The Foolish Explorer: A Trilogy about “Discovery”

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Curativity Center

14 min readJan 30, 2024

Life Discovery, Knowledge Discovery, and Meaning Discovery

From Jan 18, 2024, to Jan 26, 2024, I wrote a series of posts and edited two possible books: Meaning Discovery and Situational Note-taking.

Jan 18, 2024 — TALE: Thematic Triangles and Life Discovery +
Jan 19, 2024 — The Meaning Discovery Model (v1, 2024)
Jan 23, 2024 — Meaning Discovery (book, v1, 2024)
Jan 24, 2024 — Situational Note-taking (book, v1, 2024)
Jan 25, 2024 — A Tree of Thoughts (Oliver Ding, v2, Jan 25, 2024)
Jan 26, 2024 — The Foolish Explorer: A Trilogy for “Discovery”

This marks a great milestone in my creative journey! Meaning Discovery follows Knowledge Discovery: Developing Tacit Knowledge with Thematic Space Canvas (May 2022) and Life Discovery: The Life-as-Project Approach (July 2022). Together, they form a trilogy.

A Trilogy for “Discovery”

The trilogy shares a set of ideas in mind, life, activity, and discovery.

According to the Merriam-webster dictionary, the word Discover has two meanings: 1) to make known or visible; 2) to obtain sight or knowledge of for the first time.

The trilogy sees “Knowledge Discovery”, “Life Discovery”, and “Meaning Discovery” as three types of Second-order Activity.

Knowledge Discovery Activity
Life Discovery Activity
Meaning Discovery Activity

Second-order Activity is a core concept of the Anticipatory Activity System (AAS) framework which is inspired by Anticipatory Systems Theory, Activity Theory, and other theoretical resources.

A primary pair of concepts of AAS are First-order Activity and Second-order Activity. While First-order Activity refers to goal-directed Activity, Second-order Activity refers to discovering a goal for First-order Activity. You can find more details in A Typology for Anticipatory Activity System.

From the perspective of AAS, all three types of Discovery Activity lead to Significant Insights which lead to further development. See the Meaning Discovery Model below.

The above model shows six focuses within a 3*2 conceptual context:

Capture the Insight
Weaving the Mind
Clarifying the Order
Running the Project
Grasping the Concept
Perceiving the Setting

A 3*2 conceptual framework also frames the model:

The “Meaning — Experience” Transformation
The “Knowledge — Activity — Environment” Hierarchy

More details are in The Meaning Discovery Model (v1, 2024).

Discovery as Second-order Activity

The Anticipatory Activity System (AAS) framework is inspired by Activity Theory, Anticipatory System theory, Relevance theory, and other theoretical resources. The framework is about modeling a specific structure: “Self, Other, Present, Future”.

An Anticipatory Activity System is formed by two parts: First-order Activity and Second-order Activity.

From the perspective of AAS, there are two types of activities in the journey of Knowledge Discovery:

First-order Activity: Knowledge Performance Activity
Second-order Activity: Knowledge Discovery Activity

Knowledge Discovery Activity is about developing Tacit Knowledge, discovering possible themes, developing concept systems, etc. It is more about Subjectification.

Knowledge Performance Activity is about making solid things of knowledge such as writing an academic paper, publishing a book, making a speech, developing software, etc. It is more about Objectification.

The pair of “Discovery — Performance” concepts can be applied to the Life Discovery Activity and the Meaning Discovery Activity.

First-order Activity: Life Performance Activity
Second-order Activity: Life Discovery Activity

Life Performance Activity refers to normal work and everyday routines such as Daily Commute, Grocery Shopping, Birthday Party, Annual Performance Review, etc.

Life Discovery Activity refers to Reflect on Life's Meaning, Life Transitions, Life Strategic Exploration, Self Awareness, Transformational Learning, etc.

Meaning Discovery Activity
Meaning Performance Activity

I didn’t directly use the term “Meaning Performance Activity” in the Meaning Discovery Model. However, you can find the term “Running the Project” which echoes “Meaning Performance Activity”.

From the perspective of the AAS, the most important thing is not the distinction between First-order Activity and Second-order Activity, but the connection between the two types of Activities because they form a meaningful system.

The outcome of Second-order Activity is Significant Insights that lead to Objects and Objects that define further First-Order Activity. The outcome of the First-order Activity is Significant Achievements that lead to Results and Rewards that support Second-order Activity.

The Foolish Explorer

The distinction between First-order Activity and Second-order Activity also echoes the pair of “Exploit — Explore” concepts which is inspired by James G. March’s “Exploitation and Exploration”. You can read the following piece to get some ideas.

