Sunday with Dewey

The Dewey Decimal System has a national day.  Who knew?  Not I.  I was putting together my usual Sunday Salon post, happened upon this illustration, and decided to write about it because of that third column.  Yeah, take time to read it; click to enlarge the photo.  Here's an illustration that "proves" next Saturday is Dewey Decimal System Day:

When my children were little, I used to take them once or twice a week to the public library on McCallie Avenue in Chattanooga.  That was long before the "new" library was built on Broad Street, where one of my girls worked when she grew up.  Anyway, the children's books were on the lowest level and mine were on the next floor up.  They were eventually so well-known by the librarians and so familiar with their department, that I was able to leave them to browse while I went upstairs to find some books for myself.

It reached the point that they would come and find me when they were ready to go home.  And they knew exactly WHERE to find me.  I'd be in the 100s and 200s section.  Can you tell that my first degree was in Philosophy and Religion?  Well, that degree actually became a double major, when I expanded into the 800s and added English Language and Literature.  Here's part of my library loot that reflects a current interest:

The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread ~ by Caitlin O'Connor and James Owen Weatherall, 2019, psychology, 280 pages

Why should we care about having true beliefs?  And why do demonstrably false beliefs persist and spread despite bad, even fatal, consequences for the people who hold them?  Philosophers of science Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall argue that social factors, rather than individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the spread and persistence of false beliefs.  It might seem that there’s an obvious reason that true beliefs matter:  false beliefs will hurt you.  But if that’s right, then why is it (apparently) irrelevant to many people whether they believe true things or not?

The Misinformation Age, written for a political era riven by "fake news," "alternative facts," and disputes over the validity of everything from climate change to the size of inauguration crowds, shows convincingly that what you believe depends on who you know.  If social forces explain the persistence of false belief, we must understand how those forces work in order to fight misinformation effectively.

It's a library book, so I'm calling it "library loot" for this "Sunday Salon" post.  Use the chart above or the one below to try to figure out what category it's in.  What do you think?  I decided "psychology" sounds about right to me.  My library lists it as 153.74

I want to share one more thing:  I was very surprised when I read the Wikipedia article List of Dewey Decimal classes that many are shown as "Not assigned or no longer used."  Hmm, this ole world is in even more flux than I realized.  (Flux = defined as "continuous change or movement.")

I'll spend next Saturday (Dewey Decimal System Day) reading.  What about you?

Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.