Your purposes determine when you should accumulate and when you should uniframe. Grouping by simialrity can be done on the basis of structure or perceived function. "At one moment you may wish to emphasize a similarity; at the next moment, you may want ot emphasize a distinction. Often, we have to use both uniframes and accumulations in combination."
Why is it so ahrd to define the essence of an accumulation? "Many good ideas are really two ideas in one -- which form a bridge between two realms of thought or different points of view." We find accumulations on the structure side of the structure/funciton bridge because of many-to-one relationships. "Our different worlds of ends and means don't usually match up very well. So when we find a useful, compact uniframe in one such world, it often corresponds to an accumulation in our other worlds."
The bottom line: "we know only a very few -- and, therefore, very precious -- schemes whose unifying powers cross many realms."
(NB: This and preceding chapters remind me to re-visit prototype vs. exemplar debate in the concept literature -- a good source is Smith and Medin's book.)
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