In an echo of more general theories of adaptation, theories of the adaptation of a scholarly field describe a process involving struggles between a core establishment committed to a relatively coherent conception of truth and various peripheral challenges to that conception. The struggles reflect a necessary tension between the developments, refinement, and exploitation of existing knowledge and methods and the exploration of possible new directions. A hallmark of effective knowledge refinement and exploitation is a tight network among researchers. Such networks thrive on easy communication, and communication thrives on unified understandings. Consensus on the fundamentals is essential. Exploration, on the other hand, involves the examination of numerous possibilities, many of them dubious. It thrives on diversity and deviance. Because the efficiencies of coherence are useful immediately, they dominate local adaptive processes of learning. However, they are invitations to long-run stagnation. With exploratory diversity, disciplines, cultures, and languages turn in upon themselves. Thus, the emphasis in adaptive theory on maintaining a mix of both exploitation and exploration. (Explorations in Organizations, James G. March, 2008, p.329)

There is no theory for finding the optimum balance. It all depends on practical situations. According to James March,

“It is clear that a strategy of exploitation without exploration is a route to obsolescence. It is equally clear that a strategy of exploration without exploitation is a route to elimination. But it is not clear where the optimum lies between those two extremes. The problem is partly one ignorance about the distribution of costs and benefits, but it is only partly that. A deeper problem is that specifying the optimum requires comparing costs and returns across time and space. An exploitation/exploration balance that is good in the short run is likely not to be good in the long run. And a balance that is good for the individual actor is likely not to be good in the long run for the community of actors. Thus, although we cannot specify the optimum balance, we know that that optimum depends on the time and space perspective taken. More specifically, the longer the time horizon and the broader the space horizon, in general, the more the optimum moves toward exploration.” (Explorations in Organizations, 2008, p.109)

In 1971, March published an essay titled “The Technology of Foolishness” in Civiokonomen, a journal published by the Association of Danish Business School Graduates. He identified three significant ideas of the mainstream view on intelligence and theories of choice in the 1960s:

Pre-existence of purpose
Necessity of consistency
Primary of rationality

March pointed out that there are two kinds of theories of choice behavior in human beings: the theory of children and the theory of adults.

In fact, the conscious introduction of goal discovery as a consideration in theories of human choice is not unknown to modern man. For example, we have two kinds of theories of choice behavior in human beings. One is a theory of children. The other is a theory of adults. In the theory of childhood, we emphasize choices as leading to experiences that develop the child’s scope, his complexity, his awareness of the world. As parents or psychologists, we try to lead the child to do things that are inconsistent with his present goals because we know (or believe) that he can only develop into an interesting person by coming to appreciate aspects of experience that he initially rejects.
In the theory of adulthood, we emphasize choices as a consequence of our intentions. As adults, or economists, we try to take actions that (within the limits of scarce resources) come as close as possible to achieving our goals. We try to find improved ways of making decisions consistent with our perceptions of what is valuable in the world.
…
In my judgment, the asymmetry between models of choice for adults and models of choice for children is awkward; but the solution we have adopted is precisely wrong-headed. Instead of trying to adapt the model of adults to children, we might better adapt the model of children to adults. For many purposes, our model of children is better. Of course, children know what they want. Everyone does. The critical question is whether they are encouraged to develop more interesting “wants”. Values change. People become more interesting as those values and the interconnections made among them change.
One of the most obvious things in the world turns out to be hard for us to accommodate in our theory of choice: A child of two will almost always have a less interesting set of values (yes, indeed, a worse set of values) than a child of twelve. The same is true of adults. Values develop through experience. Although one of the main natural arenas for the modification of human values is the area of choices, our theories of adult and organizational decision-making ignore the phenomenon entirely.
… The main point here, however, is not to … Rather it is to examine how we might improve the quality of what behavior, how we might aid the development of interesting goals.
…
Interesting people and interesting organizations construct complicated theories of themselves. In order to do this, they need to supplement the technology of reason with a technology of foolishness. Individuals and organizations need ways of doing things for which they have no good reason. Not always. Not usually. But sometimes. They need to act before they think.
Source: James G. March (1971)

In the essay, March associated the term “Technology of Foolishness” with the “Interesting Value System”. We can also find a related piece from a 2006 interview:

You’ve written about the importance of a “technology of foolishness.” Could you tell us a little about it?
That paper sometimes gets cited — by people who haven’t read it closely — as generic enthusiasm for silliness. Well, maybe it is, but the paper actually focused on a much narrower argument. It had to do with how you make [an] interesting value system. It seemed to me that one of the important things for any person interested in understanding or improving behavior was to know where preferences come from rather than simply to take them as given.

Where did your preferences come from? Do you change your default browser?

What’s an interest value system? March shared an example in the interview:

So, for example, I used to ask students to explain the factual anomaly that there are more interesting women than interesting men in the world. They were not allowed to question the fact. The key notion was a developmental one: When a woman is born, she’s usually a girl, and girls are told that because they are girls they can do things for no good reason. They can be unpredictable, inconsistent, [and] illogical. But then a girl goes to school, and she’s told she is an educated person. Because she’s an educated person, a woman must do things consistently, analytically, and so on. So she goes through life doing things for no good reason and then figuring out the reasons, and in the process, she develops a very complicated value system — one that adopts very much to context. It’s such a value system that permitted a woman who was once sitting in a meeting I was chairing to look at the men and say, “As nearly as I can tell, your assumptions are correct. And as nearly as I can tell, your conclusions follow from the assumptions. But your conclusions are wrong.” And she was right. Men, though, are usually boys at birth. They are taught that, as boys, they are straightforward, consistent, and analytic. They go to school and are told they’re straightforward, consistent, and analytic. So men go through life being straightforward, consistent, and analytics — with the goals of a two-year-old.
And that’s why men are both less interesting and more predictable than women. They do not combine their analysis with foolishness. (Explorations in Organizations, 2008, p.17, onlinve version)

Inspired by March’s ideas, I used “The Foolish Explorer” to name the trilogy about “Discovery” and associate it with “Subjectification” and “Slow Cognition”.

