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Index numbers: a vital tool for clear thinking

2 October, 2015 - 10:02

As we have seen in Concepts of Human Association, above, the word law as commonly used expresses three wildly different meanings when observed from the perspective of the periodic table of human associations. But this word is hardly unique in its ambiguity, and we need to remember that many of the words used in politics and in the analysis of politics may mean quite different things from time to time and from person to person. It is therefore useful to find techniques which can help us to sort out the different meanings expressed by a single word.

One such technique is to add different index numbers to a word when it is being used to mean different things. An index number is merely a small number placed just after and slightly lower than the word being indexed. For example, we could distinguish between door1 (pronounced "door sub one") and door2 (pronounced "door sub two"), if we noticed that sometimes the word door refers to an opening in a wall through which one can go, and other times it refers to the object used to block up that opening so that one cannot go through!