Grasping the Concept (book, v1, Introduction)

The Territory of Concepts and Concept Dynamics

In June 2023, I edited a book (draft) titled Thematic Exploration: The Early Discovery of Knowledge Engagement (v1) and introduced a model of EARLY DISCOVERY of the journey of knowledge engagement.

I consider Strategic Thematic Exploration and Conceptual Elaboration as two phases of EARLY DISCOVERY of the journey of knowledge Engagement. See the diagram below. The further phase is Continuous Objectification which aims to turn a concept system into real things.

I use “Strategic Thematic Exploration” to frame a creative space for exploring the strategic intent with the thematic analysis methods, especially for knowledge engagement.

Since a knowledge framework is formed by a set of concepts, I also use Spontaneous Concept System to refer to the early version of a knowledge framework.

On August 21, 2023, I made a possible theme called “The Territory of Concepts” which refers to the phase of Conceptual Elaboration.

From August 21 to Nov 26, I worked on the “Territory of Concepts” project. Now it is time to close Phase 1 of the project.

Moreover, it is time to close more projects about themes and concepts. Such as the “Concept Dynamics” project, the “Themes (Concept)” project, etc.

The outcome is a new book (draft) titled Grasping the Concept: The Territory of Concepts and Concept Dynamics.

The phrase “Grasping the Concept” was inspired by Andy Blunden who is the author of Concepts: A Critical Approach. In Nov 2020, we had a short thematic conversation about concepts via Gmail. He used “… grasped with two different concepts…” to review two different views of Activity Theory.

I realized that “Grasping the Concept” was the essential thing of the Concept-related practice.

That was a significant insight.

Now I want to use it to name a book.

Contents

1. The “Territory of Concepts” Project (2023)
2. The “Concept Dynamics” Project (2020)
3. The “Theme (Concept)” Project (2017–2023)
4. The “Social Cognition” Project (2022–2023)
5. The “Platform Genidentity” Project (2022–2023)
6. The “Slow Cognition” Project (2022–2023)
7. A Possible Book

Grasping the Concept (book, v1, Table of Contents)

1. The “Territory of Concepts” Project (2023)

The “Territory of Concepts” project is about Developing a Concept System in the phase of Conceptual Elaboration.

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 developers of a concept system, only can see this Subjective Reality and use it to help us elaborate the Spontaneous Concept System.

I wrote private notes about the project and put them in a doc on Coda. See the screenshot. For example, I wrote a Twitter thread about the theme of “Concepts” on August 29, 2023.

On August 29, Jeroen Coelen recommended a book titled The Big Book of Concepts within the tiny Twitter conversation.

Source: Twitter

I read the book and made some notes. See the diagram note below.

You can also find more details in this long article: Themes of Practice: Concept, Activity, and Cognition.

What did I read The Big Book of Concepts and made the above note?

In the phase of Conceptual Elaboration, there are three critical challenges.

• Internal Integration: curate our pieces of ideas into a meaningful conceptual framework or concept system, understand the Part — Whole relationship
• External Alignment: compare our ideas with other ideas, understand the Collaboration — Competition relationship
• Cultural Projection: match our ideas with cultural needs, understand the Means-End relationship

My approach to “Concepts” and “Cognition” was inspired by Ecological Psychology, Activity Theory, and Lui’s Theoretical Sociology. The “Territory of Concepts” project started with the creative dialogue between three approaches. This refers to the Internal Integration challenge of my project on Themes and Concepts.

The Big Book of Concepts is about the perspective of Cognitive Psychology. So, my action of reading the book is related to the External Alignment challenge of my project on Themes and Concepts.

How about the Cultural Projection challenge?

From Sept 9, 2023, to Nov 20, 2023, I worked on a case study about the concept of “Mindset” in the field of psychological knowledge engagement. A by-product of the case study is the “Grasping the Concept” model. See the diagram below.

The above diagram highlights four types of thematic spaces which refer to four sociocultural areas.

• Theoretical Psychologists — The THEORY thematic space
• Empirical Psychologists — The END thematic space
• Intervenors — The MEANS thematic space
• Actors — The PRACTICE thematic space

This is an answer to the Cultural Projection challenge.

In a given field such as psychological knowledge engagement, there are four major sociocultural areas. Each area has its own logic of the Means-End relationship.

