NELSON GOODMAN
281
receiver and turntable in a corner cabinet, and a remote control
switch on the mantel . I find a system that was already there. But see
what this finding involves: distinguishing the several components
from the surroundings, categorizing them by function, and uniting
them into a single whole . A good deal of making, with complex con–
ceptual equipment, has gone into finding what is already there . An–
other visitor, fresh from a lifetime in the deepest jungle , will not
find, because he has not the means of making, any stereo system in
that room. Nor will he find books there; but in the books and plants I
find he may find fuel and food that I do not. Not only does he not
know that the stereo set is one; he does not recognize as a thing at all
that which I know to be a stereo system - that is, he does not make
out or make any such object.
Now you may complain that all I am doing is applying a dif–
ferent term to a familiar process to bring out the constructive aspect
of cognition . And you may ask, as Israel Scheffler has, how we can
reasonably say that we, or versions, make the stars, which existed
long before us and all versions .
3
Let me defer that question for a mo–
ment to look at a slightly different case .
Has a constellation been there as long as the stars that compose
it, or did it come into being only when selected and designated? In
the latter case, the constellation was created by a version. And what
could be meant by saying that the constellation was always there,
before any version? Does this mean that all configurations of stars
whatever are always constellations whether or not picked out and
designated as such? I suggest that to say that all configurations are
constellations is in effect to say that none are: that a constellation
becomes such only through being chosen from among all configura–
tions, much as a class becomes a kind
4
only through being
distinguished, according to some principle, from other classes.
Now as we thus make constellations by picking out and putting
together certain stars rather than others, so we make stars by draw–
ing certain boundaries rather than others. Nothing dictates whether
the skies shall be marked off into constellations or other objects . We
3. See his "The Wonderful Worlds of Goodman",
Sy nthese
45 ( 1980) 201-209, and
my reply, pp. 211-215.
4. That is, a
relevant- som etimes
miscalled
natural-kind.