I used the term “Subjectification” in the Creative Life Curation framework. It refers to “turning the world into a person’s experience”.

In contrast, the term “Objectification” refers to “turning the person’s experience into artifacts for the world”.

Subjectification

Experience 1: turning the world into a person’s experience.
This echoes Second-order Activity.

Objectification

Experience 2: turning the person’s experience into artifacts for the world.
This echoes First-order Activity.

These terms link to the General Curation Framework. See the above diagram.

As an application of Curativity Theory, the above General Curation Framework represents the structure and dynamics of general curation practice. The activity of general curation aims to collect pieces of things into a meaningful whole to present a theme to a group audience.

I use Experience 1 to refer to turning the world into a person’s experience. For Life Curation Activity, this means Collecting pieces of life experiences.

Experience 2 refers to turning the person’s experience into artifacts for the world. For the Life Curation Activity, this means Presenting a new meaningful whole to a group audience.

Subjectification (Experience 1) is more about a person’s meaning-making and the development of tacit knowledge, Objectification (Experience 2) is more about sharing ideas with others by making concrete artifacts.

The key to the transformation between Experience 1 and Experience 2 is Crystallize Thematically which refers to the process of discovering a match between individual life themes and collective cultural themes.

“The Foolish Explorer” is only about Subjectification (Experience 1).

The Smart Executor

In contrast, “The Smart Executor” is about Objectification (Experience 2).

I used it to associate with the following terms:

Performance
Objectification
Fast Cognition

This is not the primary focus of the present trilogy.

I’d like to point out that the AAS requires us to become both the Foolish Explorer and the Smart Executor because First-order Activity and Second-order Activity form a meaningful system.

March also emphasized this is about the question of balance. See the interview below:

What role would there be for foolishness in business education?
We have some foolishness already, though we dress it up as [a] fairly serious activity. For example, we have students play roles. We have them pretend they are the CEO of IBM, and that’s foolishness. They aren’t, and they can’t be, and they won’t be. But if you are encouraged to think of yourself as somebody else, you start acting the way you imagine such a person ought to act and experimenting with who you might become.
On the whole, I think that American management education is so deeply embedded in a rational mystique that pressure toward foolishness often has to become extreme in order to have even a minor effect. At the same time, I don’t think any of us would live in a world of foolishness that ignored the fact that one of the major glories of the human estate is the capability to practice intelligent rationality.
It’s all a question of balance. Soon after I wrote my paper on the technology of foolishness, I presented it at a conference in Holland. This was around 1971. One of my colleagues from Yugoslavia, now Croatia, came up and said, “That was a great talk, but please, when you come to Yugoslavia, don’t give that talk. We have enough foolishness.” And I think he may have been right.
(Explorations in Organizations, 2008, p.19, onlinve version)

In 2022, I worked on the Creative Life Strategy project and edited a book. One of my three major theoretical inspirations behind the project is March’s ideas.

My primary interest is located in the intersection between Knowledge, Creativity, and Adult Development. I roughly use Creative Life to name this focus. I don’t want to develop a general framework about adult development for everyone. I only consider Knowledge Workers and Creators as my target audience.

The Life Strategy Project aimed to develop a systematic approach to life strategy for knowledge creators. The outcome of the project was the possible book (draft) Advanced Life Strategy: Anticipatory Activity System and Life Achievement.

I also see the AAS framework as a general knowledge framework. Based on March’s idea about the pair of “Exploration — Exploitation” concepts, I also emphasize the concept of “Curation”.

The transformation between Second-order Activity and First-order Activity is not easy. It requires a Curated Mind! In the book Advanced Life Strategy, I also introduced a model called the Strategic Curation Model.

The Strategic Curation Model is a five-space model.

Experience Space: It refers to the facts of the Past.
Challenge Space: It refers to the problems in the Present
Response Space: It refers to the solutions for the Future
Reference Space: It refers to reliable and validated knowledge for thinking
Speculative Space: It refers to imaginative thinking such as Counterfactual Thinking about the Past and Prefactual Thinking about the Future.

What does Strategic Curation mean?

It refers to using a specific strategy to curate pieces of experience, knowledge, and resources into a meaningful whole for a better future.

You can find more details in A Five-space Model for Strategic Curation Activity.

Slow Cognition

I used the term “Slow Cognition” to refer to my method of studying abstract ideas such as Concepts, “Themes of Practice”, Thematic Spaces, the Evolving Concept System, the development of Tacit Knowledge, etc.

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.