Classification is the activity of assigning objects to some pre-existing classes or categories. This is distinct from the task of establishing the classes themselves (for example through cluster analysis). Examples include diagnostic tests, identifying spam emails and deciding whether to give someone a driving license.
As well as 'category', synonyms or near-synonyms for 'class' include 'type', 'species', 'forms', 'order', 'concept', 'taxon', 'group', 'identification' and 'division'.
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Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order, or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office filing systems, library catalogs, and reference books.
Collation differs from classification in that the classes themselves are not necessarily ordered. However, even if the order of the classes is irrelevant, the identifiers of the classes may be members of an ordered set, allowing a sorting algorithm to arrange the items by class.
The phenomenology of religion concerns the experiential aspect of religion, describing religious phenomena in terms consistent with the orientation of worshippers. It views religion as made up of different components, and studies these components across religious traditions in order to gain some understanding of them.
A different approach is that of typological or classifying phenomenology, which seeks to describe and explain religion in general by analyzing the many diverse 'phenomena' of religions, such as rituals, holy places, narratives, religious roles, and the many other modes of religious expression. In this respect, the phenomenology of religion takes the generalizing role that linguistics has over philologies or that anthropology has in relation the specific ethnographies: where the history of religions produces insights into specific religious traditions, the phenomenology of religion becomes the general scholarly (or scientific) enterprise that explains and interprets religious phenomena in general.