• Theoretical Development -> Setting the Term
• Empirical Research -> Bounding the Case
• Intervention and Curation -> Capturing the Theme
• Life Reflection -> Weaving the Mind

In general, all three challenges are related to a deep issue: the Mindset — Meaning relationship.

So, we need to pay attention to our notes about the following issues in the phase of Conceptual Elaboration

• The Part — Whole relationship
• The Collaboration — Competition relationship
• The Means — End relationship
• The Mindset — Meaning relationship

After Early Discovery, what should we do?

I roughly used “Continuous Objectification” to describe the stage after Early Discovery.

2. The “Concept Dynamics” Project (2020)

The Concept Dynamics Project is about understanding a single knowledge concept from three perspectives: Linguistic Reality, Conceptual Reality, and Ecological Reality.

I started the project in 2020 after closing a project called Affordance Analysis.

From 2014 to 2017, I often read academic papers about the concept of Affordance. In the beginning, I read papers in the field of ecological psychology. Then, Cognitive Science, Creativity Research, Design, HCI, Social Media, Information Systems, etc.

This experience inspired me to plan the Conceptual Analysis part of the Affordance Analysis project. I made several diagrams to visualize my thoughts.

I also conducted a genetic analysis of the development of the “Affordance” Concept Ecology. See the diagram below.

I found there are six moments of the development process:

• Perceive: A person perceives a brand new reality in the real-life world and discovers its theoretical value.
• Primary Conceptualize: The person conceptualizes his insights and develops a brand new theoretical concept.
• Secondary Conceptualize: The original theoretical concept is adopted and modified by others. This moment generates first-order variation and second-hand concepts.
• Tertiary Conceptualize: A second-hand concept is adopted and modified by others without returning to the original theoretical concept. This moment generates second-order variation and third-hand concepts.
• Meta Conceptualize: This moment is about reflecting and reviewing the developmental process of a concept ecology.
• Deconstruct: People use the word part of the concept without deeply considering its theoretical meaning and value. An awesome theoretical concept became a buzzword.

This model is pretty interesting because it clearly describes the source of the complexity of a concept ecology. It also points out a possible solution to solve the problem of knowledge overload.

The above case study led to the Concept Dynamic framework. See the diagram below.

If you pay attention to the diagram about the concept of Affordance, you will find the following terms:

• Ecological Reality: Personal Knowledge
• Conceptual Reality: Public Knowledge
• Linguistic Reality: Ordinary Language

Originally, I used these terms to define different zones of Concept Ecology. Later, I realized that it could be used to develop a new framework. The above case study is only about the “Affordance” concept ecology. There are many ways to create new concepts. Not all theoretical concepts start from the Ecological Reality.

Eventually, I developed a non-linear model of concept creation. I called it Concept Dynamics.

The Concept Dynamics Framework emphasizes that every theoretical concept has three basic aspects: ecological reality, conceptual reality, and linguistic reality.

• Ecological Reality refers to the real experience of discovery in the real world from the perspective of researchers.
• Conceptual Reality refers to the outcome of the creative conceptualization process.
• Linguistic Reality refers to expressional form with verbal and rhetorical effects.

After learning Affordance Theory, I realized that the Gap between Theory and Practice is the “Ecological Reality”. Many theoretical concepts are great in Conceptual Reality and Linguistic Reality, but they fail in the test of “Ecological Reality”.

Why?

Because it’s easy to create new knowledge concepts by only working on Conceptual Reality and Linguistic Reality with some creative heuristic tools. Then, we share these new concepts by writing articles or publishing academic papers without testing their Ecological Reality.

It’s hard to test new concepts in the real-life world because it costs time and energy.

In order to emphasize the relevance of “Ecological Reality” for concept creation, I used the slogan “I See It” to describe this notion. I even designed a visual identity for the notion and the Concept Dynamics framework.

The above is the symbol of the Concept Dynamics Project. One circle means a concept as a whole while three lines mean the above three aspects.

The above is the logotype of the Concept Dynamics Project. It reuses the three-line visual idea.

You can find more details in Knowledge Discovery: The Concept Dynamics Framework.

3. The “Theme (Concept)” Project (2017–2023)

On June 20, 2023, I introduced the theme of Theme (Concept) in a post titled TALE: A Possible Theme called “Context (Mind)”. Theme (Concept) is an application of the notion of Container (Containee) which is the core idea of the Ecological Practice approach.

