TALE: The Territory of Concepts

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TALE500

11 min readAug 21, 2023

Developing a Spontaneous Concept System as a Creative Social Action

The above picture represents a theme called “The Territory of Concepts” which was introduced in Themes in the Field: Self, Agency, and Activity (Part III) on June 6, 2023.

This article reviews this theme and adopts the following three theoretical approaches to support it.

Ping-keung Lui’s term “Social Territory” and his Subjectivist Structuralism
Andy Blunden’s approach to Activity Theory: Activity as Formation of Concept (2010, 2012, 2014)
My approach: the Themes of Practice approach

Finally, I adopted the Infoniche framework and its application the Optimal Context Canvas to support the theme of “The Territory of Concepts”.

Originally, the Optimal Context Canvas was developed for discovering opportunities. Now it is rediscovered as an operational tool for mapping the Territory of Concepts.

Early Discovery

From the perspective of “Strategic Thematic Exploration” framework, The “Themes in the Field” stage refers to two states: 5) A knowledge concept with a working definition, and 6) A knowledge framework with a set of concepts. In this stage, we aim to develop the primary knowledge concept and a network of related concepts.

Now we have a good name for the network of concepts: Spontaneous Concept System.

The next phase of the journey of knowledge engagement is Conceptual Elaboration which aims to turn a Spontaneous Concept System into a Defined Concept System or a Scientific Concept System.

If we see the “Conceptual Elaboration” phase as an Activity, the raw material is a Spontaneous Concept System and the outcome is a Defined Concept System or Scientific Concept System. All actions of the Activity are about deliberately developing individual concepts, relationships between concepts, diagrams of concepts, and representations of frameworks. The mediation of the Activity can be various tools and methods case studies, etymology, thematic analysis, concept choices, etc.

The further phase is Continuous Objectification which aims to turn a concept system into real things.

I consider Strategic Thematic Exploration and Conceptual Elaboration as two phases of EARLY DISCOVERY of the journey of knowledge Engagement. See the diagram below.

In the above diagram, you can see a term called “The Territory of Concepts” which is inspired by Alfred Korzybski’s “The Map is not the Territory”.

According to Korzybski, the conceptual models of reality are not the reality itself. For the journey of knowledge engagement, our challenge is more complicated than the simple map-territory relation because we are making the map while we are trying to understand reality.

A Spontaneous Concept System refers to a rough Knowledge Framework which is the outcome of Strategic Thematic Exploration. The Activity of Developing a Spontaneous Concept System means turning a Rough knowledge framework into a Reliable knowledge framework.

Subjective Reality

I use “The Territory of Concepts” to refer to the subjective experience of objectification of concepts. It means we should make some real objects of concepts.

In the process of objectification, we, as the makers of these objects, will earn the subjective experience such as feedback from others, reflection on mistakes, excited moments, thematic conversations, capturing significant insights, comparing two concept systems, testing an object, expanding a concept system, moving between concept systems, etc.

The Territory of Concepts can be seen as a Subjective Reality. We, as the developer of a concept system, only can see this Subjective Reality and use it to help us elaborate the Spontaneous Concept System.

Is there an Objective Reality that can be an object for our knowledge engagement? Yes, we can claim it. However, once we reach a part of an Objective Reality, it becomes a part of our experience.

Social Territory

The “Territory” of Concepts is inspired by Ping-keung Lui’s term “Social Territory” and his Subjectivist Structuralism which is part of his theoretical sociology.

The structure of Lui’s theoretical sociology is a nested structure. See the diagram below. According to Lui, “The realism comprises a subjectivist structuralism and an objectivist stock of knowledge, while the hermeneutics is an interpretation and an analysis. Second, I shall present an ontology that nests the realism within its boundaries.” (p.250, 2016, Aspects of Sociological Explanation)

Source: Aspects of Sociological Explanation (Ping-keung Lui 2016, p.251)

We should see this grand theory as a dialogue between philosophy and sociology because “Ontology” and “hermeneutics” are respectable terms in philosophy, but “realism” — sandwiched between them — is not. Lui emphasizes that Realism is the sociological matter proper (p.251, 2016, Aspects of Sociological Explanation).

