Thingspace seems rather like cladistics, in which you come up with groups of characteristics and then work out trees of evolutionary descent. Note that this originated in studying the evolution of life on Earth and piecing together the Tree of Life, but is applicable anywhere an evolutionary process can work, e.g. linguistic evolution. Without necessarily going as far as the actual sorting stuff into trees, cladistics may be useful in helping conceptualise thingspace and distance in thingspace.
Thingspace seems rather like cladistics, in which you come up with groups of characteristics and then work out trees of evolutionary descent. Note that this originated in studying the evolution of life on Earth and piecing together the Tree of Life, but is applicable anywhere an evolutionary process can work, e.g. linguistic evolution. Without necessarily going as far as the actual sorting stuff into trees, cladistics may be useful in helping conceptualise thingspace and distance in thingspace.