The Ecological Practice approach is inspired by Ecological Psychology, Activity Theory, and social practice theories. It considers Experiences, Actions, and Social Context.

I have been working on the theme of “Themes” for many years. My vision behind the journey is to build an Ecological Approach to Concept Science. This is an ambitious project!

You can find more details in A Journey of Engaging with the Theme of “Themes” (2017–2023).

The pictures below represent two significant movements of the journey.

In 2019, I developed the idea of “Themes of Practice” in order to discuss the “meaning” of the meaningful whole for my book Curativity: The Ecological Approach to Curatorial Practice. I realized the notion of “Theme” is a great tool for curating experiences and actions.

As an application of Curativity Theory, the above General Curation Framework represents the structure and dynamics of curatorial practice. The activity of curatorial practice aims to collect pieces of things into a meaningful whole in order to present a theme to a group of audience. There are three immanent contradictions within the activity of curating: “pieces — whole”, “things — themes” and “curator — audience”. For the first dichotomy, I use the concept of “Container” to balance the pieces and whole. For the last dichotomy, I use the notion of “Everyone A Curator” to deconstruct the concept of “Curator” because I want to claim that the activity of curating is a general social practice.

The dichotomy of “things — themes” refers to two classical great debates of social science: “mind—matter” and “individual — collective”. After reviewing the concept of “theme” in various disciplines such as Cultural Anthropology, Counseling Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, and the Philosophy of Science, I developed a new concept “Themes of Practice” to propose a process view of “Theme”.

Anthropologist Morris Opler (1945) developed a theoretical “theme” for studying culture. Career counseling therapists and psychologists also developed a theoretical concept called “life theme.” If we put cultural themes and life themes together, we see a “great debate” of social science: “individual — collective.” The above diagram visualizes the “concept network” or “idea ecology” of “Themes of Practice”.

I consider the notion of “Themes of Practice” as a “process” type of concept, not a “substance” type of concept. Thus, it is not a new category of themes, but a transformational process between individual life themes and collective culture themes. It refers to both concept and action. It connects mind and practice. It indicates the transformation of both a person and society.

After reading Blunden’s book Concepts: A Critical Approach which presents a “Hegel-Marx-Vygotsky” account of “Concept”, I realized this is an essential theoretical resource that can support my idea of “Themes of Practice”. According to Blunden, “Dualism has been around for a long time, and not only in the form of mind/matter dualism. One of the most persistent and debilitating forms of dualism today is the dualism of the individual and society, supported by sciences devoted exclusively to one or the other domain. Since concepts are units both of cultural formations and individuals minds, a theory of concepts confronts this head on…The development of the human sciences along two parallel paths, one concerned with human consciousness, the other concerned with social and political phenomena, can only serve to place barriers in front of people’s efforts to intervene in the affairs determining their own life. By understanding concepts as units of both consciousness and the social formation, I aim to create a counter to this disempowering dogma.” (2012, p.9)

Blunden’s argument on Concept echoes my consideration of the concept of Theme. Since Theme is a particular concept, I can adopt Blunden’s proposal — the “Hegel-Marx-Vygotsky” account of “Concept” — as a theoretical foundation to support the concept of “Themes of Practice”. Furthermore, I can also adopt the Project-oriented Activity Theory to upgrade the General Curation Framework to the Cultural Curation Framework.

Each curation program can be considered as a Project. Each “Theme of Practice” of a curation program can be considered as a Concept of a Project. Thus, the whole process of a curation program can be considered as “Initialization”, “Objectification” and “Institutionalization” of a “Theme of Practice”.

You can find more details in Activity U (VIII): Project as a Unit of Activity.

In 2022, I developed the concept of “Thematic Space” which led to a new stage of the development of my ideas on themes and concepts.

What does Thematic Space mean?

I used the term to refer to a large cognitive space around a particular theme for a particular person. You can find more details in The Development of the Concept of “Thematic Spaces”.

On May 11, 2023, I applied Container Thinking to discuss the relationship between “Theme” and “Concept” for the “Strategic Thematic Exploration” project.

For the Strategic Thematic Exploration framework, I made a distinction between “Theme” and “Concept”. While “Theme” emphasizes subjective experience and understanding, “Concept” is more about objective meaning and definition.

The Thematic Engagement project aims to explore the “Person — Theme” relationship and interaction. The Thematic Engagement approach is supported by the “Themes of Practice’” approach and the “Project Engagement” approach.

