Knowledge Engagement: The Expanded Creative Course Framework

Oliver Ding

Published in

Curativity Center

10 min readJul 25, 2023

Using the Diagram Blending method to build an intermediate framework for the Creative Life Theory (V2.0)

In April, I finished a Chinese book (draft) titled Knowledge Engagement: Knowledge Center and Creative Life Theory.

The 228-page book collects my 15 reading notes about Gaze, Actions, and the Social World (Ping-keung Lui, 2007). I also reflected on the following three projects while replaying Lui’s theory development journey.

The Knowledge Engagement Project
The Creative Life Framework
The Theme of “Value Circle”

I adopted Lui’s theoretical approach to developing several new frameworks which form the Creative Life Theory (v2.0). One of these frameworks is called the Creative Course Framework. See the diagram below.

The Creative Course Framework was inspired by Lui’s Subjectivist Structuralism which is part of his theoretical sociology.

You can find more details in Knowledge Engagement: The Creative Course Framework.

The above diagram is the basic model of the Creative Course framework. I also connected it with Value Circle, Anticipatory Activity System, and other models. The result is an expanded version. See the diagram below.

The Expanded Creative Course Framework (Oliver Ding, April 2023)

The above large diagram is the outcome of a Diagram Blending process. You can see five sub-diagrams that represent five frameworks.

Center: The Creative Course Framework
Left: The Value Circle Framework
Right: The Universal Reference Framework
Up: The Anticipatory Activity System Framework
Down: The Knowledge Circle Framework

This article aims to briefly introduce newly added frameworks and reflect on the creative process from the perspective of diagram blending.

The Value Circle Framework

In order to discuss professional knowledge networks from the perspective of Creative Life Theory. I used the theme “Value Circle” to rename the model of “Project Network”.

The Model of “Project Network” is for discussing the idea of “Knowledge Center.” It’s a multiple-level network, not a one-level network.

A Network of Themes
A Network of Knowledge Centers
A Network of People

Each level refers to one type of Project. The “Themes” level refers to “Concept as Project”. For example, “TEDx” and “Startup Weekend” are Concepts, and the global TEDx community is a large project. The global Startup Weekend community is a large project too.

The “Knowledge Centers” level refers to “Center as Project”. For example, Each local TEDx program and each local Startup Weekend chapter are local projects.

The “People” level refers to “Engagement as Project”. For example, if a person joins a local TEDx team as a volunteer, she can consider her own experiences and actions of participating in the team as a Developmental Project for her.

These three types of Projects are also embedded in three types of networks: a network of themes, a network of centers, and a network of people.

You can also find a case study of the model of “Project Network”. See the diagram below. You can find more details in Life Strategy: Moving between Thematic Spaces.

I was not satisfied with the name “Project Network” because it only means one level of the model.

The theme of “Value Circle” was born for discussing the professional knowledge economy in Jan 2023. You can find more details in TALE: A Possible Theme called “Value Circle”.

In March 2023, I decided to use “Value Circle” to rename the “Project Network” model.

The Universal Reference Framework

The Universal Reference Framework was born on Nov 11, 2022, after reflecting on the Diagramming Reference Frame which was made on Oct 27, 2022.

Later, it inspired me to develop the concept of “The World of Activity” on Nov 18, 2022.

One important notion I learned from Lui’s theoretical sociology is from Ferdinand de Saussure’s structural linguistics.

Langue and parole is a theoretical linguistic dichotomy distinguished by Ferdinand de Saussure in his Course in General Linguistics. Langue refers to the abstract system of language while parole means concrete speech.

Lui’s theoretical sociology and Semiotic System Diagrams are inspired by Saussure’s structural linguistics.

Inspired by Lui’s philosophical view of science, I also used Observable (Data) and Unobservable (Hypothesis) to make a distinction between Researchers and Actors.

By using the Universal Reference Framework, I discovered a path for “Knowledge Engagement”:

Action > Creation > Curation

This path covers 1) Action and Reflection, 2) Knowledge Creation, and 3) Knowledge Curation. See the diagram below.

Below is a case study of the field of sociology. Knowledge Creation means from #0 to #1–8, while Knowledge Curation means from #1–8 to #9.

0: Actor’s Actions (Subjective Experience)
1: The Sociological Imagination (C. Wright Mills, 1959)
2: Public Sociology (Michael Burawoy, 2004)
3: Policy Sociology (Michael Burawoy, 2004)
4: Social Theories
5: Theories of Middle Range (Robert K. Merton, 1949)
6: Adoptive Theory Approach (Derek Layder, 1998)
7: Critical Sociology (Michael Burawoy, 2004)
8: Sociological Theories
9: Theoretical Sociology (Lui, 2007)

This case study is inspired by Lui’s typology, Michael Burawoy’s typology, and other individual theoretical approaches.

You can find more details in Diagram: A Universal Reference for Knowledge Engagement.

The Anticipatory Activity System Framework

“Anticipatory Activity System” is a specific theory inspired by Activity Theory, Anticipatory System theory, Relevance theory, etc. It defines the basic model of the AAS framework:

First-order Activity / Second-order Activity
The Anticipation — Performance Complexity
The Self-Other Relevance

In Oct 2022, I connected the Anticipatory Activity System (AAS) framework to Lui’s theoretical sociology. Since the Creative Course framework is an application of Lui’s theory, I can easily connect the AAS framework to the Creative Course framework.

