In the diagram I arranged last week, I ignored the logical connections and simply mimicked the appearance of that 18th-century diagram, creating new classifications based on my own interpretation. However, as I wrote the diagram, what caught my attention was the contrast between my unspecialized knowledge and the idealized knowledge structure claimed by the encyclopedia. This contrast lies not only in the scale of knowledge but also in the perspectives, as I view knowledge as something from everyday engagements with reality, the encyclopedians perceive knowledge as texts in an advanced system that could encompass the world.

A quick mention of one reference from my research that helps to position my work for this week: In ‘The World Explained: A Microhistorical Encyclopedia’ by Erick Beltran, the concept of ‘the personal theory’ is defined as “tending to generalize and being pragmatic, enabling a practical engagement with the world” and that we make sense of things through “hunches, makeshift ideas, crude understandings, and impromptu explanations, drawing from the limited knowledge and experience we have at hand.” and that everyday knowledge is “a constant dynamic process of making meaning.” Beltran demonstrates these ideas through diagrams, illustrating possible structures of personal knowledge, how they could be evoked by composed questions asked to people and how a system of producing personal theory could be built. ( I think the point is to observe this neglected branch of knowledge, which we frequently engage with in our daily lives yet consistently find excluded from most structured systems. And to zoom in on a single object or a single word could be helpful for this observation.)

iteration 1

The text shown in this printed matter is an attempt to rearrange my personal knowledge under the knowledge structure of an 18th-century encyclopedia. What I did was to list out my knowledge about fences under the guidance of each branch. So you can say it’s a parallel map with a close-up focus on the fences in my mind. It was a one-time writing experiment without any later corrections, as I want to keep the incomplete, unreliable and even incorrect facts of “personal knowledge”.
Through paralleling, I got to evaluate each branch itself. For example, concepts considered unnatural were classified as ‘Deviations of Nature’. The Manufacturing was placed under ‘The Uses of Nature’. These classifications reflect the values of that specific period in time. I also got to see the picture of my own knowledge and the fact that I enjoy drawing associations from visual examples. In branches where I lacked knowledge, such as mathematics, I simply closed off that entire branch and I was happy to do that. Plus, I’m also glad that I get to remove all the “etc.” from the original diagram.

iteration 2

This publication begins with the Figurative System of Human Knowledge from d’Alembert and Diderot’s Encyclopedia. It is a diagram epitomizing an encyclopedic representation of knowledge, with its deceptive appearance, creating the illusion of comprehensiveness. This diagram presents a flat, static, and out-of-date branching structure, contrasting with the way we engage with personal knowledge in everyday life. Here’s a hunch: will this diagram reveal new perspectives for us to understand knowledge construction, if placed in an intertextual relation?During the repeated zoom-in and zoom-out between the diagram and my own thoughts, I compiled this publication you’re holding now. On the left, you can see the original diagram, while on the right, I listed out my personal knowledge about FENCE following the branching terms from the left diagram. In between the two diagrams, you can observe changes and divisions occurring on the connection lines.

References:

To better explain myself, I‘d like to share two references. They are not directly related in contents with my work, but the form and method that they took, have shaped my understanding. One is The Parallel Encyclopedia, in which the connections are built on the tension between juxtaposed images and interpretations of the individual. And another one is called 891 Dusks: An Encyclopedia of Psychological Experiences. The book was made by Chen Zhe, in the book, she wrote about ‘the undiagnosed symptoms of “evening uneasiness”’ for 891 times based on another pseudo-scientific book. The kind of ambiguous and lost experience was really strong when I tried to retrieving a specific sympton, and the difficulty of locating the text added another dimension of experience, align to the experience of how difficult it is to articulate the unknown feelings. I see both references as effective examples of trying to shift the experience of accessing and locating certain knowledge in a traditional media(in these cases, a printed publication). 

Both of the projects had led my attention to how I can arrange knowledge by altering the way of “retrieving” them. The diagram in this publication could be a start,  by drawing lines and compare knowledge as a way of altering retrieval. In this way, I could visualize the division and contrast which are difficult to put into words. My observation is : the construction of knowledge, no matter systematic or unspecialized, the contents would gain a form, or a look as being juxtaposed, compared and retrieved, and by shifting that form or look, there may be an unusual perspective for viewing knowledge and the construction of it. Just as the question I put at the end of the publication: “will this diagram reveal new perspectives for us to understand knowledge construction, if placed in an intertextual relation? ”