It’s damp!!
I: Good. Is it damp like fruit?
TIM: A little bit.
I: A little bit. And is it shaped like fruit, I mean, round?….
TIM: Nooo, water is shaped like … it goes around all over the place, round, square, all over the place….
I: It takes all the shapes it wants?
TIM: Uh huh….
I: Then here and there you can see square waters, round waters….
TIM: No, not here and there, only in rivers, in streams, in washbasins, in baths….
I: So it’s a transparent thing, damp, that takes the shape of all the things it goes into?
TIM: Yes.
I: And so it’s not a solid thing like bread….
TIM: No!
I: And so if it’s not solid, what is it?
TIM: I dunno.
I: What is everything that isn’t solid?
TIM: It’s water.
I: Is it liquid, perhaps?
TIM: You see, water is a transparent liquid that you can’t drink, because the normal stuff has little flies, microbes that you can’t see….
I: Good boy, a transparent liquid.
(As can be seen, Tim knows what a liquid is, and after a lot of hints he even arrives at a definition that would delight a dictionary semantician («transparent liquid»). Apparently he cannot get there on his own, and the first definition he gives is of a functional nature (what water is for: he does not go so much for the «dictionary» or morphological characteristics of the object as much as its affordances/ Nevertheless we should recall the question. It was about a man who lived on a moun taintop and quenched his thirst without knowing what water was. Tim understood that the man drank fruit juice, and so the idea of liquid struck him as implicit. He tried to identify other characteristics of water compared to other liquids. This is a typical case in which the formulation of the question can lead to answers that we then consider deviant or insufficient.)
I: Listen now, I have never seen a radio. How can I recognize one?
TIM: (hesitant mumbling)
I: Do it the way you did with water before, when you finally told me the most important thing, that it was a transparent liquid.
TIM: With batteries or plugged in?
I: But I don’t know what a radio is, and therefore I don’t know which is better.
TIM: Well, it has electricity that says everything that … that in the … batteries is (incomprehensible word)… and says everything that has happened….
I: And that’s a radio?
TIM: You put in the electricity like there is here (points to the tape recorder) and then it goes.
I: But what is the radio—is it an animal that goes ahead if I put the electricity inside it?
TIM: No, it’s an electrical box that….
I: An electrical box?
TIM: No, it’s that inside there is the electricity and the batteries, with wires … that says everything that has happened.
I: So it’s like that box over there, that if I put a record on, it says what has happened?
TIM: Nooo, it doesn’t have a record.
I: Oh, it’s a box with electricity, wires, batteries, and without a record that says everything that has happened.
TIM: Yes.
(Apart from the fact that an adult would also find it difficult to give a scientific definition of a radio, and it being evident that Tim could recognize a radio perfectly well, it will be noted that he did not think to distinguish it from the water and the bird as an artificial kind or Artifact, not even when I suggested the opposition with Animal to him.)
I: Now listen to this. I am a gentleman who has always lived…. TIM: Not on a desert island again!!
I: No, this time in a hospital where the people were ill and each one was missing a part, some an arm, others a leg. I have never seen a foot. What is a foot?
TIM: Ha ha … It’s this here.
I: No, you mustn’t show me it, you must explain to me what it is, so that when I see one, I can say, oh, this is a foot.
TIM: It’s made of meat, it has toes. Don’t you know what toes are?
I: So it’s a thing made of meat with toes … Is this it? (I show him a hand.)*
TIM: Nooo. Because the foot has the elbow here, and instead the hand has it here.
I: Then it is an ill hand, like this {I imitate a withered hand)….
TIM: Nooo! It has the corners and toes straight out in front, it’s like this.
I: Then the street where we live is a foot. It has corners, it is straight…
TIM: No, it’s smaller, and then it has a thing here. I: Try to tell me where it is…
TIM: It is where the men that walk … It is the thing that men rest on the ground to walk with … What begins at the hips and goes down and at the end of the leg—which is that thing there—there is the foot.
I: One more: it’s the man who lives on the desert island again.
And he doesn’t know what a hot sausage is.
TIM: It’s round.
I: Like a ball?
TIM: No, it’s like this, it has corners like this, and it’s longer than a ball and is made of meat.
I: Then it’s a leg….
TIM: Without the bones, because a leg has bones.
I: How can I recognize a frankfurter? You told me it was made of meat…
TIM: It’s round, it’s a half of a ball, but it’s only at the corners that it has nothing, that inside that … halfway … that inside is very very thin, and then it’s made of meat and is pink.
(The session finished here, because Tim was showing signs of tiredness. As can be seen, he did not think °f saying that afoot is a Limb and that a frankfurter is a Food. He must agree with Neisser (1978: 4): categories cannot be a mode of perception.)
3.7.3. Quadruped Oysters
I shall say in 4.3 in what sense the scientific categories must be distinguished from the «wild» categories, but for the time being I propose to assume that we have, in line and without any embedding from general to particular, CTs for apple, banana, tree, hen, sparrow, and bird. How is it possible to have two distinct CTs for sparrow and hen and only one for great tits, curlews, and skylarks all together? It is possible largely because it happens (and by time-honored definition all that happens is possible). The CT for birds is so «generous» (or vague, or rough) as to
