The notion of Category : Its implications in subject analysis and in the construction and evaluation of indexing languages

The notion of category, from Aristotle and Kant to the present time, has been used as a basic intellectual tool for the analysis of the existence and changeableness of things. Ranganathan was the first to extrapolate the concept into the Theory of Classification, placing it as an essential axis for the logical organization of knowledge and the construction of indexing languages. This paper proposes a conceptual and methodological reexamination of the notion of category from a functional and instrumental perspective, and tries to clarify the essential characters of categories in that context, and their present implications regarding the construction and evaluation of indexing languages.