  The paradigm of weaving serves two main functions (on the paradigm of weaving, cf. El Murr 2002 and Blondell 2005). First, it introduces a new procedure allowing the inquirers to differentiate the target from other arts akin to it, all located in the lowest kind reached by the previous dichotomous division. As earlier noted (§ 3.2), the new procedure is division “by limbs, like a sacrificial animal” (Statesman 287c) (for a different view of the Stranger’s strategy, see El Murr 2005). Whereas dichotomous division separates a kind into two parts, and then ignores at each step the part that does not lead to the goal, division by limbs breaks off pieces of an original whole, whose members are interrelated and cooperate in tending their common object. All the arts of clothes-working have clothes as their object. Many of the kindred arts provide weaving with its tools or materials (these contributing arts are characterized as sunaitiai, “helping causes”). The differentiation of weaving from various subsidiary arts reveals a procedure to define statecraft in relation to the subordinate arts.