Ranking (part 5): Lists as one form of assemblage

What distinguishes lists form other forms of assemblages? Well, to start with a pretty simple observation: Lists are pretty simple forms of assemblage. They are nothing near the complexity of an organism, not even of a network. They have a certain degree of systemic quality: If one element enters or changes its place, it can effect to a certain degree other elements placed afterwards. But once again, this is rather simple, nothing compared to the systemic quality of an organism. Indeed, one of the most important traits of lists is probably their simplicity, thus their possibility to reduce complexity. They order all their elements along a line.

So what kind of line is it? Firstly, it is a linear line, without loops or circles. Lists can fork (and I will come back to that later), or structure themselves into parts along a line, mostly through sub-headlines, but they remain linear. Secondly, lists always have a start. This is why lists have such a close relation to ordinal numbers (= first, second, third …). Thirdly, lists have multiple possibilities to end. Sometimes they have a clearly defined end, sometimes not (in the latter case, they end, for example, with "etc..."). Fourthly they create some kind of order along the line. This means fifthly: In most lists, every item occurs only once.

One way to represent a list is to give its elements ordinal numbers. A list does not need to be numbered to be a list, but its internal order has to be of a kind that can be expressed by ordinal numbers A list can thus be defined as an assemblage, whose internal order is potentially expressed by ordinal numbers. Ordinal numbers have in such cases the function of a secondary list, which expresses the "list-ness" of the primary list. I will come back to this later.

Once again, I would like to reformulate this in relative terms: The more the internal order of an assemblage can be expressed in ordinal numbers, the more it becomes a list. Random lists are thus lists with a low degree of list-ness. I would argue that random lists are indeed primarily sets or groups, and lists only on a second level; all other lists are indeed primarily lists, but groups or sets on a second level.

But how about networks? Is a list only a specific linear form of network? A network that is stretched and reduced to a chain of relations ordered in one line? My answer would be: No. The key difference between a list and such a super-flat network is: The relations in the network are still "personal". They connect one particular element with one other particular element. A list is "non-personal". The elements are connected to each other though the inclusion and the specific place on the list, but not through relationships in the network sense. Yes, the two elements before and after define the place of the element in between. They might also ad meaning to it. Indeed, in some lists one element can be defined by all other elements (such as in lists ordered by internal algorithms, where elements exactly define the other elements). But it is never "personal" in the sense of a relation, as it occurs in a network.

So we see: A central problem of lists is the nature of their internal order. The next post will address this in more detail.