The Invention of Knowledge

The Unique Artifacts Theory

Art Bardige

This Abstract, which I now publish, must necessarily be imperfect. I cannot here give references and authorities for my several statements; and I must trust to the reader reposing some confidence in my accuracy. No doubt errors will have crept in, though I hope I have always been cautious in trusting to good authorities alone. I can here give only the general conclusions at which I have arrived, with a few facts in illustration, but which, I hope, in most cases will suffice. No one can feel more sensible than I do of the necessity of hereafter publishing in some detail all the facts, with references, on which my conclusions have been grounded; and I hope in a future work to do this.
Charles Darwin, Introduction On the Origin of Species 1859

A Theory of Knowledge

This work is a new theory of knowledge, a theory in the fullest sense of the word.

It is hard to imagine a theory of knowledge. We have so little experience with them. Unlike theories in the sciences which many of us hold and use with great clarity, theories of knowledge have traditionally been difficult to understand and very hard to use. To be honest, since the Greeks broad based theories of knowledge just have not been very powerful. They have not been comprehensive. And they certainly have not had the utter simplicity and beauty of the great theories of science.

It includes a comprehensive pattern to the history of knowledge.

This lack of powerful theories, or even of comprehensive patterns to the history of knowledge, makes us deeply suspicious of the possibility of their existence. Even though the great theories of physics encompass the universe, the great theories of biology explain a complex and multifaceted natural world, and the Periodic Table systematizes chemistry; many of us have come to believe that knowledge is just too big, too complex, and too idiosyncratic to fall under one comprehensive human construction. Without a single example of such a theory or of a pattern, how can we be expected to believe that one can be built?

Perhaps, just perhaps, there are reasons to suspend our natural disbelief. After all, the great theories and patterns of science, which give us such deep confidence in human intelligence and creativity, are relatively recent inventions. If we had lived in Shakespeare's time, early in the 17th century, when the Aristotelian hold on the sciences was being discredited, we might well have believed that comprehensive theories of science were equally impossible or at best muddy and hard to fathom. Yet before the end of that century, belief in science's ability to explain the universe became virtually unquestioned.

This work first describes a new pattern that organizes the history of knowledge. We then build a theory explaining this pattern and the construction of all knowledge. And finally, as with any good theory, we look at fascinating connections with other disciplines and predictions of the future of knowledge.

Theories can seem to come out of nowhere.

Unprecedented inventions do have a way of suddenly appearing, changing beliefs about what is possible in a discipline. Great theories and startlingly new works in nearly every discipline seem to pounce without warning. Were they just the result of greater genius? Were they built on foundations finally laid, in Newton's words, "on the shoulders of giants?" Or, were they enabled by the availability of a new kind of tool for constructing knowledge? If it is tools that actually account for many of these unprecedented breakthroughs, and if we have anew tool at hand, then it is possible for a new theory of knowledge to be developed that would, like a great theory in science, bring pattern and clarity to the invention of human knowledge.

A new fundamental tool for constructing knowledge makes this theory possible.

I believe that such a new tool is just now available, and that breakthroughs in knowledge, while often the result of individual genius, are enabled by such tools. I believe that this new tool will lead to the construction of wonderful new knowledges, for it is not a matter of how much the ground has been plowed or prepared by others; great inventions are, as Thomas Kuhn taught us, revolutionary changes in paradigm that have surprisingly little predictability. I believe that this new tool is finally powerful enough to build a well-defined pattern to organize the history of knowledge, and a comprehensive theory to explain the development of knowledge.

1. THE PATTERN

The Periods of Knowledge

We start in search of a pattern to knowledge, looking past its vastness to find unique occurrences that illuminate all. Like Darwin with the finches of the Galapagos, it is the rare and special example that we must always use to build patterns.

We climb above the great morass of knowledge to see a pattern.

In order to understand this new tool, we need to look at the fundamental tools of the past. To see them, I like to imagine knowledge as a great, richly detailed map spreading across the disciplines and across time. No matter where we look on this map, knowledge appears massive and complicated. Today, it is produced in prodigious quantity growing so rapidly that in many disciplines knowledge has a half-life of just 3 to 4 years. Most of us master only minute areas of this map, holding often disconnected bits and pieces of other locations. If we simply scan the map, we are awestruck by the scale of human knowledge so overwhelmingly vast and complex, filling libraries of books, overflowing in uncountable journals, all different, and each piece seemingly capable of being plumbed to any depth. Is it any wonder that most of us, mainly focused on a tiny region, cannot imagine that there is a pattern to it all?

But if we rise above this map, the complexity and chaos of detail begin to fade. We no longer see the small changes, the fine distinctions. The major events, the ideas that span decades, begin to stand out from the maze of detail. As we continue climbing, only the largest features are visible, those that dominate the broad historical map of knowledge: great ideas, enduring knowledge, major theories, wondrous works of art, grand inventions. We can actually enumerate these greatest works in the history of knowledge, for they are the treasures of humankind.

Once high enough to take in the whole of knowledge, we see many of these works as singularities, great inventions spread seemingly at random. But, we also see striking surprises, groups of great ideas, unmistakable eruptions of human invention so clustered in time that they could not be random, so dominating that they could not be arbitrary, so revolutionary, and so simultaneous that they could only have represented a single extraordinary event.

1859 - Environments

These six years were the most extraordinary in all of human knowledge.

The closest to us of these great explosions was perhaps also the most remarkable. In less than half a dozen years, starting in the waning days of 1859, revolutionary and defining works were produced in nearly every major discipline. In all of human knowledge, no collection of comparable intellectual achievement has ever occurred in such a short period. It was startling, wonderful - a precious explosion of new knowledge. I believe Charles Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species in November of 1859 marked its beginning. His breakthrough was quickly followed by fundamental, breathtaking works across the broad range of knowledge.

On the Origin of Species

Charles Darwin

1859

Biology

Das Kapital

Karl Marx

1859/66

Economics

Alice in Wonderland

Lewis Carroll

1865

Literature

"On the Organic Corpuscles Which Exist in the Atmosphere"

Louis Pasteur

1863

Medicine

"Luncheon on the Grass"

Eduard Manet

1863

Art

"A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field"

James Clark Maxwell

1864

Physics

"The Man with a Broken Nose"

Auguste Rodin

1864

Sculpture

War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy

1865

Literature

"Experiments in Plant-Hybridization"

Gregor Mendel

1866

Genetics

Nearly every discipline was revolutionized by a single work of great importance.

