Adler's Ideas About Alphabetization

Mortimer Adler certainly had some fascinating ideas.  Obviously he didn't like arbitrary, linear links between information, such as alphabetization; he felt that a person should use their own inherent connections to different pinpoints of data to organize said data, as indicated by his statement "inherent in all things to be learned we should be able to find inner connections".  The problem with this is that not every brain links data the same way.  One person may connect items by color; another by size; a third by smell.  Alphabetization allows anyone who is literate and uses the Latin alphabet to transfer the order of information to another person.  It's like a universal language for information translation.

A number of years ago I read a study about gender differences between spatial/geographical references (the infamous sense of direction that some of us lack).  The study found that women tended to remember routes by landmarks - for instance, "the house next to the big Oak tree".  Men, on the other hand, tended to remember routes by distance and direction - north, south, east, west.  This certainly rings true to me! :)  The problem, of course, is that landmarks can change - a parked car that was next to the street where you turn right might be gone the next day.  Distance and geophysical direction don't change; hence, men are more reliable when giving directions.

Now, I don't know if this is true for everyone, but it is certainly true in my case.  Once I realized that I was using a sometimes moveable, or possibly duplicate, item as a landmark, I paid a lot more attention to the odometer and the compass.  And, as my mother told me to when I learned to drive, I learned to read a map.  The map is the universal translator - like alphabetization - that shows us all how to get somewhere.

So I'm all for alphabetization (and maps), because it allows us to transfer information to each other more effectively.