We don’t only consider the semantic relationship between themes, but also the genetic relationship between them. While the semantic relationship is associated with the part of “themes”, the genetic relationship is associated with the part of “practice” which means the real historical development of projects.

Thematic Engagement is both subjective and objective, the “Loose coupling” model is a typical configuration of a theme network. In this way, we can have the necessary degree of flex between the semantic relationship and the genetic relationship.

On Sept 21, 2023, I used the Universal Reference diagram to make a diagram about the landscape of “Theme (Concept)”.

The above diagram presents different perspectives of four kinds of actors.

There are two types of Researchers, they hold two views of concepts:

• Concept-as-Object
• Concept-as-Process

While “Concept-as-Object” is associated with the “Analysis” perspective and Properties of Category, “Concept-as-Process” refers to the “Synthesis” perspective and Formation of Concept.

There are two types of Actors, and they hold two views of themes:

• Creative Themes
• Situational Themes

These two views of Themes set the foundation of two views of Concepts.

The four types of actors and four types of terms form a matrix of meaning. See the diagram below.

You can find more details in Themes of Practice: Concept, Activity, and Cognition.

I also applied the same method to discuss the concept of Mindset. You can find more details in Knowledge Engagement: The Concept of Mindset and Theoretical Integration.

4. The “Social Cognition” Project (2022 — 2023)

I didn’t use the term “Social Cognition” for my projects in 2022.

In 2022, I connected the Project-centered Approach and the concept of “Thematic Space” together. See the diagram below.

Life = Project = Thematic Space

While Life is a chain of projects, it can be understood as a journey of moving between various thematic spaces.

Each project has its primary themes and other secondary themes. By joining projects and leaving projects, we are practicing our significant Life Themes. Thus, these projects are Thematic Spaces too.

This significant insight led to a brand new social theory: Life, History, and Multiverse.

While Life is the outcome of the diachronic unfolding of the chain of projects, history is the outcome of the diachronic unfolding of the chain of events.

You can find more details in Project Engagement (v2): Life, History, and Multiverse.

In Sept 2023, I officially used the term “Social Cognition” in my article Themes of Practice: Concept, Activity, and Cognition which is about the diagram below.

Activity Theorist Clay Spinuzzi once suggested “social cognitive” as a direction for the future of activity theory.

Andy Blunden’s approach to Activity Theory and Concept Theory has offered us a great solution. Activity and Concept are two major aspects of social life and social cognition.

From the perspective of the Ecological Practice Approach, I’d like to work in this direction with the above ideas and the concept of “Thematic Space”.

In July 2022, I wrote a thesis titled Project Engagement: Life, History, and Multiverse. Part 5 of the thesis is the outcome of re-learning Activity Theory. I discovered the following pairs of keywords for discussions:

• Concepts and Themes
• Project and Platform
• Culture and History
• Context and Settings

Finally, I made a “meta-framework” for the Project Engagement approach (v2.0). See the picture below.

The meta-framework is formed with two sets of keywords:

• Activity, Concept, Culture: this set of keywords is discovered from Andy Blunden’s approach.
• Actor, Settings, Society: this set of keywords is discovered from the Project Engagement approach.

This meta-framework considers Thematic Spaces as the primary concept. It also has a slogan:

Life = Projects = Thematic Spaces = Events = History

Moreover, this new approach emphasizes “Moving between Thematic Spaces”, not the definition of Thematic Spaces. If we apply this idea to discuss Social Cognition, we can see two types of moves:

• Mental Moves
• Social Moves

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.

Affordance means potential action opportunities offered by environments. I want to highlight the meaning and value of actual action itself, however, the term Affordance only refers to potential actions. Thus, I coined the term Attachance to emphasize the potential opportunities offered by actual actions, especially the attaching act and the detaching act.

In July 2023, I finished the “Mental Moves” knowledge project and edited a possible book titled Mental Moves: The Attachance Approach to Ecological Creative Cognition.

The “Social Moves” knowledge project used “Social Territory” as the primary concept.

If we put “Mental Moves” and “Social Moves” together, we see a new unit of analysis of Social Cognition. While “Social Moves” are about Social Actions, “Mental Moves” are about related Mental Activities.

Social Cognition = Social Moves (Mental Moves)

In Sept 2023, I made the first case study of Social Moves.

