Thematic Space: Flow, Film, and Floor Plan
A metaphor for Developing Tacit Knowledge
This article is part of the Slow Cognition project and its focus is Thematic Space and Developing Tacit Knowledge. I have introduced the concept of Thematic Space and a canvas in the following articles:
- The Notion of Thematic Spaces
- Mapping Thematic Spaces #1: OS Card and Mapping Clues
- Mapping Thematic Spaces #2: The “Activity” Thematic Space
This article aims to put Thematic Space in the context of life development with a simple metaphor: Flow, Film, and Floor Plan.
- Life as a continuous flow
- Project as a film with a prominent theme
- Thematic space as a floor plan
This metaphor is inspired by my experience in the past week. In order to explain the eight mapping dimensions of the thematic space, I reviewed my own “Activity” thematic space and the development of my tacit knowledge about Activity Theory. The final article looks like a boring report.
Do we really need such a canvas?
This question encouraged me to reflect on my long term journey of Epistemic Development.
A Reflective Practitioner
As a serial creator and a lifelong thinker, I am passionate about intellectual development and life reflection. Initially, I was influenced by Chris Argyris’ Action Science and Donald Schön’s Theory in Practice and The Reflective Practitioner. In 2014, I started learning Ecological Psychology, Activity Theory, and other theoretical approaches.
I wrote my first learning autobiography in 2015 and was attracted to biographical studies. In 2016, I developed a framework called Career Landscape which is inspired by Activity Theory, Communities of Practice, and other ideas. I also developed a series of tools such as Learning Autobiography Guide, Learning & Reflective Cards, Learning & Reflective Canvas, Learning & Reflective Monthly Report Template, etc.
However, these methods and tools were not adopted by others. So, I stopped making such tools and focused on my own journey of intellectual discovery. At the end of 2017, I wrote a series of articles on the relationship between Knowledge and Personal Development and developed a framework called Dynamic System of Personal Knowing.
In June 2018, I was thinking about a typical question of middle crisis:
What should I do with the rest of my life?
I focused on the side project about intellectual development and life reflection. It was clear that this is one of my life enterprises because I had worked on it for several years without any pay. If a person can do a thing for many years without any pay, the thing definitely is his passion.
The next question is not about life’s meaning, but techniques.
A Deep Review
I realized that I didn’t adopte academic resources for the project. Though I quoted many theories about knowledge and development in 2017, I didn’t check the status of Personal Knowing from the perspective of academic research.
In June 2018, I did a rough literature review about personal knowing and found there is an established discipline called Personal Epistemology or Epistemic Cognition.
I realized there is a Sandwich of personal knowing! Thus, I designed a diagram below.
At the top of the Sandwich, there is a branch of philosophy: epistemology. Also, a related discipline is Philosophy of Science.
At the bottom of the Sandwich, there is a real daily life world. I pointed out two key words: Narrative and Action. These two key words refer to two approaches: the narrative approach is about biographical studies while the action science approach refers to Chris Argyris’ Action Science and Donald Schön’s Theory in Practice and The Reflective Practitioner.
In the middle of the Sandwich, there are several areas. One layer is about academic professional research themes such as Metacognition, Epistemic Cognition, and Conceptual Change. These themes belong to different disciplines and different theoretical research traditions. For example, Metacognition is part of cognitive psychology. Epistemic Cognition belongs to educational studies. The term Conceptual Change is only used by North American scholars.
In order to connect academic research and the daily life world, I coined the term Epistemic Development and used it to replace my old terms such as intellectual development and life reflection.
Finally, I found my position on a large map.
The Slow Cognition Project
The above diagram led to a plan of building a community of inquiry about epistemic development. However, I didn’t act to build such a community, but accepted another one challenge later. You can find more details in an old article D as Diagramming: Challenge as Opportunity.
Now it seems I am returning to the track with the Slow Cognition Project which focuses on the historical-cognitive approach and the long-term development of thoughts.
The above diagram represents an idea ecology behind the Slow Cognition project. For Curativity Theory, the notion of Thematic Spaces is a new theoretical concept which is part of the Knowledge Curation framework. Also, Themes of Practice is a sub-theory of Curativity Theory, the notion of Thematic Spaces is also part of the Themes of Practice framework. The notion of Slow Cognition refers to the long-term development of thoughts and the historical-cognitive method.