James Clerk Maxwell produced "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field " this seminal work of 19th century physics connected electricity, magnetism, and light with a single fundamental new idea - the field. Louis Pasteur's most important work established modern medicine, seeing the causes of disease as bodies in the atmosphere. The origin of modern art can be traced to a single painting, the compelling "Luncheon on the Grass" by Eduard Manet the first work of what came to be called Impressionist art. It was soon followed by the first Impressionist sculpture “Man with a Broken Nose," by Auguste Rodin. Karl Marx revolutionized the study of both government and economics with Das Kapital. In literature Tolstoy's War and Peace, Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, and Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, changed forever the nature of fiction and the definition of the novel. Gregor Mendel established a new discipline, genetics, with his careful breeding and statistical analysis of peas. Such a unique grouping of the greatest new works of knowledge could not be accidental or arbitrary. Each was not just of great importance, each was revolutionary.

"Luncheon on the Grass" 1863

"Man with a Broken Nose" 1864

Each of these revolutions was built on the same new idea, the environment: surroundings, field, nature, atmosphere, social class, populations.

I found this singularity by accident 30 years ago when I was trying to teach my high school physics students to understand electromagnetic fields. Searching for a metaphor for these abstractions, I was comparing the idea of the field to similar ideas in other disciplines. Maxwell's field was like the selecting "nature" in Darwin, the surrounding "atmosphere" in an Impressionist painting. It was an environment. This word that I accidentally blurted out seemed to capture the essence of all of these great inventions. Maxwell's field, "the space in the neighbourhood of the electric or magnetic bodies," was an environment. Darwin's nature, selecting those individuals and species that would live and die, was an environment. Manet's painting of a picnic created what came to be called “atmosphere" shows no interactions, only the action of the environment on its characters. The atmosphere was the cause of fermentation and putrefaction for Pasteur. Rodin's new form of sculpture reflected its environment and was changed by it. "Social classes" for Marx were environments that defined people. Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland showed the effects of a distorted environment on the actions of a character. For Tolstoy, the Russian environment created its people, its society, and won its great war. And Mendel, one of the first scientists to use statistical analysis, found the essence of inherited traits by studying populations of peas.

Environment, the idea which we use so ubiquitously today, became the building block of knowledge in 1859. It created the great knowledge revolutions of the 1860's. And it has remained the central element in our knowledge ever since.

Calling all of these great ideas “environment" seems inconsequential today. We apply this word to all of our important ideas. And had my class not just been studying Newtonian Mechanics, I would have completely missed its significance. For Newton’s mechanics is about objects; its causes are forces, the interactions between objects. Maxwell's electrodynamics is about the surrounding environment, its causes are fields acting on electric and magnetic bodies. Even this word - environment - so ubiquitous today, was I discovered, first used in the 1860's. Before this great explosion, the world built knowledge in a very different way.

The environment element has remained the fundamental tool for knowledge building to this day.

The invention of environment, a brand new tool for building knowledge, spawned this 1860's amazing revolution in knowledge. I call such fundamental tools - elements. The environment element first invented in 1859 defines our knowledge to this day. Indeed, those disciplines not revolutionized during the 1860's explosion followed very shortly afterwards. The late 1860's saw the "Periodic Table" of Mendeleev, followed by Cantor's "Set Theory", and the symphonies of Brahms. The environmentselement has remained our fundamental tool for constructing ideas, concepts, theories, and works of art. These great new knowledges of the 1860's were so revolutionary because they were the first major works in their discipline to be fashioned with this new element. They were so explosively clustered because the new environments element gave people a new tool for conceptual constructions.

1498 - Objects

The beginning of the Renaissance was an equally extraordinary time.

Going back in time, the next great knowledge revolution is easy to spot. It started just before 1500, an explosion of knowledge so new, so different, so pervasive that we name it "Renaissance. “I mark its beginning with a singular work, Leonardo's "The Last Supper. "Finished in 1498, it truly was revolutionary, the first painting that seems to have been sculpted. The people look three-dimensional; they have weight, the scene has depth and perspective. It is amazing to look at this damaged fresco today, for it is still so powerful and compelling compared to paintings with the same theme produced even a short time before it. Leonardo's looks completely new; each apostle is an individual; each has a personality; each has a physical presence. At their center is Christ; the source of their life, the controlling force acting on each individual, the cause of their actions. Leonardo's great work was quickly followed by extraordinary inventions in nearly every discipline.

"The Last Supper" 1498

"The Last Supper"

Leonardo DaVinci

1498

Art

"Adam and Eve"

Albrecht Durer

1504

Art

St. Peter's Cathedral

Donato Bramante

1506

Architecture

"Pieta "

Michelangelo

1506

Sculpture

On The Revolution of Celestial Bodies

Nicolaus Copernicus

1509/1543

Astronomy

The Praise of Folly

Erasmus

1509

Humanism

The Prince

Niccolo Machiavelli

1513

Government

Utopia

Thomas More

1516

Philosophy

"Ninety-Five Theses"

Martin Luther

1517

Religion

This element was the object - a body, an organ, a state, a thing.

The signature theory of this revolution was the heliocentric system of Copernicus. For him, the heavens were made of real objects; the earth and the planets were objects - massive, actual bodies, whose locations and paths were governed by the great central object, the sun. The heavenly bodies were not "ideas," not aetherial truths as they had been to the Greeks - but real, tangible objects. This theory came to be called the Copernican Revolution, taking its name from the title of the work and adding "radical change" as another meaning of the word.

Before environment, the element with which all knowledge was constructed had been the object. It was brand new in the early 1500's, producing the great explosion of ideas we call the Renaissance. It remained the building block of the knowledge of the Enlightenment.

In every work a central object controlled other objects.

All of these works had commonality. The object was the new element for the knowledge of the Renaissance, with the central objects acting on other objects. Humanism viewed people as real objects, complete with some measure of free will and empowered to run their own lives. These new objects were under the authority and control of a central object, which Machiavelli built into a new vision of a political state whose prince was responsible for his subjects' actions like the puppeteer pulling the strings of puppets. Michelangelo's and Raphael's works, like Leonardo's were full of real objects always drawn to a single central figure, the source and focus of their behavior and actions. And Durer engraved exemplars of human objects with the parts of the human figure in perfect proportions. The Protestant Reformations were made possible by this new element, making God real and the source of all actions requiring prayer and good works without mediation.

Once the world was populated with real objects and not the truths, the grip of the popes and the Catholic church on religion, the Aristotelians on science and philosophy, and the ancient Greek philosophers on all matters from medicine to mathematics was broken. Even the symbols of the old authority were captured by this new element. The new Church of St. Peter was designed by Bramante on a "central pattern" with its great dome as the central object, the architectural symbol of the mother church. Those disciplines not revolutionized during that remarkable 20 year period were soon after rewritten with great works in medicine, in philosophy, and in literature. The object continued as the basic element of knowledge through 1859.

