Visualising an Ordered Universe

We live in an ordered universe. Or rather, we would like to believe we do. And even if we don't, we try as hard as we can to make it ordered. You only have to look, on the one hand, at Wikipedia, which is nothing less than an attempt to create a systematic collection of human knowledge, or, on the other, at Flickr groups, each which views the collection through the often obsessive prism of its defining principle.

So it comes as no surprise to find that there is a Web site that aims to combine a whiff of Wikipedia with a flash of Flickr. It's called The Visual Dictionary, and it is interested not so much in words as containers of meaning, but as pure visual symbols. It's still quite small, but strangely pleasing. (Via Digg.)