I use a Psychological Counseling Platform as an example to run the case study. There are seven key roles in the platform:

• Influencee
• Supporter
• Founder
• Supervisor
• Counselor
• Client
• Follower

Each Circle refers to an “Activity Circle” which refers to the social structure of “Self, Other, Thing, Think”.

The four types of activities indicate four types of “Activity Circle”.

• Clan
• Hierarchy
• Market
• Network

People’s social life can be understood as moving between different types of “Activity Circles”.

You can find more details in A possible theme called “Social Moves” and From “ARCH” to “Activity Circle”.

In Sept 2023, I made the second case study of Social Moves by reviewing the developmental psychologist Robert Kegan’s knowledge enterprise.

Kegan switched between four roles and moved between four different types of thematic spaces of psychological knowledge engagement.

• Theoretical Psychologists — The THEORY thematic space
• Empirical Psychologists — The END thematic space
• Intervenors — The MEANS thematic space
• Actors — The PRACTICE thematic space

These four types of knowledge creators have different perspectives and behavioral patterns because they have different construal levels, practical interests, points of observation, methodological preferences, and expressive conventions (or language habits).

Since the four thematic spaces correspond to four types of roles, moving between these thematic spaces means moving between four social spaces.

This is a perfect example of Social Moves (Mental Moves).

You can find more details in Psychological Knowledge Engagement and Robert Kegan’s Knowledge Enterprise.

5. The “Platform Genidentity” Project (2022–2023)

The Platform Genidentity project is a sub-project of the Platform Ecology project.

I started the Platform Ecology project in 2019. The major outcome of the project is a book (draft) titled Platform for Development: The Ecology of Adult Development in the 21st Century (2021).

In 2022, I developed the Platform Genidentity Framework and moved to test a related concept called “Knowledge Center”.

I used the diagram below to represent a rough idea of the “Platform Genidentity” framework.

What’s Platform Genidentity? I use the concept of Platform Genidentity to describe a process of keeping the uniqueness of a platform within a long-term duration. For example, Google.com (a Search Engine), Wikipedia.org, and YouTube.com, these three websites keep their original core design without major changes.

In order to understand the complexity of Platform Genidentity, I developed the following two new concepts:

• Platform Core: a basic unit of a platform. For example, a Tweet, a YouTube video page, a Q&A page on Quora, etc.
• Platform-ba: a platform-based sociocultural field. For example, YouTube-ba is a YouTube-based sociocultural space. You can find more details here.

As mentioned above, we have an operational definition of the concept of Genidentity: A thing’s Genidentity is defined by Essential Differences with Situated Dynamics.

For Platform Ecology, we need to discover the sources of Essential Differences and Situated Dynamics. I think the sources are Platform Core and Platform-ba. However, they don’t work as a one-to-one mapping relationship. See the above diagram.

In the past several months, I worked on a strategic design research project about a web 3.0 platform. A by-product of the project is the idea of “Spontaneous Concept System”.

d I pay attention to two fields: Knowledge Engagement and Product Engagement. Both two fields share the same pattern of developing a concept system. However, they have different complexities in the stage of Continuous Objectification.

For a theorist, the Objectification of Concepts is very simple. He/she only needs to write a book! However, for a startup founder, the Objectification of Concepts is quite complicated because he/she needs to build a team and make a real product or a service.

On March 2, 2023, I edited a book (draft) titled Perspectives on Product Engagement (v1.0).

So I will use the field of Product Engagement as the context of Continuous Objectification. Based on this setting, I made a model called “Evolving Concept System”. See the diagram below.

I used “Spontaneous Concept System/Defined Concept System/Scientific Concept System” to explain three parts of an Evolving Concept System.

• Mental Platform: How do you think?
• Behavioral Network: How do you do?
• Material Container: What do you make?

It means the process of Developing A Concept System is not only about thinking, but also about doing, saying, and making.

Let’s start with “Mental Platform”:

• Theory as Platform: an established academic theory is a Scientific Concept System. A founder learns some ideas from a Scientific Concept System, or from many theories. In this stage, an academic theory is perceived as a developmental platform that supports his/her lifelong learning and cognitive development.
• Mental Platform: Finally, he/she curates ideas into a meaningful whole and develops his/her own Spontaneous Concept System about a particular possible product. Since his/her goal is to build a successful innovative product, the Spontaneous Concept System could be understood as a Mental Platform that supports his/her activities.