"Sistine Chapel c. 1510

"St. Peters”, Bramante 1506

600 B.C. - Universals

The Polis Greeks invented the world anew.

An intellectual explosion of similar intensity marked the sudden and dramatic arrival of the Greek peoples as the focus of much of our histories and certainly our conceptual and artistic interests. These people of the logos believed they were different, fundamentally different, from other peoples; the first to use logic, the first to find true causes, the first to prove ideas, the first whose explanations were not mythos. Around 600 B.C. they produced a blizzard of intellectual invention: the first scientific theory, the first free-standing human size sculptures, the first paintings portraying people three dimensionally, the first city-state, the first constitution, the first mathematical proof, the first buildings constructed from a standard set of forms, the first logic, and of course the first philosophy. All of these inventions - so wonderful that we continue to venerate them more than 2500 years later, so powerful that they defined the intellectual world for more than 1100 years, and so beautiful that we continue to admire them - were developed within a single generation by real people.

First Principle is Water

Thales of Miletus

c. 590 B.C.

Science

Constitution of Athens

Solon

c. 600

Government

Black Figure vases

various anonymous artists

c. 600

Art

Doric order

anon.

c. 600

Architecture

Standing Youth

anon.

c. 600

Sculpture

Aesop's Fables

Aesop

c. 590

Literature

Calf-Bearer

anon.

c. 570

Sculpture

Tragedy

anon.

c. 600

Theater

"Kouros (Standing Youth)" c. 600

Black Figure Vase c. 525

The Greeks invented logos around 600 B.C. and with it came the explosion that completely changed the face of knowledge. Mythos had been based on symbols that were known by myth, magic, and ritual. Universals were truths, known by logic, reason, and argument.

Universals - principles, properties, elements, generalizations, and when proven -truths.

The Greeks were not the only inventors of universals - Deuteronomy's authors and Confucius built with universals.

Once again, it was a new element that produced this great revolution; logic, proof, first principles, truths, and geometrically perfect shapes were all universals. The Greeks invented the universal in 600 B.C. Universals were truths; they could be proven, they could be figured out logically. Universals were first principles, the fundamental elements upon which all things were built. Universals were perfections, geometric forms in art and architecture, the fundamentals of human social and political relationships. The Greeks were the first to see knowledge as human creations. It was Thales who invented the first science, proclaiming that water was the first principle of all things. Solon invented the Polis and the first constitution, the Constitution of Athens. It was Aesop who with his fables, invented conceptual metaphor to portray the universals of human actions. The search for universals, for truths, for logical proofs was the foundation of Greek thought and its Roman offspring. Their element - the universal - dominated knowledge for a thousand years and, as we shall see, was reinvented anew around 1050 in Medieval Europe.

The First Element - Symbols

The symbol dominated knowledge in tribal societies and in the great empires.

Rising above the Greek mountains, we return to the search for great revolutions and quickly find two. One appears multiple times with the great empires of Egypt, Sumer, India, China, and Mayan America. The other, buried under the detritus of time, requires us to reconstruct the great human revolution from tantalizingly few bits and pieces, for pre-literate intellectual achievements left little direct evidence.

To find the first element of knowledge we turn back to the origins of humankind. It was the invention of the symbol that lead to all of the constructions that we connect to the beginnings of tribal society. It was in all likelihood a rapid explosion as well.

The human revolution - a burst of invention.

We turn first to that - to the inventions of the "first humans" - combining circumstantial archeological evidence with anthropological studies of surviving tribal peoples to find the element of the first revolution. For the first humans were also tribal and everything that we know about them indicates that they were very similar in their constructions, treasures, and behaviors to surviving tribal peoples. Even the most "primitive" of today's tribal peoples have a complete and complex language, art, a wide range of tools, a sense of counting, rich collections of stories, powerful dances, elaborate rituals, myths, and magic. They build structures to house themselves, make clothing, use and keep fire, and have sophisticated social and clan relationships. That all surviving tribal people, no matter how primitive have these accouterments strongly suggests that the first humans had them as well. These were all inventions. They were all made possible because of a new element invented by the first humans.

"The Paintings in the Lascaux Caves c. 20,000 B.C."

The symbol- representations, names, art, language, myth, magic, ritual.

Of all the things that made us human, the most distinctive were our rich languages. They were constructed of symbols. Symbols were the first element and it enabled this species to construct the knowledge that we think of as human. Tribal people saw everything as symbols and constructed symbols for everything of significance in their world. All things had their symbolic names. Their physical tools and physical artifacts were themselves symbols and were always fashioned symbolically with ritual, magic, myth, and chant. Tribal people created ritual to invent and hold on to their symbols. They told stories to remember and to teach their symbols, and to build and connect their symbolic world. They created chants and dances to engage their symbols. And they named themselves and their groups with symbols, indeed becoming those symbols.

I do not believe that we can yet say what caused the brain to change, making this new tool for constructing knowledge possible, or when it exactly happened in human evolution. Nor can we say how quickly these symbolic inventions occurred. But from our experience with other new elements, I would be very surprised if the symbol revolution did not turn out to be surprisingly rapid; from an historical perspective, nearly instantaneous. It is hard to imagine that once this wondrous tool - the symbol - was available, that rich language did not follow quickly. And with language came stories which drove the demands for rich language, and with stories myths, magic, and all of the mental constructions that make us human.

The Tools of Knowledge

The Elements
Symbols

Universals

Objects

Environments

Here, then, are the large-scale tools for the construction of knowledge, the elements: symbols, universals, objects, and environments. Each enabled the invention of great quantities of new knowledge. Each produced its own form of knowledge over long prosperous periods. Each finally gave way to a new and more powerful element. Isn't it extraordinary that we can name the commonality across diverse realms of human invention with a single word? Isn't it incredible that a single idea should be so pervasive and knowledge so dependent on it? This is the element; the word, the tool if you like, with which people construct knowledge during a great period of time. This fundamental tool is the reason that knowledge looks and feels unified during long historical periods. Its first use is always marked by a massive explosion of new knowledge and invention.

Elements

Symbols

c. 50,000

Universals

600 B.C.

Objects

1498

Environments

1859

The Entities - Singular and Plural

These great periods split into two parts each defined by an entity - (singular or plural). An explosion of new knowledge also opened the plural half of each period.