The diagram below is the basic model of the Anticipatory Activity System (AAS) framework. A primary pair of concepts is “First-order Activity/Second-order Activity”. An Anticipatory Activity System is a self-referential system and it has two parts:

First-order Activity
Second-order Activity

My original idea about them is that Second-order Activity determines First-order Activity.

I also use First-order Activity to refer to Work, Production, and Exploitative Activity. This notion echoes traditional Activity Theory which is inspired by the Marxist theory of Work and Production.

Second-order Activity is more about Play, Discovery, and Exploratory Activity. The notion of Second-order Activity goes beyond the scope of the traditional Activity Theory.

Lui’s grand theory doesn’t use “Activity” as a theoretical concept. The basic unit of his approach is “the Course of Action”. According to Lui, there are two types of Course of Action:

The Weberian course of action: In actual intervention, the actor does not necessarily remember (in the present of the past) nor expect (the present of the future), but he must pay attention (in the present of the present).
The Giddensian course of action: In contemplation of intervention, however, he does not need to pay attention, though he must remember and/or expect.

These two types of Course of Action are located at the part of Realism in Lui’s approach.

I roughly consider First-order Activity echoes the Weberian course of action while Second-order Activity echoes the Giddensian course of action.

I use the term “echo”, not the word “equal” because I am not claiming that the AAS framework is an application of Lui’s theoretical sociology.

I use the World of Works to describe knowledge creations such as theories, concepts, frameworks, books, papers, etc. It can be considered as a part of Symbolic Universe which is related to Second-order Activity.

For the Creative Life Theory (v2.0), I used Creative Field to refer to something that corresponds to the creators’ Social Territory which is related to First-order Activity.

The term Creative Field was inspired by 1) French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu’s Field theory, and 2) Creativity research scholar Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Social Systems Model of creativity. I didn’t use the Systems Model of Creativity for the Creative Life Theory. The term “Creative Field” roughly corresponds to the sum of “Domain” and “Field”.

You can find more details in Knowledge Engagement: The Creative Course Framework and Slow Cognition: Three Paths of Creative Life and A Semiotic System.

The Knowledge Circle Framework

The Knowledge Circle Framework was born from a research project about Lui’s knowledge center.

Originally, I applied the Activity Circle model to develop a new model for understanding Knowledge Center in general. The diagram below is the Activity Circle model.

The diagram below is the new model for the Knowledge Center project.

However, I found the above model is not suitable for Lui’s knowledge center’s activities. Thus, I used a different version of the Activity Circle model to make a diagram of Lui’s knowledge center.

After publishing Gaze, Actions, and the Social World in 2007, Lui continuously develop his account of Theoretical Sociology. We can roughly see his activities about Building Theoretical Sociology as a Knowledge Center.

From 2012 to 2017, Lui used email and WeChat to host a small academic group for discussing his Theoretical Sociology. After reading the archive of their discussions, I used double activity circles to represent a typical pattern of the discussions.

I also used “Knowledge Circle” to name this new model.

You can find more details about the Activity Circle model in The Activity Circle (Oliver Ding, 2017) and Diagram Blending: “Activity Circle” + “Concept Dynamics”.

The Diagram Blending Method

In A New Possible Book: Knowledge Engagement, I have mentioned that Creative Life Theory (v2.0) is a by-product of reading Lui’s book Gaze, Actions, and the Social World.

The Extended Creative Course Framework is part of the Creative Life Theory (v2.0). However, the above diagram is not the original diagram I made in March 2023.

What did I make in March 2023? See the diagram below.

The above diagram uses the early version of Creative Course as the core to build the expanded framework. I didn’t incorporate Knowledge Center into the framework.

On July 24, 2023, I modified the above diagram and made a new version. See the diagram below.

However, I found a bug in the above diagram because the original version is about the following connections:

The World of Works → Second-order Activity
Creative Field → First-order Activity

This bug inspired me to rethink the whole diagram. Later I moved the AAS module to the top and added two other frameworks to the diagram.

This is an interesting case of Diagram Blending. In Dec 2021, I edited a book (draft) titled Diagram Blending: Building Diagram Networks.

I am a big fan of Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner’s Conceptual Blending Theory which is an established theoretical approach in the field of cognitive linguistics.

I was very surprised by the way they use diagrams to express complex theoretical ideas. The name “Diagram Blending” is inspired by Conceptual Blending. I want to use the title to pay tribute to Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner.

The major difference between Conceptual Blending and Diagram Blending is that instead of using four mental spaces to build the foundation of a theory, I use the Part — Whole Curativity as the foundation. A simple diagram can be considered a part of a complex diagram. By adopting the simple idea of Part and Whole, we can blend diagrams together and build a diagram network too.

You can find an example of Diagram Blending from D as Diagramming: Tripartness and Diagram Blending. See the diagram below.

The article introduces a meta-diagram: Tripartness. It is one of a set of meta-diagrams I designed in past years. The Tripartness meta-diagram can be expanded to a Diagram Network. Or, we can say that it is an outcome of a process of Diagram Blending.

Tripartness is a great example of Building A Diagram Network. However, it is not an ideal case of Diagram Blending.

The Expanded Creative Course Framework is an ideal case of Diagram Blending because it expands a basic model to a large model from its spatial structure.

The added four frameworks are attached from four directions. While the core model is a high-level framework, these four frameworks are located lower level since they function as practical applications.

I should emphasize that these connections are not fixed because we can attach other frameworks to the core model for different purposes.