Knowledge Engagement: The Spirit of Unification and Knowledge Curation
This is a short note
In a 1993 paper, the theoretical sociologist Thomas J. Fararo and his student John Skvoretz mentioned a term called “the Spirit of Unification”.
“…proliferation and unification are both essential processes in science. If only proliferation were to occur, a field would spawn endlessly branching discrete ideas and give rise to a sense of intellectual chaos. If only unification were to occur, a field would eventually arrive at a non-growth condition in which integration would have gone as far as it could with the given intellectual materials.
In real theoretical sciences, both processes occur together. But fields differ in their relative weight. In some sciences, despite proliferation, a sense of movement toward more and more comprehensive theory exists even as new problems and theories continue to be generated. In other sciences, despite occasional episodes of integration, the predominant tendency is to ever-increasing proliferation with insufficient integration. In Sociology, the latter is the case.
… The spirit of unification in its most general sense is a value commitment to activities that, while not theory-integrating episodes as such, are important to the creation of an intellectual situation that produces such episodes. This means that not only direct theory integration is valued, but so are other sorts of unifying intellectual activities is valued, but so are other sorts of unifying intellectual activities. Thus, we think that the spirit of unification can be embodied in at least four distinct modes of inquiry.”
The “Proliferation v.s. Unification” theme echoes the “Creativity v.s. Curativity” theme.
In the academic world, a Concept is a foundational object of a knowledge enterprise such as Theories and Frameworks. Scholars have to deal with the Conceptual Reality of a Concept. A significant aspect of academic creativity is developing a brand-new concept to change a discipline’s objects, directions, methods, etc.
The tendency to create Conceptual Reality leads to Conceptual Heterogeneity.
Conceptual Heterogeneity refers to different people using the same word to express different conceptual meanings. It leads to Knowledge Fragmentation inside one discipline. Also, it raises the cost of cross-boundary collaborative projects.
In 2019, I coined a term called “Curativity” and wrote a book (draft). It was used to discuss turning pieces into a meaningful whole. From June 2020 to Oct 2022, I worked on the Knowledge Curation Project (phase 1) which aims to connect THEORY and PRACTICE.
It seems that I share the same vision with Thomas J. Fararo and John Skvoretz. However, there are several differences between our approaches.
1. Strong Unification (Their “Integration”) v.s. Weak Unification (My “Curation”)
2. Their Four Models v.s. My Six levels
3. Theory Only (their purpose) v.s. the Theory-Practice connection (my purpose)
(7/30/2023)