The Empires

Each period breaks into two parts - "singular" and "plural"

Returning to the revolution we skipped, we could focus on the inventions of the empires of Sumer and Egypt around 3000 B.C.; China a thousand years later; India or the Aegean about 1500 B.C.; Mayan America after 600 A.D.; or in several others places like the Holy Roman Empire that started with the reign of Charlemagne in 800 A.D. All were strikingly similar. Each marked a knowledge revolution that suddenly changed dispersed and separate tribal societies into a dynamic, great "empire." Each of these empires, in a very short time, invented: written language, monumental buildings, calendars, mathematics, governments, and feudal societies with well-defined social classes. Each built great cities, created laws, developed games with complex rules, and had religions with a small number of important gods served by a priestly class. Each extended control over large territories, developing bureaucracies and armies, along with money, weights and measures, and histories. While different in style, they were the same in substance, inventing, with little or no borrowing, the same forms, works, and social structures. Even their arts differed in style, each based on its own geometric shape, and not in form. All empires produced art works with full-scale human figures in either profile or frontal views, and all sculpted full-sized figures that remained supported or embedded in stone.

Plural symbols began with empires (Sumerians and Egyptians were the first). Symbols represent groups.

Of course they were symbolic, but these symbols were different from tribal ones. In order for people to become literate they had to reduce the thousands of oral word symbols to a relative handful (hundreds) of pictures. An Egyptian glyph was an icon - a symbol - representing a class of either words or sounds. These icons, by changing their meaning in context, could be used to represent any idea. Class or group was also the foundation for mathematics. A number represents a collection and not an individual. Operations on the collection, the heart of empire mathematics, were independent of what was being counted. These symbols were no longer individualistic entities; they were group symbols, symbols of classes, of collections, of the society as a whole.

Symbols represent groups.

This new plural symbol was categorical, enabling true classification for the first time. Their statues were symbols of classes, carefully including dress or attributes that represented not the person but the position. Calendars organized social activities, festivals, and celebrations, maintaining group cohesion. The great monuments they built were massive, highly organized group social activities that people willingly participated in to create powerful collective identity symbols of their empire and society. The societies of the first civilizations were organized alike; their social structures were all feudal. Feudal societies submerged the individual into a rigid hierarchy of social classes, which completely defined their actions, activities, and behaviors. This structure was reified in numerous class symbols and symbolic ritual.

Singular and Plural

Do entities represent individuals or groups?

When we look across the great periods of knowledge, we find this same dichotomy in each. During the first half of the period the entity is singular, one thing, unitary. It is an individual symbol, universal, object, or environment. During the second half the entity is plural, a collection, a group, a particle common to larger units. The most important singular entities are separate; they stand out, they are special external and they act on other things. The most important plural entities are atomistic, elements that are within the things of the world, internal; they produce experience by their interactions. During the singular parts of each period people search for ideals, for perfection, for those entities that represent perfection. During the plural parts people search inside of things and think about themselves and their world as internal, looking not for the ideal but for the real, for the perceptual, inventing new elements that are within all things, making them up and explaining their nature.

Singular Periods

Plural Periods

external

internal

ideal

real

action

interaction

outside

inside

logical

perceptual & empirical

fixed

relative

central

egalitarian

individual

group

The Classic Greeks

Plural universals began c. 440 B.C. Universals became perceptual.

We can find the start of the plural parts of the periods by again looking for revolutions. In Greece the universals entity shifted from singular to plural about 440 B.C. The Parthenon, begun in 448 and completed in 432, was not only the greatest Greek monument, but it was profoundly different from any temple built before it. Its columns were no longer perfect cylinders nor equidistant apart; its forms were all designed for perceptual rather than mathematical ideals. Socrates sought truths internally. He taught his followers to look inside of themselves by assiduous questioning of assumptions and experiences rather than by constructing an external logical and mathematics-like system. Democratus invented atoms to explain both matter and its human perception and sensation. Thucydides cataloged real events, actions, and words to explain the Peloponnesian War. And Hippocrates searched for the sources of illness not from the gods but through the interactions of people.

"Parthenon c.448-432 B.C.

"Spearbearer c.450-440 B.C.

Plural Universals

Socrates
Democratus
Euripedes
Hippocrates
Parthenon
Protagoras
Thucydides
Dying Nioboid
Hippias

469-399
460-361?
485-406
460-377
448-432
c.480-411
460-404
450-440
460-?

The Enlightenment

Plural objects began with Newton and Locke. The Laws of Nature were interactions between bodies within.

In the objects period, the break was clear; it came in 1686 with the publication of Newton's Principia. For Newton the objects were the "particles of bodies."

...for I am induced by many reasons to suspect that [mechanical principles] may all depend upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards one another, and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from one another.Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Preface to the First Edition, 1686

Gone was the central object that acted on other objects found in the work of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Descartes. Now all objects were qualitatively equal with their interactions as causes. Gravity was the interaction of minute bodies which caused them to coalesce into larger bodies and which pulled across space to move these collections - the planets - in their orbits. John Locke, Newton's contemporary, created a political vision of society as interacting people, fundamentally equal, and self-governing under the laws of nature. From the music of Bach, as the interaction of instruments and melodies, to the new novels of Henry Fielding with lovers and enemies bumping into and away from each other, the universe was mechanical, a giant clockwork filled with objects whose interactions were lawful forces that could be known.

Plural Objects

Huygens
Locke
Leeuwenhoek
Newton
Leibniz
Bernoulli
Halley
Defoe
Swift
Watteau
Berkeley

1629-1695
1632-1704
1632-1723
1642-1727
1646-1716
1654-1705
1656-1742
1660-1731
1667-1743
1684-1721
1685-1753

The 20th Century

Plural Environment began with the onset of the 20th century. Environments became internal.

In the environments period, the beginning of the 20th century was marked by the revolutions of Freud, Einstein, Matisse, Wright, Pavlov, and Conrad. Their environments were plural - perceptual, realistic, internal and relative - environments known by interaction. In physics, Relativity and Quantum Mechanics were developed around the problems of the measurement of physical environments, because the only way we can know them is to measure them. In Special Relativity, Einstein in 1905 raised the principle of relativity to a postulate, that all observers must perceive the same fundamental laws of physics despite their "frame of reference." Heisenberg in his 1927 work on the "Uncertainty Principle" made the limit on the ability to measure the location and momentum of a particle the foundation for Quantum Mechanics. Ours is a perceptual world because we are within it. Our abstract arts depend upon our frame of reference. Our philosophies are realistic and practical. Our societies are pluralistic and egalitarian. And we exist within environments looking for the elements and the laws which are collective, which are shared by all things. We see ourselves as environments and as interacting with other environments.

Matisse "Joy of Life" 1903

Plural Environments

Pavlov
Poincare
Freud
Shaw
Conrad
Planck
Bergson
Dewey
Hilbert
Curie
Matisse
Wright
Russell

1849-1936
1854-1912
1854-1939
1856-1950
1857-1924
1858-1947
1859-1941
1859-1952
1862-1943
1867-1934
1869-1954
1869-1959
1872-1970

Singularity is Copernicus' sun - central, external, and acting. It is Maxwell's field - separate, central aether, acting on bodies. Plurality is Newton's gravity - common, internal, and interacting. It is Einstein's field - relative, known by measurement, by interaction.

