 Zhu often classified a natural phenomenon in terms of these categories and associations, and left it at that, unconcerned that the categories were haphazard and the associations arbitrary and inexplicable. Likely Zhu recognized that these categories and associations often were arbitrary and not particularly informative regarding physical reality but did not find it necessary or practical to pursue the matter. He presumably contented himself with assigning phenomena to these culturally colored sets of categories and associations because in those speech contexts those associations were more significant and interesting than the probing of purely physical categories and explanations would have been. These sorts of examples reflect the cultural common sense and conditions of common speech of his age.