Mental Moves #3: Attachance, Thematic Space, and Framework

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7 min readMay 3, 2023

A new insight about the concept of “Attachance” and “Moving between Thematic Spaces”

This post is part of the Mental Moves knowledge project that aims to collect related articles about the concept of “Attachance” and more examples about “Moving between Thematic Spaces” in order to edit a book. You can find more details in the following links:

March 4, 2023 — Creative Action: The Chance-configuration Theory and Beyond
March 8, 2023 — Creative Action: The Attachance of Moving Mental Elements
March 10, 2023 — [Knowledge Engagement] How to develop a concept called “Attachance”?
March 10, 2023 — #TalkThree 19: The Art of Semantic Awareness
March 23, 2023 — The Knowledge Engagement Framework (v4)
March 24, 2023 — TALE: A Possible Theme called “Mental Moves”
March 24, 2023 — The Concept of Attachance (A list of articles)
March 30, 2023 — Mental Moves #1: The Transformation of Mental Elements
April 27, 2023 — Creative Swapping of Mental Elements
April 29, 2023 — The “Mental Moves” Knowledge Project (Digital Board)

I coined the term Attachance by combining Attach and Chance in 2018 to discuss some ideas related to Affordance, a core idea of Ecological Psychology.

In 2022, the development of Attachance was tied to the development of Thematic Space which refers to a specific type of container: cognitive container. You can find more details in [Slow Cognition] The Development of the concept of “Thematic Spaces”.

On March 10, 2023, I wrote a short post about the development of “Attachance” on Linkedin. On March 24, 2023, I collected a set of articles about the concept of “Attachance” and “Moving between Thematic Spaces”.

The Concept of Attachance (A list of articles)

I coined the term Attachance by combining Attach and Chance in 2018 to discuss some ideas related to Affordance, a core…

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Updates

I use the list of articles as a collection of original materials for the Mental Moves knowledge project. I also update the list by adding relevant links. For example, I found that I used the concept of “Attachance” to describe a model for Developing Tacit Knowledge.

Today I also found that I used the concept of “Attachance” to name a chapter of my 2021 book titled Diagram Blending. See the screenshot below.

Last week, I also launched a board for the Mental Moves knowledge project on Milanote.

You can find 12 sub-boards about case studies on the board.

I adopted Dean Keith Simonton’s Chance-configuration theory as the foundation and expanded his theory to a new model. You can find the basic model here.

Thematic Space and Framework

In the past several days, I read the list of articles and reflect on my several knowledge projects which did’t consider the concept of “Attachance” as their primary objects.

However, I often associated the concept of “Attachance” with my works of developing knowledge frameworks. I always identified thematic spaces within a particular knowledge framework and emphasized the Attachance of moving between thematic spaces. I also encouraged people to take the attachance of moving between different knowledge frameworks.

As mentioned above, the development of Attachance was tied to the development of Thematic Space in 2022. This morning, I realized that the development of Thematic Space was tied to my work of developing knowledge frameworks.

I designed the above diagram to represent the new insight.

Originally, I consider “Concept” and “Diagram” as two significant aspects of knowledge frameworks. For example, I designed the picture below to visualize Yrjö Engeström’s thoughts about the process of developing the Activity System model which is a popular knowledge framework in the field of Activity Theory. You can find more details in Activity U (IV): The Engeström’s Triangle and the Power of Diagram.

The picture has seven red dots: Domain, Resource, Tools, Problem, Method, Concept, and Diagram. These elements are from the HERO U framework (the article, the diagram). The seven red balls refer to Personal Conditions of Knowing.

The first group is Domain, Resource, and Tools, they define the outside setting of the knowing activity.
The second group is Method and Problem, they define the source of competence and solution.
The third group is Diagram and Concept, they define the representation format of the outcome of knowing. These three groups form a process of knowing.

Now we can add Thematic Space to the list. I should emphasize that this idea is not for every knowledge framework. It only works well for some knowledge frameworks.

Example 1: The “HERO U” Framework

The HERO U Diagram is an application of the Theme U meta-diagram.

What’s the difference between HERO U and Theme U?

The “Theme U” diagram is a simple meta-diagram that displays six themes in a U shape. The simple way of using the Theme U diagram is 1) defining six themes, and 2) displaying them on the U shape randomly.

The HERO U diagram adopts the Width way and defines six types of objects of knowing:

mTheory: Meta-theory
sTheory: Specific Theory
aModel: Abstract Model
cModel: Concrete Model
dPractice: Domain Practice
gPractice: General Practice

You can find more details in The Knowledge Curation Toolkit #1: Theme U for Single-theory Curation.

On August 2022, I used the HERO U framework to reflect on my journey of developing the Anticipatory Activity System (AAS) framework.

For the ASS project, I consider the following “Objects of Knowing” for connecting THEORY (AAS) and PRACTICE (Life Strategy).

Meta-theory: Activity Theory, Anticipatory System Theory, Relevance Theory, etc.
Specific Theory: Anticipatory Activity System
Abstract Model: The AAS Framework
Concrete Model: The AAS4LT Framework
Domain Practice: The AAS4LT 1:1 life coaching program
General Practice: Life Development

You can find more details in Life Discovery: The AAS Framework.

The above diagram represents 9 moves between 6 thematic spaces within 12 months.

Example 2: The “Platform Genidentity Matrix” Framework

On May 29, 2022, I developed a framework called “Platform Genidentity Matrix” in order to develop a strategic map for curating Platform-based projects.

The framework was formed by the following two models:

The Movements of Objectification of Platform-core (Three types)
Construal Levels of Platform Objectification (Six levels)

It is a 3x6 matrix with 18 thematic spaces. The table below uses my journey of developing “Curativity Theory” as an example of the Meta-theory.

I use “Curativity” as an example of the meta-theory. Though the concept of “Curativity” is a member of the Ecological Practice Approach, it led to a series of projects such as the Knowlege Curation project, the Life Curation project, and the Career Curation project. My “Curativity” thematic space became a large knowledge enterprise.

You can find more details in Platform Genidentity: The Movements of Unfolding Uniqueness.

Example 3: The “Ecological Transformation” Framework

On Sept 9, 2022, I wrote an article titled The Attachance Framework (2018) and Thematic Engagement and introduced the Attachance framework.

In fact, the framework was originally called the “Ecological Transformation” framework. Now I decide to use its original name.

Based on the above model, I identified 9 types of Attachances. See the red words and red lines.

Each red line refers to an Attach/Detach act between two thematic spaces. Each red line means a type of Attachance.

Each type of Attachance has its own specific settings of time and space. For example, Move means there is a distance (space) between Non-Act and Before-Act, and there is no previous (time) interaction between Subject and Object.

I used “Far — Near — With — Near — Far” as the spatial structure to develop the framework. The structure also corresponds to three types of experience.

Far > There > Non-Experience
Near > Here > Quasi-Experience
With > Here > Real-Experience

The term “Experience” refers to interaction-based experience. If a Subject is far from an Object, the spatial distance between these two determines the experience: there are no action opportunities there. I call this type of experience Non-Experience.

On Dec 31, 2022, I used the framework to reflect on the “Oliver — Activity” thematic engagement. See the diagram below.