The History of Knowledge

We focused on the "Western" tradition but the pattern applies to all cultures. The sequence starts anew after 476 A.D. with Northern European tribes.

We have, of course, left out many historical times and many different cultures from this description of the patterns of the history of knowledge. The use of the symbol in both singular and plural periods by all tribes and feudal empires strongly suggests that these tools are common to all of human knowledge. For simplicity, I have mainly followed and will continue to follow the "Western" tradition from the Greeks on. In that tradition we can create a complete and continuous picture of the pattern of knowledge. I believe that other cultures show the same pattern, although their indigenous knowledge building generally did not traverse all of the phases seen in Western intellectual history.

Symbols

Singular

Tribal

Prehistory-3000

Plural

Early Empires

3000-600

Universals

Singular

Archaic Greece

600-440

Plural

Classical Greece/Rome

440 B.C.-476 A.D.

Symbols

Singular

Tribal Europe

476-800

Plural

Feudal Europe

800-1050

Universals

Singular

Medieval Europe

1050-1250

Plural

Late Middle Ages

1250-1498

Objects

Singular

Renaissance

1498-1686

Plural

Enlightenment

1686-1859

Environments

Singular

Victorian

1859-1900

Plural

20th Century

1900-1995

These common entities extend across all of the periods. They also extend to other areas of knowledge that we have not yet described - including the coming of new tribes into what had been the history of Greco-Roman Europe. I believe that they apply to the intellectual history of all peoples.

A Fork in the Road

The theory takes center stage.

We now have a broad scale pattern to the development of knowledge, a pattern to the history of knowledge. But these periods are very long and there is great variety to the kinds of knowledge produced during them. Is it possible that there is an order to the knowledge in each of these periods? Is it possible that this order is the same in all of the periods? Is it possible to use the same kinds of methods and similar tools to find it? The answer to all three questions is yes! There is a further and more refined pattern to the knowledge in each period and that pattern is common to all of the periods. The search for this pattern of phases of knowledge works much the same way as the search for the periods.

But before we would plunge headlong into that search, there is a compelling question that also comes out of the pattern of broad scale periods. What comes next?

And that question leads us off on an entirely different trail, for predictions require theories if they are to be anything more than educated guesses. We would thus have to build a theory of knowledge in order to predict the next element. And as we shall quickly find out, we will have to make good guesses about the next element in order to build a theory of knowledge.

We have these two choices of paths to take, and both are valuable. But if we take the theory path then that theory should produce the pattern of these phases within the periods of knowledge and make it much easier to find them. This direction enables us to more quickly establish these ideas and use the pattern making to help us to understand them. In a short work such as this one, this trail is perhaps a little more direct and easier to navigate. It is thus the one I will lead you on. If you are impatient to see the final form look at the Pattern of Knowledge

These two paths, one leading to a complete pattern of experience, the other leading to prediction and theory, are typical of the invention of knowledge. In every actual invention of knowledge these trails naturally intertwine, for one informs the other. But following both would be confusing and they would make it very difficult to both follow a logical argument and fill in the detailed pattern. Thus we will begin by looking for the prediction of the next period of knowledge, and follow this path to a theory of knowledge and once there begin to fill in the pattern.

It is based on a new element!

There is good reason to believe that we are near the end of a great period and that the next element is on the horizon. Plural environments has been going on for just short of 110 years, more than twice as long as singular environments. Furthermore, the past several decades have a great deal in common with those before 1859 and 1498. While the pace of new invention is rapid, few of these inventions are novel. Much like the waning years of both the objects and the universal periods, there is lots going on, but there have been no great new ideas. To be honest, knowledge building seems stale. We have seen no great new theories, no great new artistic visions, no fundamentally new ways of thinking, no breakthrough ideas in either the sciences or the arts. Incredibly, we even have scientists of the first rank who tell us that theory making is near the end, just as they did in the 1890's; that we simply have to fill in the blanks to understand all of nature.

There is very good reason to believe that this Pattern of Knowledge is not based on environments. Nothing we have been investigating has suggested environments. Indeed, environments are only one of the elements. It would be surprising if the plural environments entity could actually explain itself. These elements of knowledge, symbols, universals, objects, environments, are archetypes and not atoms. They pervade knowledge during a given period because they shape it and not because they are the simple building blocks. They have the characteristics of singular periods and not plural ones. They are ideals, they are external, they are singular, they are central. There is something new going on here - very new! These ideas smell different from what we have been used to.

The pattern breaks down further into a series of consistent phases.

The descriptive path, delving further into the periods, does lead to a detailed pattern to the history of knowledge. Each half period, with either a singular or a plural entity is made up of six parts or phases that are common to all. The result is a Pattern of Knowledge that is well formed and that, I believe, fully defines the knowledges we invent. The other path enters uncharted territory and leads to the theory. I will take you down this latter path. It is shorter, allowing me to condense the descriptions of each phase and to give you a sense of both the pattern and the theory with less attention to the detail of the pattern. But it is the more difficult path, so I hope that you will make use of the Pattern of Knowledge chart to help you find your way. I also encourage you to try to order your own areas of expertise as you reconstruct this theory and pattern for yourself.

2. THE THEORY

Free Invention

A theory connects a logical structure to an empirical pattern. It thus, explains the pattern and suggests elaborations and new connections that significantly broaden the pattern. The starting points for such logical systems are free inventions, which once found can be logically structured.

Theories unlike patterns do not grow out of experience - they are pure inventions.

The work of finding patterns is always less difficult than the work of making a theory. The pattern is a matter of laying brick upon brick, built by adding more and more information and of finding some kind of sameness in that information. It may not be easy, for the bricks may be hard to come by and the interpretation of what is common between them is generally far from evident for the first builder. But each can be shaped and molded and the pattern built on accumulated evidence. A theory is something else entirely. As Einstein said, it is a matter of "free invention;" the creation of pure imagination. It begins with an initial selection, a starting idea. There is no way to build that idea in a systematic way. There is no way to know when you start that it must lead to something of value. It is just a hunch, a guess, a feeling that you are on the right path, that the idea will prove to be useful in building a complex and powerful structure.

The next element must be a larger idea than environments.

Thus when we start building a theory of knowledge by finding this new element, we make a great leap of faith. We have not yet seen this element. We hope that we find the right one, and then that it leads to a theory of knowledge. And here is the freest invention, for it is clear that we need to invent the next element to construct a theory of knowledge.