The founder may directly move to build a product that can be understood as a Material Container of a Concept System. In this stage, I adopted the Product Langue framework from the Product Engagement approach.

If a product is complicated, the founder needs to build a team. In this situation, we see the third part of the model: Behavioral Network.

• Beliefs and Values
• Culture

I use the term “Behavioral Network” to refer to a set of actions of a group of people. In order to turn pieces of actions into a meaningful whole, we need the alignment of beliefs and values. Furthermore, we need to see the alignment between commitment and actual behavior. I use “Culture” to refer to “Team Culture” which is the Objectification of Beliefs and Values.

• Beliefs and Values: Defined Concept System, designed by the founder and team members
• Culture (Team Culture): Spontaneous Concept System, acting by each team member

A founder’s “Mental Platform” is about his/her personal knowledge, beliefs, and values. It can be seen as a combination of several concept systems. In order to simplify the discussion, we can only use two concept systems, one is related to “Material Container” and the other one is related to “Behavioral Network”.

The Evolving Concept System is a process of Continuous Objectification, a dynamic Supportive Collaborative Project.

The development of “Behavioral Network” is a collaborative project between the Founder and team members.

The development of “Material Container” is a collaborative project between the Founder/Team and Users.

Moreover, the development of “Mental Platform” is related to the development of “Material Container” and “Behavioral Network”.

You can find more details in Situational Note-taking: Mental Platform as Evolving Concept System.

I think the model of “Evolving Concept System” could be used to support the Platform Genidentity framework.

6. The “Slow Cognition” Project (2022–2023)

How did I study abstract ideas such as Concepts, Themes of Practice, and Thematic Space?

I used the “Slow Cognition” method.

From Jan 2022 to May 2022, I worked on the Slow Cognition project that aims to explore the historical-cognitive approach and the long-term development of thoughts. I used two strategies to conduct the project:

• 1) I use my own real-life experience as data for the historical-cognitive analysis. From Jan 2022 to May 2022, I recorded ideas of my thoughts and wrote many articles on Medium. These records and articles represent the long-term development of my thoughts.
• 2) I use Donald Schön’s Reflective approach to reflect on the development of my thoughts within these months.

The primary project in these months is the Thematic Space project. Originally, I used the term “Thematic Space” to name an item for the Knowledge Curation model and canvas. Later, I developed a canvas for the concept of “Thematic Space”. This led to a series of canvases and a series of activities. You can find more details about the book here.

My original intention behind the Slow Cognition project is to adopt Howard E. Gruber’s approach and method to studying creative work. While Phase I of the Slow Cognition project focuses on Instruments (the Thematic Space Canvas, etc), Phase II returns to its original focus: Methods (the Historical-cognitive approach, etc).

From the perspective of Methods, I consider Phase II of the project as a dialogue between Howard E. Gruber’s Evolving Systems Approach and Activity Theory.

The concept of “Mediated Action” refers to Lev Vygotsky’s idea about human psychological development. Vygotsky claimed that human action and psychological functions are mediated by tools which refer to technical tools that work on objects and psychological tools that mediate the mind and environment. This concept is the foundation of Activity Theory and CHAT (Cultural-historical activity theory) in general.

The Developmental Work Research (DWR) methodology was developed by Yrjö Engeström who is the author of Learning by Expanding: An Activity-Theoretical Approach to Developmental Research (1987). The DWR is based on the Activity System model and the model of Expansive Learning.

The concept of “Networks of Enterprise” refers to Howard E. Gruber’s Evolving Systems Approach. Gruber’s approach uses “Task — Project — Enterprise — Network of Enterprise” as a structure to understand a creative person’s work.

The concept of “Networks of Enterprise” refers to the pattern of work in the life of a creative individual. Gruber said, “We use the term enterprise to stand for a group of related projects and activities broadly enough defined so that (1) the enterprise may continue when the creative person finds one path blocked but another open toward the same goal and (2) when success is achieved the enterprise does not come to an end but generates new tasks and projects that continue it.” (1989, p.11)

Since Gruber’s approach focuses on creative people and their work, we can use “Creative Work Study” to describe the application of the approach.

The Slow Cognition Method is also inspired by the following ideas:

• The Historical-cognitive method (HC)
• The Cultural-historical method (CH)
• Experience Sampling Method (ESM)
• Project Engagement method (PE)

The Historical-cognitive method combines historical research and cognitive research together. This method was developed by Gruber.

