Classification

Abstract

Perceiving the fragment in relation to the whole, this text looks at frag-ments as key points which reveal two different approaches of classification within the scope of scientific understanding: Giovanni Morelli, a 19th cen-tury scholar having a medical background, studied the practice of connois-seurship within the framework of modern science. His method gives a prio-rity to the fragments of paintings as traces of a ‘lost original’. This effort to systematize true judgement can be read in parallel to Durand’s Recueil et Parallèle des Edifices de tout Genre, a book prepared for his lectures at the École Polytechnique to make engineers acknowledged with architecture. In Durand’s ordering, the fragment reveals itself as constitutive element. While he eliminated particularities for the sake of a ‘whole’, Morelli used particularities in order to make a statement about the ‘whole’.