others those that resemble flies from a distance You can draw what conclusions you like from such an ordered list. That was certainly the intent of its use by Borges. He was interested in order and how ultra-order can become opaque, even disorderly. For example in his story "The Library of Babel" the encyclopedia contained not only entries for everything known, but also for everything that could be known. There was so much information, and such an earnest attempt to anticipate information, that it veered into nightmare. Regarding taxonomies and the example of the Chinese encyclopedia, Borges says "it is clear that there is no classification of the Universe not being arbitrary and full of conjectures. The reason for this is very simple: we do not know what thing the universe is."