Here is what we know, some grist to invent with. Elements - symbols, universals, objects, and environments - were the largest ideas available in their respective periods. The environment is the largest idea we currently have, embracing the biggest pieces of experience. And off the top of our heads we cannot even think of anything larger or more general that is not itself an environment. There are no words in our vocabulary that represent larger ideas.

A union of environments

Yet the sequence of elements is one of increasing generality. A universal is a larger idea than a symbol. We can even think of a universal as a union of symbols. For the Greeks the geometric form, a circle was a universal, symbolizing the collection of all circles, the natural motions of the heavens, perfection, the infinite, pi, and so many other things. It was a very special universal, a union of all the things that a circle is symbolic of. An object is a larger idea than a universal. An object is a collection of a variety of universal attributes, but it is something more, it acts by its own laws. Thus a person is a real thing, a complex of attributes combining into a union. And, of course, an environment is much bigger than an object. Once again it is a union of objects that is much more than simply their collection, just as the idea of natural selection is much more than the strong devouring the weak. The next element must be larger and more general than environments. The next element must be a union of environments. A union is not just a collection; it is a new element with new behaviors, new properties, and a new unity not found in any mere collection of environments.

Fundamentally different from environments

We also know that each element is quite different. An object is very distinct from an environment and a universal from a symbol. It is not just bigger. It is different. We would not in any way confuse them, and if we did not see their pattern in the history of knowledge we would never suggest that they were strongly connected. That individuality makes knowledge during each period so distinct. Thus this new element must be very different from those that came before. It will not be just a bigger environment. We would also like it to be a single word. Since this new element is a new invention, it can be anything. But the pattern would be a lot nicer if it were one word.

Why not call it element?

I imagine that you are currently rummaging through your word attic in search of something that catches your eye, just as I did, looking for a more general word than environment. You may be trying to actually invent a new word, or you may be wondering why we could not use the word element. The problem with using "element" is that it does not have any special meaning; like inventing a new word, it does not name the fundamental idea in this new period. To give it the proper meaning we have to understand and construct that meaning first. We are better off with a word that we recognize - a word whose meaning already fits but can be expanded. Field, atmosphere, nature, and environs existed long before 1859, applying to the physical world. Starting in 1859 they were given new extended meanings.

The Starting Point

This is the nature of all knowledge construction. We choose a starting point and hope that it leads us in the right direction.

That first metaphor - the starting point for any thinker is usually very personal and often improbable. For Galileo it was a swinging chandelier, for Darwin it was birds on a remote and deserted island. For me it was technology. I love the making of things and have been fascinated, for as long as I can remember, with how things work and how they are constructed. So as I looked at the pattern of knowledge that was unfolding, I saw these constructions in the theories of science, in the discoveries of mathematics, and in the creations of artists. I saw these explosions of new knowledge as re-inventions, as the building of a new car or plane from pretty much the same material and with the same general end in mind. There was little new information about the positions of the stars that Copernicus had and Ptolemy did not. There was nothing substantially different about Manet's visual experience from Courbet’s. And the tiny bits of new knowledge that forced Einstein to rethink mechanics were, in the larger scheme of things, trivial.

I began to see knowledge as a human construction - a construction no different in its fundamentals from the construction of any physical artifact.

Knowledge is a human construction.

I began to see knowledge as a human construction - a construction no different in its fundamentals from the construction of any physical artifact. It fit that the arts and the sciences were related, constructed from the same basic tools. It fit that I could show the conceptual similarity between physical inventions and conceptual inventions. It fit that the same basic materials could be used to build two very different houses or two very different theories. And if knowledge is indeed a human construction, then this new element had to describe human constructions. Unlike environments, it could not come from nature; it had to come from the things that humans fashion.

Artifacts

Physical and conceptual constructions are artifacts.

On the Origin of Species	Charles Darwin	1859	Biology
Das Kapital	Karl Marx	1859/66	Economics
Alice in Wonderland	Lewis Carroll	1865	Literature
"On the Organic Corpuscles Which Exist in the Atmosphere"	Louis Pasteur	1863	Medicine
"Luncheon on the Grass"	Eduard Manet	1863	Art
"A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field"	James Clark Maxwell	1864	Physics
"The Man with a Broken Nose"	Auguste Rodin	1864	Sculpture
War and Peace	Leo Tolstoy	1865	Literature
"Experiments in Plant-Hybridization"	Gregor Mendel	1866	Genetics

	Calling all of these great ideas “environment" seems inconsequential today. We apply this word to all of our important ideas. And had my class not just been studying Newtonian Mechanics, I would have completely missed its significance. For Newton’s mechanics is about objects; its causes are forces, the interactions between objects. Maxwell's electrodynamics is about the surrounding environment, its causes are fields acting on electric and magnetic bodies. Even this word - environment - so ubiquitous today, was I discovered, first used in the 1860's. Before this great explosion, the world built knowledge in a very different way.
The environment element has remained the fundamental tool for knowledge building to this day.	The invention of environment, a brand new tool for building knowledge, spawned this 1860's amazing revolution in knowledge. I call such fundamental tools - elements. The environment element first invented in 1859 defines our knowledge to this day. Indeed, those disciplines not revolutionized during the 1860's explosion followed very shortly afterwards. The late 1860's saw the "Periodic Table" of Mendeleev, followed by Cantor's "Set Theory", and the symphonies of Brahms. The environmentselement has remained our fundamental tool for constructing ideas, concepts, theories, and works of art. These great new knowledges of the 1860's were so revolutionary because they were the first major works in their discipline to be fashioned with this new element. They were so explosively clustered because the new environments element gave people a new tool for conceptual constructions.
1498 - Objects
The beginning of the Renaissance was an equally extraordinary time.	Going back in time, the next great knowledge revolution is easy to spot. It started just before 1500, an explosion of knowledge so new, so different, so pervasive that we name it "Renaissance. “I mark its beginning with a singular work, Leonardo's "The Last Supper. "Finished in 1498, it truly was revolutionary, the first painting that seems to have been sculpted. The people look three-dimensional; they have weight, the scene has depth and perspective. It is amazing to look at this damaged fresco today, for it is still so powerful and compelling compared to paintings with the same theme produced even a short time before it. Leonardo's looks completely new; each apostle is an individual; each has a personality; each has a physical presence. At their center is Christ; the source of their life, the controlling force acting on each individual, the cause of their actions. Leonardo's great work was quickly followed by extraordinary inventions in nearly every discipline.

