The Dewey Decimal System is an extremely useful method of categorizing knowledge for cataloging a library, but it is also a very useful system to use when searching out and exploring a topic of knowledge. An understanding of its classifications can yield some few advantages over computer catalogs of libraries for card catalog users, too. And then, just browsing a section, grazing the pages of books from one end of a class to another, can sometimes yield great benefits.
I once spent time “living” any available spare moment in a large state university library as an undergrad (and it wasn’t even the school I was attending *heh*) making such discoveries–especially during one semester when I was taking a course so far off my majors that I had almost NO background, and none of the prerequisite courses (yeh, talked my way ito it because it seemed interesting) in the subject. Result: The professor found my “insights” refreshingly stimulating, much to the disgust of the other seven members of the class who were restricted by having all the prerequisite boundaries instilled in their thinking.
Ah, but of course all classifications of knowledge, especially those which–like the DDS–comprise relatively rigid, detailed classifications, have the basic flaw of placing artificial boundaries between fields of knowledge. But then, it seems to be a basic human trait to connect disparate elements into a whole, even when that “whole” is wholly artificial and even nonsensical. So, the DDS is, in my use at least, most like a box of building blocks divided into compartments by shape, color, size, etc. It can make it useful when searching for just that right building block.
Sometimes, though, one wants to just dump the box out and scramble up the pieces to see what serendipitous connections one might make. That’s the Internet.