Construct · 4 fields · 4 citations
One name. Different field. Different construct. One map.
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In the type-token distinction the type is a general, repeatable kind, as opposed to its individual instances, which are the tokens: the word "the" printed three times on a page is one type but three tokens, so counting kinds answers a different question from counting occurrences. Charles Peirce drew this contrast in his 1906 Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism, separating a general pattern from each concrete appearance of it. The referent is an abstract kind that can have many instances, a matter of logic and metaphysics, and it is not a classification of computer values, a preserved reference organism, or a category of person.[1]
A data type is a classification attached to a value in a program that fixes the set of values it may take and the operations that may be applied to it, so an integer, a boolean, and a string each admit their own legal manipulations. Cardelli and Wegner's 1985 On understanding types, data abstraction, and polymorphism set out how type systems classify values, catch meaningless operations before or as a program runs, and support abstraction and polymorphism. The referent is a formal classification of data that a language enforces, checked statically or dynamically, and it is unrelated to an abstract logical kind, a museum specimen, or a personality category.[2]
In biological nomenclature a type is the single reference specimen, most often the holotype, to which a species name is permanently attached, so the name is anchored to one physical organism rather than to a description that might later be judged wrong. Witteveen's 2015 Naming and contingency: the type method of biological taxonomy examined how this type method fixes the reference of a name to one designated specimen kept in a collection. The referent is a preserved organism that anchors a name, curated in a museum or herbarium, and it has nothing to do with an abstract kind, a class of program value, or a category of person.[3]
A personality type is a discrete category into which a whole person is sorted, such as the sixteen Myers-Briggs types or the Type A and Type B labels, treating people as belonging to one class or another rather than lying somewhere on a graded scale. McCrae and Costa's 1989 Reinterpreting the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator argued that the data behind such types are better described by continuous traits, so the crisp categories mask underlying dimensions of degree. The referent is a bounded category of person, contrasted here with the continuous traits treated on the trait page, and it is not an abstract logical kind, a data classification, or a reference specimen.[4]
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