The notion of Thematic Spaces is a great tool for turning the notion of Slow Cognition from a concept into a project. Also, it is an instrument for researching Developing Tacit Knowledge.
However, this is only about my story.
As a new instrument, what is the value of Thematic Space for others?
The Context of Developing Tacit Knowledge
In order to answer the question, I designed the following diagram in which we can see a big picture.
The above diagram is built with a metaphor which suggests a three-layer structure for understanding the context of Developing Tacit Knowledge.
This article aims to put Thematic Space in the context of life development with a simple metaphor: Flow, Film, and Floor Plan.
- Experience > Flow > Life as a continuous flow
- Story > Film > Project as a film with a prominent theme
- Model > Floor Plan > Thematic space as a floor plan
There are some notes about the relationship between these three layers. The rest of the article will unpack these details.
Experience: Life as a continuous flow
I use “continuous flow” as a metaphor to describe Life and Experience. This metaphor is inspired by William James’ metaphor “Stream of Thought”.
In fact, James used a group of metaphors around the notion of “Stream of Thought”. According to Jeffrey V. Osowski, the following other metaphors or images were part of the stream family (1989, p.132): train, chain, path, current (both water and electric), channel, line (with segments), procession, kaleidoscope, and fabric. “By using these metaphors, James was able to capture the concepts of continuity, constant change, direction, connectedness, pace, rhythm, and flow, all of which were important characteristics of thought or consciousness.”
James used the stream metaphor to reject the British empiricists’ view of consciousness which refers to the chain or train metaphor. According to James:
“Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as “chain” or “train” do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A “river” or a “stream” are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness or of subjective life. (vol. 1, p.239)
What James emphasized is the Subjective Life. I follow this metaphor and directly use Life as a continuous flow to describe a person’s subjective experience of his own life. You can’t use a knife to cut a stream, you only can use a container to contain it.
The water doesn’t have a form which also means structure, but the container has a form. The form of our experience is perceived as an interaction between our immediate actions with ecological situations which refers to physical environments and social environments.
The Experience layer means the ground of Developing Tacit of Knowledge and the source of Story and Model.
Story: Project as a film with a prominent theme
The Story layer refers to the level of social communicative context. At this level, a person could tell his journey of developing tacit knowledge with others. I use Film as a metaphor for this layer.
In fact, the Film metaphor echoes the Mind as Stage metaphor. We can roughly put these two metaphor together:
- Film > Project
- Theme of Film > Theme of Project
- Actors > Objects of Knowing
- Stage Lights > Perspectives
- Stage > Domain
The Story layer is also inspired by my experience of writing my learning autobiographies and working on learning narrative related projects. I often write reflection notes for each project. I also share my journey with others. For example, I had a 99-minute conversation with a friend of mine on Jan 8, 2022. I briefly introduced my journey of epistemic development from 2019 to 2022. I spent about 60 minutes sharing my story and some core ideas of several major works. You can find more details from here.
In order to make a clear statement, I make two type of stories.
- Story 1: it refers to Actual Narrative.
- Story 2: it is framed by Cultural Significance.
Story 1 emphasizes the Architecture aspect of the Story layer while Story 2 emphasizes the Relevance aspect of the Story layer.
Story 1 refers to the real story which is not told yet. A Story 1 is a set of immediate actions (experience) with a structure. The structure could be a planned project, a real project, and an imagined project. In a previous article The Dynamics of Tacit Knowledge, I described a similar insight with different terms:
I use the term “possible journey” to discuss the “narrative journey” because the four original stories are not part of a real journey. A narrative journey gives us freedom to curate real events into imagined journeys which are different to real journeys in our life.
A possible journey needs a reasonable structure to curate several intermediate purposes into a new meaningful whole. I adopted the structure from the four graphics and I found it matched the four stories I selected.
Story 2 refers to told stories which are framed by Cultural Significance. Once a person starts to share his stories with others, he must consider Relevance in the communicative context. Thus, there is a difference between Story 1 and Story 2. You can find more discussions about Relevance here.
At the Story layer, a person could know the themes of his stories and the structure of his stories. However, this type of knowing is based on Synthesis. If he wants to explore the Analysis-type of knowing, he needs models.
