Thematic Space: Sparks In, Statue Out

The Enter — Exit Trajectory

Photo by IJ Portwine on Unsplash

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

I also used a metaphor to discuss the context of Developing Tacit Knowledge.

• Thematic Space: Flow, Film, and Floor Plan
• Thematic Space: Project as Story
• Thematic Space: Place as Container

Today we are going to return to the Canvas of Thematic Space and discuss the Enter — Exit Trajectory.

The Canvas of Thematic Space

Last week, I introduced the idea of Thematic Spaces and a Canvas of Thematic Space, see the picture below. You can find more details from the original article: The Notion of Thematic Spaces.

The basic form of the canvas is a matrix. There are two dimensions:

• The Enter — Exit dimension
• The Individual — Collective dimension

The Enter — Exit dimension is inspired by my work the Ecological Practice approach which highlights the concept of Container. As mentioned above, the thematic space is a super cognitive container. The Enter — Exit dimension describes the whole process of interaction with the container.

For the Knowledge Curation project, the Enter is related to Resources and the Exit is related to Results. That means we consider two types of resources for Developing Tacit Knowledge: Theory and Practice. There are two types of Results for Developing Tacit Knowledge: End and Means. The End refers to “Knowing for Me” while the Means refers to “Knowing for All”.

Today I will focus on the Enter — Exit dimension.

The Attach — Detach Flow

The Ecological Practice approach is inspired by Ecological Psychology and other theoretical resources. You can find more details about its development here.

The above diagram is the basic model of the Ecological Practice approach. combines three core concepts of Ecological Practice approach together: Affordance, Attachance, and Containance. The term “Offers” is an affordance-inspired concept, it refers to opportunities afforded by the Container. The group of “Offer — Act” forms “Event” which changes the status of the Container. The new status of the Container affords new opportunities which guide the new acts and events.

In the article titled Thematic Space: Flow, Film, and Floor Plan, I 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

Now we use the Ecological Practice approach to explain these metaphors. For the metaphor of “Life as a continuous flow”, we can understand it as an Attach — Detach flow. In this way, we see two things:

• Life Flow
• Life Container

As discussed in Thematic Space: Place as Container, we need two types of containers — Abstract Containers and Concrete Containers — because Sparks are not graspable. I call it the Double Containers Principle.

The term Sparks refers to the basic unit of tacit knowledge. It was born from the Life Flow. In general, we can say that Sparks are a basic unit of life experience too.

Since a container has its boundary, then we have experience of Enter and Exit. If we consider Life as a large container as a whole, Enter refers to Birth and Exit refers to Death. We can also consider Birth as a small life event, its primary life container is Womb. For Death, its primary life container is Tomb.

The concept of Container is adopted from George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s conceptual metaphor Container and image schema Containment. However, I expanded the concept from a metaphor to a theoretical concept for the Ecological Practice approach. I use “Attach” and “Detach” to describe these experiences and other meanings.

For life development, what I want to claim is the meaning of “Attach something to containers” and “Detach something from containers”. This is not part of the conceptual metaphor Container and image schema Containment.

By expanding to “Attach something to containers” and “Detach something from containers”, we can talk about something. In this way, Life is not only a pure spiritual journey, but a social material activity too. In other words, mind and matter are not separable. This view about life and mind echoes Ecological Psychology and Activity Theory.

The Enter — Exit Trajectory

The above basic model of Ecological Practice approach offers two level processes:

• Inside process: Offers — Acts
• Cross-boundary process: Attach — Detach

For the Canvas of Thematic Space, I will use the following related notions:

• Inside process: The Self — Other Path
• Cross-boundary process: The Enter — Exit Trajectory

According to Robot Academy, “There is an important distinction between a path and a trajectory. A path is a spatial construct and tells us how we get from A to B through the world. A trajectory is a path plus a schedule. It tells us how quickly we should move along the path, at what time we should be at what point along the path.”