"The Last Supper"	Leonardo DaVinci	1498	Art
"Adam and Eve"	Albrecht Durer	1504	Art
St. Peter's Cathedral	Donato Bramante	1506	Architecture
"Pieta "	Michelangelo	1506	Sculpture
On The Revolution of Celestial Bodies	Nicolaus Copernicus	1509/1543	Astronomy
The Praise of Folly	Erasmus	1509	Humanism
The Prince	Niccolo Machiavelli	1513	Government
Utopia	Thomas More	1516	Philosophy
"Ninety-Five Theses"	Martin Luther	1517	Religion

First Principle is Water	Thales of Miletus	c. 590 B.C.	Science
Constitution of Athens	Solon	c. 600	Government
Black Figure vases	various anonymous artists	c. 600	Art
Doric order	anon.	c. 600	Architecture
Standing Youth	anon.	c. 600	Sculpture
Aesop's Fables	Aesop	c. 590	Literature
Calf-Bearer	anon.	c. 570	Sculpture
Tragedy	anon.	c. 600	Theater

Elements
Symbols	c. 50,000
Universals	600 B.C.
Objects	1498
Environments	1859

The Empires
Each period breaks into two parts - "singular" and "plural"	Returning to the revolution we skipped, we could focus on the inventions of the empires of Sumer and Egypt around 3000 B.C.; China a thousand years later; India or the Aegean about 1500 B.C.; Mayan America after 600 A.D.; or in several others places like the Holy Roman Empire that started with the reign of Charlemagne in 800 A.D. All were strikingly similar. Each marked a knowledge revolution that suddenly changed dispersed and separate tribal societies into a dynamic, great "empire." Each of these empires, in a very short time, invented: written language, monumental buildings, calendars, mathematics, governments, and feudal societies with well-defined social classes. Each built great cities, created laws, developed games with complex rules, and had religions with a small number of important gods served by a priestly class. Each extended control over large territories, developing bureaucracies and armies, along with money, weights and measures, and histories. While different in style, they were the same in substance, inventing, with little or no borrowing, the same forms, works, and social structures. Even their arts differed in style, each based on its own geometric shape, and not in form. All empires produced art works with full-scale human figures in either profile or frontal views, and all sculpted full-sized figures that remained supported or embedded in stone.
Plural symbols began with empires (Sumerians and Egyptians were the first). Symbols represent groups.	Of course they were symbolic, but these symbols were different from tribal ones. In order for people to become literate they had to reduce the thousands of oral word symbols to a relative handful (hundreds) of pictures. An Egyptian glyph was an icon - a symbol - representing a class of either words or sounds. These icons, by changing their meaning in context, could be used to represent any idea. Class or group was also the foundation for mathematics. A number represents a collection and not an individual. Operations on the collection, the heart of empire mathematics, were independent of what was being counted. These symbols were no longer individualistic entities; they were group symbols, symbols of classes, of collections, of the society as a whole.
Symbols represent groups.	This new plural symbol was categorical, enabling true classification for the first time. Their statues were symbols of classes, carefully including dress or attributes that represented not the person but the position. Calendars organized social activities, festivals, and celebrations, maintaining group cohesion. The great monuments they built were massive, highly organized group social activities that people willingly participated in to create powerful collective identity symbols of their empire and society. The societies of the first civilizations were organized alike; their social structures were all feudal. Feudal societies submerged the individual into a rigid hierarchy of social classes, which completely defined their actions, activities, and behaviors. This structure was reified in numerous class symbols and symbolic ritual.
Singular and Plural
Do entities represent individuals or groups?	When we look across the great periods of knowledge, we find this same dichotomy in each. During the first half of the period the entity is singular, one thing, unitary. It is an individual symbol, universal, object, or environment. During the second half the entity is plural, a collection, a group, a particle common to larger units. The most important singular entities are separate; they stand out, they are special external and they act on other things. The most important plural entities are atomistic, elements that are within the things of the world, internal; they produce experience by their interactions. During the singular parts of each period people search for ideals, for perfection, for those entities that represent perfection. During the plural parts people search inside of things and think about themselves and their world as internal, looking not for the ideal but for the real, for the perceptual, inventing new elements that are within all things, making them up and explaining their nature.

Singular Periods	Plural Periods
external	internal
ideal	real
action	interaction
outside	inside
logical	perceptual & empirical
fixed	relative
central	egalitarian
individual	group

Plural Universals
Socrates Democratus Euripedes Hippocrates Parthenon Protagoras Thucydides Dying Nioboid Hippias	469-399 460-361? 485-406 460-377 448-432 c.480-411 460-404 450-440 460-?

Plural Objects
Huygens Locke Leeuwenhoek Newton Leibniz Bernoulli Halley Defoe Swift Watteau Berkeley	1629-1695 1632-1704 1632-1723 1642-1727 1646-1716 1654-1705 1656-1742 1660-1731 1667-1743 1684-1721 1685-1753

Plural Environments
Pavlov Poincare Freud Shaw Conrad Planck Bergson Dewey Hilbert Curie Matisse Wright Russell	1849-1936 1854-1912 1854-1939 1856-1950 1857-1924 1858-1947 1859-1941 1859-1952 1862-1943 1867-1934 1869-1954 1869-1959 1872-1970

Symbols	Singular	Tribal	Prehistory-3000
Symbols	Plural	Early Empires	3000-600
Universals	Singular	Archaic Greece	600-440
Universals	Plural	Classical Greece/Rome	440 B.C.-476 A.D.
Symbols	Singular	Tribal Europe	476-800
Symbols	Plural	Feudal Europe	800-1050
Universals	Singular	Medieval Europe	1050-1250
Universals	Plural	Late Middle Ages	1250-1498
Objects	Singular	Renaissance	1498-1686
Objects	Plural	Enlightenment	1686-1859
Environments	Singular	Victorian	1859-1900
Environments	Plural	20th Century	1900-1995