Lui considers the following four realities for the grand theory:

the Weberian course of action
the Giddensian course of action
Social Territory
Symbolic Universe

The Realism is determined by the Ontology. According to Lui, “I made a distinction between action and its course; that is, action is not a reality but its course is. My justification is based on a fundamental ontology.” (p.251, 2016)

The Realism leads to the Hermeneutics which considers two parts: the actors’ interpretation and the researcher’s analysis.

I have claimed that “Knowledge Center” is a type of Social Territory. You can find more details in Knowledge Engagement: The Creative Course Framework. We can apply the same logic to understand the Territory of Concepts.

The Territory of Concepts is a specific type of Social Territory.

Idea, Work, and Concept

The Territory of Concepts is also inspired by Andy Blunden’s approach to Activity Theory: Activity as Formation of Concept (2010, 2012, 2014).

In order to develop the notion of “Project as a unit of Activity” as a theoretical foundation of the new interdisciplinary theory of Activity, Blunden adopts Hegel’s logic and Vygotsky’s theory about “Unit of Analysis” and “Concept” as theoretical resources. The process is documented in four books: An Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity (2010), Concepts: A Critical Approach (2012), Collaborative Projects: An Interdisciplinary Study (2014), and Hegel for Social Movements (2019).

Blunden’s 2012 book Concepts: A Critical Approach reviews the theoretical development of Concepts in an interdisciplinary approach that curates theories about Concepts from various disciplines such as cognitive psychology, analytic philosophy, linguistics, and the history of science. He adopts Hegel’s theory of concept and Lev Vygotsky’s cultural-historical psychology as theoretical resources and proposes a new approach to Concepts. He argues that concepts are equally subjective and objective: units both of consciousness and of the cultural formation of which one’s consciousness is part. In other words, the formation of concepts is activity.

Lev Vygotsky made a distinction between two terms: Spontaneous Concepts and Scientific Concepts. For example, “Archimedes’s Law” is a scientific concept while “Brother” is a spontaneous concept.

The child formulates Archimedes’s law better than he formulates his definition of what a brother is. This obviously reflects the different developmental paths that have led to the formation of these concepts. The child has learned the concept of “Archimedes law” differently than he has learned the concept of “brother.” The child knew what a brother was, and passed through many stages in the development of this knowledge, before he learned to define the word “brother” (if he ever had the occasion to learn this).
The development of the concept, “brother”, did not begin with a teacher’s explanation or with a scientific formulation. This concept is saturated with the child’s own rich personal experience. It had already passed through a significant part of its developmental course and had exhausted much of the purely empirical content it contains before the child encourntered it in definition. Of course, this was not the case with the concept that underlies Archimedes’ law (LSVCW, v.1:178, cited in Andy Blunden, 2012, p.254)

Vygotsky uses “Brother” as an example of Spontaneous Concepts. It inspired me to take the following pictures.

The above item was made by my son Peiroan for his Time Capsule project.

Peiroan was born in 2010 and his brother Peiphen is 3 years older than him. Peiphen would open the container as a sophomore!

In the field of Developmental Psychology and Education, some people pay attention to the “wrong” aspect of Spontaneous Concepts. If we detach it from education and attach it to the field of Creativity, Design, and Innovation, we can pay attention to the “personal subjective experience” aspect of Spontaneous Concepts.

Blunden’s original approach doesn’t adopt the Activity System model which is an established approach in the field of Activity Theory. In a 2021 book titled Project-oriented Activity Theory (draft), I claim that it is possible to keep Blunden’s approach and the Activity System model within a theoretical framework by distinguishing between Idea and Concept. In this manner, we can grow Activity Theory without discarding the Activity System model since it is an established branch of Activity Theory.

For Blunden, “Formation of Concept” means a social movement that creates a brand-new Concept in the existing social-cultural system. It is a creative social action! If an Idea doesn’t bring us a brand-new Concept, it can be seen as a normal object which leads to normal Work. Since normal Work is a collaborative activity, we can use Activity System Model to understand it.