Now we not only care about the pure model of Thematic Space, but consider it as a map of Developing Tacit Knowledge or Tacit Knowing Activities.

I use the notion “The Enter — Exit Trajectory” to connect Activity Theory and Developing Tacit Knowledge. In this way, we can adopt some related tools for our discussion. Activity Theorists tend to use a pair of concept “Object — Outcome” to describe the process of an activity. We will unpack this pair of concepts later.

I use the notion “The Self — Other Path” to emphasize the social aspect of tacit knowing activities. It also echoes the Individual — Collective dimension of the canvas. However, I will discuss this topic in a new article.

Photo by Mohit Kumar on Unsplash

Now we can roughly use City Travel as a metaphor to summarize the above ideas:

• City: a concrete container (a knowledge field)
• Map: an abstract container (the canvas of Thematic Space)
• Trajectory: Enter and Exit (a strategic plan for Developing Tacit Knowledge during a period of time such as months or years)
• Path: Offers and Acts within social dynamic situation inside a city (various social settings for Tacit Knowing Activities)

The Enter — Exit Trajectory refers to a strategic plan for Developing Tacit Knowledge. It is about Anticipation and Performance.

The Anticipation — Performance Complexity

Now we can adopt a related tool for present discussion. On Sept 15, 2021, I published an article titled D as Diagramming: Strategy as Anticipatory Activity System and introduced a new framework about strategy. See the diagram below:

The original source of the above framework is the diagram below:

The difference between these two diagrams are about the pair of concepts “Object — Outcome” which is two important ideas in Activity Theory. In order to discuss life development, I adopted ideas from Anticipatory Systems theory and Activity Theory, then made a new framework called Anticipatory Activity System.

From the perspective of the new framework,it’s clear that we have to use two terms because Objective (what is motive about) is about Future while Object (what is acted on) is about Present. Moreover, Objective is related to Anticipation while Object is related to Performance.

The new framework offers a model for understanding the concept of Strategy in general. I have to claim that these notions about “Object — Outcome” are different from existing usage from the field of Activity Theory. You can find more details from the original article.

Based on the above basic diagram, I expand it with some notes which turns my tacit knowledge about Startup and Entrepreneurship into explicit knowledge. I added five Developmental Themes to the above diagram. From the perspective of adult development, I think there are five critical themes for early stage entrepreneurs.

Each developmental theme can be understood as a guiding question.

• Situation: Where are we?
• Orientation: Where should we go?
• Projection: What should we try?
• Engagement: How to find our sweet spot?
• Improvement: How to scale it?

You can find more details from the original article: D as Diagramming: The Defining Zone. Though It is about Startup and Entrepreneurship, I think it is also suitable for Developing Tacit Knowledge because they share the same pattern of mastering the complexity of Anticipation and Performance.

They all start from Discovery and end with Delivery.

Sparks In, Statue Out

From the perspective of Knowledge Curation, a single tacit knowing activity can be understood as the following metaphor:

• Attach with many Sparks (Pieces)
• Detach with one Statue (Whole)

Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash

I use “Sparks” to describe the basic unit of tacit knowledge. This is a metaphor.

If we need an academic concept, I’d like to adopt the term “mental elements” from Dean Keith Simonton’s Chance-configuration theory (Scientific Genius,1988). What’s mental elements? According to Simonton, “In scientific creativity, the predominant mental elements are cognitions of some kind, such as facts, principles, relations, rules, laws, formulae, and images. Yet immediate sensations may also play a role in laboratory experimentation and field exploration, and feelings may figure in scientific thought and discourse as well (Mahoney 1976). Sometimes these mental elements can be evoked voluntarily (e.g., the deliberate retrieval of a stored fact from memory); at other times these elements enter mental processing involuntarily (e.g., via a conditioned emotional association). Moreover, these mental elements do not have to be fully conscious, but rather, many enter information processing at the periphery of consciousness. ” (1988, p.6)

I highlight some keywords from Simonton’s description about mental elements. It looks like this is a rough definition. And, it is very hard to give an accurate definition for such things. Thus, I think the “Sparks” metaphor is fine for our present discussion.

