Seminal Mnemonics in Knowledge Organization:Ancient Traditions and Modern Practices

The use of seminal mnemonics implies the identification, at the near-seminal level, of similar subsets or groups of concepts (ideas) in subject domains and deriving a similar pattern of organization of the subsets in different domains. More specifically it consists in having the same digit or digit group to denote seminally equivalent ideas in whatever subject they may occur, even though different terms may be used to denote the ideas in the different subject fields. Seminal mnemonics are helpful in the organization of concepts - in the presentation of ideas in technical writing and in discourses, in designing schemes for subject classification, taxonomy etc. This paper examines the sequence of steps in the thinking process in different contexts, such as, systems analysis, systems design, knowledge management, problem solving, decision making, and the process of classifying subjects. Two main categories of concepts are identified, namely, concepts denoting attributes of the elements of the system studied and concepts denoting actions taken at each step in designing the system. The steps and their sequence are similar and parallel in the contexts examined. To facilitate remembering these systematic steps numerals and their ordinal values are used to organize or 'fix* the sequence. We also indicate the similarity in the association of concepts with numbers in some ancient traditions.