According to Blunden, “The project arises in response to some contradiction or problem within a social situation. However, the object cannot simply be conceived of as ‘to solve problem X’. The problem stimulates efforts to find a solution but it is not in itself sufficient to form a concept (Vygotsky, 1934/1987, p.126). Quite different, even mutually hostile projects may be directed at one and the same situation and solve one and the same problem. The formation of a project with a concept of the problem is an original and creative social act. ”(2014, p.25)

It is clear that Blunden distinguishes between the pre-concept status and the concept status. In order to better present his statement, I define the pre-concept as the “Idea” process.

There are many ideas for “problem-solution”, but not all ideas can generate a proposal of a new concept. If an idea doesn’t lead to a brand-new concept, we can see it as normal work.

Both Concept Formation and Normal Work require Developing Spontaneous Concept System because a primary concept always connects to a set of secondary concepts. Any brand-new concept starts with a Spontaneous Concept System.

Themes of Practice

Finally, I’d like to use my own idea of the “Themes of Practice” approach to support the Territory of Concept.

While the above two approaches emphasize the subjective meaning of concept formation, they don’t touch the details of different roles within the process of concept formation.

I consider “Theme” as a special type of “Concept”. Based on “Formation of Concept”, I adopt “Themes of Practice” for discussing the internal structure and dynamics of Projects. In particular, I identify five “Themes of Practice” of Projects: “Idea”, “Resource”, “Program”, “Performance” and “Solution”.

I find a connection between my own idea “Ecological Zone” and Vygotsky’s “Zone of Proximal Development”. I also notice that Blunden gives an archetypal unit of a project in his 2010 book An Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity: two people working together on a common project. By curating these ideas together, I develop a new concept of “Zone of Project” which can be considered as an expansive work of Blunden’s archetypal unit of Project.

See the diagram below and see more details in Activity U (XI): Process, Position, and Zone of Project.

In fact, the concept of “Ecological Zone” and the concept of “Themes of Practice” are also part of the Infoniche framework. See the table below.

On Sept 21, 2021, I combined the Infoniche Model and the “Network — Container — Platform — Domain” tetrad and made a new diagram called Landscape of Opportunity. See the diagram below.

The above diagram led to a new canvas called Optimal Context Canvas.

The Inner Space of the canvas refers to eight types of Proximal Contexts.

Spots: body-scale physical environments
Flows: screen-scale information environments
Zones: a Zone refers to two people sharing an activity or a theme
Camps: a Camp considers several Zones as a whole
Projects: a Project is a social activity that has an “initiators — participants” structure
Groups: a group is a group of people connected around common interests
Events: an Event refers to a thing that happens, especially one of importance
Domains: a Domain refers to a symbolic aspect of cultural environments

The Outer Space of the canvas refers to eight types of Pervasive Contexts that are abstract social-cultural systems or larger scales of proximal contexts.

Spaces: Space is a set of Spots
Places: a Place is a Space with information flow
Organizations: an organization refers to a business
Institutions: institutions refer to non-business organizations
Platforms: a Platform refers to a marketplace or a digital platform
Networks: a Network refers to a social network
Movements: a Movement refers to a social movement
Fields: a cultural field that can be considered as a Domain at a large scale

There is a rough, not accurate, one-to-one mapping between an inner block and an outer block.

Originally, the Optimal Context Canvas was developed for discovering opportunities. Now we can rediscover it as a tool for mapping the Territory of Concepts.

The Optimal Context Canvas offers the following four areas of the Territory of Concepts:

Structural Dynamics: social structure
Cultural Significance: social discourse
Embedded Activity: situated activities.
Project Engagement: goal-oriented projects

Each area has four blocks for discussion. It’s clear that this is an operational framework for studying the Territory of Concepts.

Social Moves

The Optimal Context Canvas presents 16 blocks that can be seen as thematic spaces.

Growing a Territory of Concept can be understood as moving between these thematic spaces.

In this way, the Territory of Concepts is about Social Moves.