Photo by Fernando Santander on Unsplash

I use “Statues” to describe the basic forms of explicit knowledge. This is a metaphor too.

A statue is a free-standing, solid, complete, permanent thing. This metaphor refers to my own views on the ideal forms of explicit knowledge:

• Free-standing: It should be independent.
• Solid: It should be trustable and reliable.
• Complete: It should be a meaningful whole.
• Permanent: It should be reusable, even timeless.

I have to point out that I am talking about forms, not content. Though I personally like to apply these views on the ideal content of explicit knowledge, I think it is too restricted.

If we adopt the Double Containers principle from Curativity Theory, then we can understand Forms as Concrete Containers while Content as Abstract Containers. For example, Andy Blunden’s book An Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity is a Knowledge Statue.

• Form: a book.
• Content: a brand new theory about Activity.

A book is a concrete container of explicit knowledge while a theory is an abstract container of explicit knowledge.

The Lifeflow of Thematic Space

Finally, it’s time to find a concrete container to curate the above discussion together. I designed a new diagram to visualize the Enter — Exit Trajectory.

Based on the above discussion, I identified four types of Sparks and four types of Statues.

As mentioned above, the notion of Sparks echoes the term “mental elements” which is part of Dean Keith Simonton’s Chance-configuration theory (Scientific Genius,1988). Simonton doesn’t develop a typology for the term. Also, his theory is about scientific knowledge activities. My primary interest is connecting Theory and Practice, thus I also consider professional workers’ tacit knowing activities.

The “Theory — Practice” dimension refers to a pair of concepts “Fact — Fiction”. Based on the notion, I discovered four types of Sparks:

• Imagery: Sparks inspired by literary works (or other sources) that evokes a mental image or other kinds of sense impressions.
• Semantics: Sparks inspired by the meaning of a word, phrase, sentence, or text.
• Narrative: Sparks inspired by storytelling, performance, conversation, in a situational activity.
• Affordance: Sparks inspired by real interactions between human, object, and environment.

Here I use “Imagery”, “Semantics”, “Narrative” and “Affordance” as labels for four types of Sparks. We should just see these terms as placeholders. So far, I can’t find other terms for names of these four types of Sparks. Anyway, the point is the differences and similarities between these four types.

• Imagery/Semantics is located at the “Fiction” zone because they directly link to imagination and language.
• Narrative/Affordance refers to real situational embodied experience which is located at the “Fact” zone.
• Imagery v.s. Semantics: Imagery refers to visual mental image while Semantics refers to understanding and appropriate use of meaning in single words, phrases, sentences and even longer units.
• Narrative v.s. Affordance: Narrative is about human-to-human communicative activities. Affordance is about human-to-environment embodied activities.

This is not an ideal typology of Sparks, I think these four types of Sparks are important types. I don’t consider Data as Sparks because we can put it into the category of “Semantics”. A data works like a sign because a data refers to “number (data value)/meaning (actual value)”.

The four types of Statues are identified by a format of Container (Knowledge). As mentioned above, I don’t focus on the content of explicit knowledge. I think a particular explicit knowledge could apply to various applications. Also, an application could be a container of several explicit pieces of knowledge.

The four types of Statues means four types of Knowledge Containers. Inspired by the Opportunity Space canvas (see the diagram below), I think we can adopt its typology for Knowledge Container. Also, I use “Media” to replace “Content”.

The Opportunity Space was developed for discussing the productization of diagrams. I placed “Diagram” in the center of the canvas. As mentioned before, I used the term Diagrams interchangeably with Knowledge Frameworks. Thus, the Opportunity Space is about the productization of knowledge frameworks too.