The theory takes center stage.	We now have a broad scale pattern to the development of knowledge, a pattern to the history of knowledge. But these periods are very long and there is great variety to the kinds of knowledge produced during them. Is it possible that there is an order to the knowledge in each of these periods? Is it possible that this order is the same in all of the periods? Is it possible to use the same kinds of methods and similar tools to find it? The answer to all three questions is yes! There is a further and more refined pattern to the knowledge in each period and that pattern is common to all of the periods. The search for this pattern of phases of knowledge works much the same way as the search for the periods. But before we would plunge headlong into that search, there is a compelling question that also comes out of the pattern of broad scale periods. What comes next? And that question leads us off on an entirely different trail, for predictions require theories if they are to be anything more than educated guesses. We would thus have to build a theory of knowledge in order to predict the next element. And as we shall quickly find out, we will have to make good guesses about the next element in order to build a theory of knowledge. We have these two choices of paths to take, and both are valuable. But if we take the theory path then that theory should produce the pattern of these phases within the periods of knowledge and make it much easier to find them. This direction enables us to more quickly establish these ideas and use the pattern making to help us to understand them. In a short work such as this one, this trail is perhaps a little more direct and easier to navigate. It is thus the one I will lead you on. If you are impatient to see the final form look at the Pattern of Knowledge These two paths, one leading to a complete pattern of experience, the other leading to prediction and theory, are typical of the invention of knowledge. In every actual invention of knowledge these trails naturally intertwine, for one informs the other. But following both would be confusing and they would make it very difficult to both follow a logical argument and fill in the detailed pattern. Thus we will begin by looking for the prediction of the next period of knowledge, and follow this path to a theory of knowledge and once there begin to fill in the pattern.
It is based on a new element!	There is good reason to believe that we are near the end of a great period and that the next element is on the horizon. Plural environments has been going on for just short of 110 years, more than twice as long as singular environments. Furthermore, the past several decades have a great deal in common with those before 1859 and 1498. While the pace of new invention is rapid, few of these inventions are novel. Much like the waning years of both the objects and the universal periods, there is lots going on, but there have been no great new ideas. To be honest, knowledge building seems stale. We have seen no great new theories, no great new artistic visions, no fundamentally new ways of thinking, no breakthrough ideas in either the sciences or the arts. Incredibly, we even have scientists of the first rank who tell us that theory making is near the end, just as they did in the 1890's; that we simply have to fill in the blanks to understand all of nature. There is very good reason to believe that this Pattern of Knowledge is not based on environments. Nothing we have been investigating has suggested environments. Indeed, environments are only one of the elements. It would be surprising if the plural environments entity could actually explain itself. These elements of knowledge, symbols, universals, objects, environments, are archetypes and not atoms. They pervade knowledge during a given period because they shape it and not because they are the simple building blocks. They have the characteristics of singular periods and not plural ones. They are ideals, they are external, they are singular, they are central. There is something new going on here - very new! These ideas smell different from what we have been used to.
The pattern breaks down further into a series of consistent phases.	The descriptive path, delving further into the periods, does lead to a detailed pattern to the history of knowledge. Each half period, with either a singular or a plural entity is made up of six parts or phases that are common to all. The result is a Pattern of Knowledge that is well formed and that, I believe, fully defines the knowledges we invent. The other path enters uncharted territory and leads to the theory. I will take you down this latter path. It is shorter, allowing me to condense the descriptions of each phase and to give you a sense of both the pattern and the theory with less attention to the detail of the pattern. But it is the more difficult path, so I hope that you will make use of the Pattern of Knowledge chart to help you find your way. I also encourage you to try to order your own areas of expertise as you reconstruct this theory and pattern for yourself.

Theories unlike patterns do not grow out of experience - they are pure inventions.	The work of finding patterns is always less difficult than the work of making a theory. The pattern is a matter of laying brick upon brick, built by adding more and more information and of finding some kind of sameness in that information. It may not be easy, for the bricks may be hard to come by and the interpretation of what is common between them is generally far from evident for the first builder. But each can be shaped and molded and the pattern built on accumulated evidence. A theory is something else entirely. As Einstein said, it is a matter of "free invention;" the creation of pure imagination. It begins with an initial selection, a starting idea. There is no way to build that idea in a systematic way. There is no way to know when you start that it must lead to something of value. It is just a hunch, a guess, a feeling that you are on the right path, that the idea will prove to be useful in building a complex and powerful structure.
The next element must be a larger idea than environments.	Thus when we start building a theory of knowledge by finding this new element, we make a great leap of faith. We have not yet seen this element. We hope that we find the right one, and then that it leads to a theory of knowledge. And here is the freest invention, for it is clear that we need to invent the next element to construct a theory of knowledge. Here is what we know, some grist to invent with. Elements - symbols, universals, objects, and environments - were the largest ideas available in their respective periods. The environment is the largest idea we currently have, embracing the biggest pieces of experience. And off the top of our heads we cannot even think of anything larger or more general that is not itself an environment. There are no words in our vocabulary that represent larger ideas.
A union of environments	Yet the sequence of elements is one of increasing generality. A universal is a larger idea than a symbol. We can even think of a universal as a union of symbols. For the Greeks the geometric form, a circle was a universal, symbolizing the collection of all circles, the natural motions of the heavens, perfection, the infinite, pi, and so many other things. It was a very special universal, a union of all the things that a circle is symbolic of. An object is a larger idea than a universal. An object is a collection of a variety of universal attributes, but it is something more, it acts by its own laws. Thus a person is a real thing, a complex of attributes combining into a union. And, of course, an environment is much bigger than an object. Once again it is a union of objects that is much more than simply their collection, just as the idea of natural selection is much more than the strong devouring the weak. The next element must be larger and more general than environments. The next element must be a union of environments. A union is not just a collection; it is a new element with new behaviors, new properties, and a new unity not found in any mere collection of environments.
Fundamentally different from environments	We also know that each element is quite different. An object is very distinct from an environment and a universal from a symbol. It is not just bigger. It is different. We would not in any way confuse them, and if we did not see their pattern in the history of knowledge we would never suggest that they were strongly connected. That individuality makes knowledge during each period so distinct. Thus this new element must be very different from those that came before. It will not be just a bigger environment. We would also like it to be a single word. Since this new element is a new invention, it can be anything. But the pattern would be a lot nicer if it were one word.
Why not call it element?	I imagine that you are currently rummaging through your word attic in search of something that catches your eye, just as I did, looking for a more general word than environment. You may be trying to actually invent a new word, or you may be wondering why we could not use the word element. The problem with using "element" is that it does not have any special meaning; like inventing a new word, it does not name the fundamental idea in this new period. To give it the proper meaning we have to understand and construct that meaning first. We are better off with a word that we recognize - a word whose meaning already fits but can be expanded. Field, atmosphere, nature, and environs existed long before 1859, applying to the physical world. Starting in 1859 they were given new extended meanings.
The Starting Point
This is the nature of all knowledge construction. We choose a starting point and hope that it leads us in the right direction.	That first metaphor - the starting point for any thinker is usually very personal and often improbable. For Galileo it was a swinging chandelier, for Darwin it was birds on a remote and deserted island. For me it was technology. I love the making of things and have been fascinated, for as long as I can remember, with how things work and how they are constructed. So as I looked at the pattern of knowledge that was unfolding, I saw these constructions in the theories of science, in the discoveries of mathematics, and in the creations of artists. I saw these explosions of new knowledge as re-inventions, as the building of a new car or plane from pretty much the same material and with the same general end in mind. There was little new information about the positions of the stars that Copernicus had and Ptolemy did not. There was nothing substantially different about Manet's visual experience from Courbet’s. And the tiny bits of new knowledge that forced Einstein to rethink mechanics were, in the larger scheme of things, trivial.