By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What are social groups? Their metaphysics and how to classify them
Brian Epstein, Synthese, 2017/04/20
At a webinar yesterday we had some fun with different terms for groups of people (herds, swarms, flocks...) and this let to a but of a discussion of the considerations behind the naming of different types of groups (and objects). Here's a longish paper (49 page PDF) that thoroughly explores this sort of question. More...