Can we consider these four types of knowledge containers as Statues? Do they match my views on the ideal forms of explicit knowledge? Let’s test it with “Tool”.

The “Tool” category refers to physical and digital artifacts. For example, Monopoly is a physical board game.

Does Monopoly match the four criteria of Statues?

• Free-standing: It should be independent.

Yes. We don’t need Wifi to play Monopoly. We don’t need to worry about the battery issue.

• Solid: It should be trustable and reliable.

Yes. It is made with paper and other materials.

• Complete: It should be a meaningful whole.

Yes. It is a single game. You don’t have to buy a pen in order to use it.

• Permanent: It should be reusable, even timeless.

Yes. We can play it as many times as we want. According to Wikipedia, “the history of Monopoly can be traced back to 1903, when American antimonopolist Lizzie Magie created a game which she hoped would explain the single-tax theory of Henry George.”

Since these four criteria of Statues are about ideal forms of explicit knowledge. In the real life world, not everything is ideal. I think the four types of Statues are acceptable for the canvas of Thematic Space.

Let’s look at differences and similarities between these four types:

• Media/Community: they are located at the “culture” zone because they refer to collective relevance and “information — rule” issues.
• Service/Tool: they are located at the “experience” zone because they refer to individual behavior and “body — need” issues.
• Media and Tool: they are both about human-to-material interactions. Media refers to human-to-information while Tool refers to human-to-object.
• Community and Service: they are both about human-to-human interactions. Community refers to communities of practice while service refers to interpersonal activities and communications.

These four types of containers are timeless. This typology is not perfect, but it covers most important types of human social practices.

What about Buildings or Architectures? We have to use the concept of Nested Containers to understand this type of thing. As environmental objects, Buildings are Tool according to our typology because Tool refers to human-to-object interactions. Then, there are activities within Buildings. Activities refer to Community and Service. Sometimes, a building is about “human-to-information” interactions, for example, a bookstore or a museum. Then, we should consider Media in its system of nested containers.

These four types of knowledge containers are basic forms, we can use the concept of Nested Containers to understand complex systems by curating these four basic forms.

What about academic papers and business books? They belong to Media.

Attaching and Detaching without Language

The above typology expands the scope of knowledge product from traditional forms of explicit knowledge to more forms. Eventually, the distinction between tacit knowledge between explicit knowledge is not important for Thematic Space.

The term Tacit Knowledge was coined by Michael Polanyi in his 1958 book Personal Knowledge which is a book about philosophy of science. Polanyi emphasized the importance of skillful knowing and intellectual passions for the development of scientific knowledge.

In a later book, The Tacit Dimension (1966), Polanyi claimed that “we can know more than we can tell.” This affirmation leads to a popular typology of knowledge: Tacit Knowledge v.s. Explicit Knowledge. The essential aspect of the typology is the expression of knowing.

If a person can express his knowing about something, then other people can see his knowledge which is confirmed as explicit. If a person can’t express his knowing about something, then the knowing is his tacit knowledge. This definition leads to an unsolved problem. If a person can’t express his knowing, how can he claim that he knows something and how can others confirm that he accurately knows something? Contemporary philosophers are still busy debating the definition of the concept and its value.

From the above discussion, the language-based knowing activities are just a part of knowing activities. There are other types of knowing activities.

As discussed in The Dynamics of Tacit Knowledge, I suggested that there is a need to make a new typology about Tacit Knowledge: Potential Knowledge/Actual Knowledge. The dimension behind the new typology is Certainty/Uncertainty.

Many Sparks In, One Statue Out! This is the only way to turn Potential Knowledge into Actual Knowledge.

You are most welcome to connect via the following social platforms:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverding
Twitter: https://twitter.com/oliverding
Polywork: https://www.polywork.com/oliverding
Boardle: https://www.boardle.io/users/oliver-ding

License

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) License. Please click on the link for details.