Model: Thematic Space as a floor plan
I use Floor Plan as a metaphor for the Model layer because it refers to three connected notions:
- Floor Plan: a cognitive representation of the structure of a house
- House: a physical place which contains a family
- Home: a social place which contains life activities of a family
Now we can translate this metaphor to discuss Thematic Space:
- Floor Plan > Thematic Space: a cognitive representation of the structure of Tacit Knowing Space.
- House > Physical Environments: computer, website, physical whiteboard, etc. These physical environments are places which contain the Canvas of Thematic Space and a person’s Tacit Knowing Activities.
- Home > Social Environments: conversations, meetings, workshops, family, school, company, etc. These social environments are places which contain a person’s Tacit Knowing Activities.
I have discussed these topics and diagrams in old articles, you find more details from here and here.
A model is not a reality, but by modeling reality, we have a special way of knowing. By using models, a person could explore the knowing of Analysis. For example, I used the canvas of Thematic Space to review my “Activity” thematic space. The process, the result, and the value are totally different from the Story layer.
However, we should remember the model is not our destination. The model is an mediating instrument for producing our outcome of tacit knowing activities. We need to return to the Story layer from the Model layer. We need to transform insights from Analysis into actionable guides by Synthesis.
Finally, the actionable guides should be transformed into real actions in ecological situations and return to the Experience layer.
Double Selectivity
The three-layer structure also represents the concept of Double Selectivity:
- The Selectivity of Perceiving: Similarity v.s. Difference
- The Selectivity of Thinking: Variant v.s. Invariant
The Concept of Double Selectivity is adopted from my work the Ecological Practice approach toolkit.
According to Harry Heft, the theoretical root of Gibson’s ecological psychology is William James’ Radical Empiricism. Inspired by Heft, I adopted the concept of Selectivity from Radical Empiricism for the Ecological Practice approach toolkit.
Heft (2012) pointed out, “…in radical empiricism, knowing refers most fundamentally to a functional relation in experience between a knower and an object known. The defining characteristic of knowing is selectivity. Through knowing processes, structure is selected out of, or differentiated from, immediate experience. It is now time to consider the products of selective processes. To use James’s terminology, two products of the selectivity of knowing processes are percepts and concepts.”(p.37)
I refer to this notion to Double Selectivity: The Selectivity of Perceiving and The Selectivity of Thinking.
According to Heft, “Perceiving is an action that entails selection of a flow of immediate experience out of the potential ground that is pure experience. Thinking or conceiving entails, in turn, selecting and fixing particular parts of this perceptual flow. Through this process, concepts are carved out of immediate perceptual experience at a remove from action and are abstracted from it. Abstracting from the immediate flow of experience makes it possible for the knower to isolate, and then to classify or otherwise manipulate, these extracted ‘moments.’ This cognitive capability enlarges the knower’s epistemic potential in incalculable ways. ”(pp.39–40)
For the present discussion, I roughly apply Double Selectivity to connect three layers.
- Experience > The Selectivity of Perceiving > Story
- Story > The Selectivity of Thinking > Model
From the Experience layer to the Story layer, the key is Similarity/Difference. It means we are very sensitive to new things in our immediate experience. Many people can generate insights by perceiving Differences, but a few people can perceive Similarities and find new insights.
If we can find Differences from Similarities, then we can find some new structures of stories. It could lead to innovation.
From the Story layer to the Model layer, the key is Variant/Invariant. Since a model is an abstraction of an insightful story, the Model maker has to separate invariants and variants from Story 1 and Story 2. While invariants refers to the Architecture aspect of the Story layer, variants refers to the Relevance aspect of the Story layer.
Truth, Beauty, and Justice
In 1975, Charles A. Lave and James G. March published a book titled An Introduction To Models in The Social Sciences. They suggested an interpretation of the evaluation of models, “What we present here are some rather simple points of view about truth, beauty, and justice that we, and others, have found helpful in heightening the pleasures and usefulness of model building in social science.”
The concept of Thematic Spaces and the canvas of Thematic Space are thinking tools for understanding tacit knowing places and tacit knowing activities. They aim to support knowledge creators to develop their tacit knowledge and create knowledge models. Thus, Thematic Spaces is a meta-model.
I am not sure if I can claim that the idea of Thematic Spaces has a strong aspect of truth. However, I think it is simple, which is the principle of beauty. We should notice that mind and tacit knowledge are complicated issues. Finally, what I want to build is a tool for intellectual freedom and self-emancipation which refers to justice.
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