• Also, Nancy J. Nersessian used “A Cognitive-Historical Approach” to name her approach to Creativity in Conceptual Change.

The Cultural-historical method refers to Activity Theorists’ methodology in general. We should notice the newest development of Activity Theory is CHAT which stands for Cultural-historical activity theory.

The Experience Sampling Method (ESM) is also called the Daily Diary Method, or ecological momentary assessment (EMA). It asks participants to report on their thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and/or environment on multiple occasions over time. The experience sampling method was developed by Larson and Csikszentmihalyi.

The Project Engagement method is called Cultural Projection Analysis which is inspired by Activity Theory and Ecological Psychology. You can find more details in Activity U (X): Projecting, Projectivity, and Cultural Projection.

I collected stories and examples for the Slow Cognition project. Some examples are my own stories of developing a theoretical concept. For example:

• [Slow Cognition] The Development of the concept of “Thematic Spaces”
• The Concept of Attachance (A list of articles)
• [Archive] The Supportance of Platform (Oct 27, 2020)
• The Concept of Supportance
• A Possible Theme called “Knowledge Center”
• A Possible Discipline called “Platform Ecology”
• Situational Note-taking: The idea of “Meaning Matrix”
• Lifesystem: Modeling Ice Skating and Other Social Practices

These articles offer us real examples of grasping the concept!

7. A Possible Book

The above sections summarize several projects about concepts and themes. Now it’s time to collect related articles and edit a possible book in order to close these projects.

As discussed above, there is no single theory or framework for these ideas. What you will see is a dynamic network of knowledge frameworks. In order words, this is an evolving concept system.

I’d like to use this book to present an evolving concept system about evolving concept systems.

The book is divided into six parts corresponding to the above six projects.

Part 1: Territory of Concepts

Part 1 offers the background of the “Territory of Concepts” project.

In this part, I introduce the Landscape of “Theme (Concept)” as a primary model of the ecological approach to concept science.

Following the model, I present a case study about the concept of “Mindset” in the field of psychological knowledge engagement.

Based on the case study about “Mindset”, I use the Four Types of Thematic Spaces of Knowledge Discovery Canvas to define the “Territory” of Concepts of Knowledge Engagement.

Part 2: Concept Dynamics

Part 2 presents the Affordance Analysis project and its primary outcome: the Concept Dynamics Framework.

Some articles about the Concept Dynamics framework are collected in this part too.

Part 3: Theme (Concept)

Part 3 reviews the historical development of the ecological approach to concept science and the interdisciplinary study of themes. It covers the following theoretical approaches:

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

The notion of “Theme(Concept)” connects Themes and Concepts. Based on this notion, we can apply the Landscape of “Theme (Concept)” to some concepts and themes. For example:

• Life (Self)
• Context (Mind)
• Project (Activity)
• Platformba(Platform)
• Proximal Mind (Proximal Mind)
• Social Moves (Mental Moves)
• Value Circle (Value Chain)

Part 4: Social Cognition

Part 4 focuses on the development of the concept of “Thematic Space”.

I also pay attention to a related notion: Social Cognition = Social Moves (Mental Moves).

Part 5: Platform Genidentity

Part 5 moves to discussing the evolving concept system in the field of platform ecology.

In this part, we can see the development of the Platform Genidentity framework and its newest version: The Landscape of Evolving Concept System.

The new model uses “Spontaneous Concept System/Defined Concept System/Scientific Concept System” to explain three parts of an Evolving Concept System.

Part 6: Slow Cognition

In the past several years, I developed several theoretical concepts for my knowledge frameworks.

Part 6 collects some articles about the development of these concepts.

Related books (Drafts)

• Creative Life Theory: Building A Knowledge Enterprise
• Thematic Exploration: The Early Discovery of Knowledge Engagement (book, v1)
• Mental Moves: The Attachance Approach to Ecological Creative Cognition
• Knowledge Discovery: Developing Tacit Knowledge with Thematic Space Canvas
• Knowledge Curation: Turning Pieces into A Meaningful Whole
• Life Discovery: Biography, Journey, Program
• Perspectives on Product Engagement
• Diagramming as Practice
• Diagram Blending: Building Diagram Networks
• Creative Life Curation: Discover Thematic Spaces of Creative Life