The Invention of Knowledge by Art Bardige

ENVIRONMENTS (1859-1995)
The Explosion (1859-1866)
Charles Darwin
Origin of Species
The
1859
Louis Pasteur
Invention
Corpuscles in the
Of
Atmosphere 1863
Eduard Manet
Knowledge
Luncheon on the
Grass 1863
James Clerk
Maxwell
THE UNIQUE ARTIFACTS THEORY
Electromagnetic
Field 1864 www.artifacts.com
Auguste Rodin
Man with a Broken
Nose 1864
A general theory of knowledge
predicting great revolutions in the
disciplines - the beginning of the
Unique Artifacts period
Lewis Carroll
Alice in Wonderland
1865
Lewis Carroll
Alice in Wonderland
Art Bardige
Karl Marx
Das Kapital artbardige@hotmail.com
1859-66 art@artifacts.com
kba publishing
Leo Tolstoy CAMBRIDGE, MA V4.0 1/99
War and Peace 1866
Copyright © 1995 & 1999 Art Bardige
Overview
This work presents a new theory of knowledge. It is made possible by a new

tool for constructing knowledge, a new fundamental element - artifacts.
• This element, used for the first time here, makes possible this theory that
unites all knowledge. Such fundamental elements are long lasting, and
new ones are rare in the history of knowledge. The last - environments-
caused the great explosion of knowledge in the 1860's that included the
works of Darwin, Maxwell, Pasteur, Manet, Marx, Rodin, and Tolstoy.
• The theory - Unique Artifacts - explains a comprehensive pattern to

intellectual history - The Pattern of Knowledge - which groups the
disciplines into well-defined historical phases. During each phase, new
knowledge in every discipline was constructed of common elements,
producing connections not heretofore recognized.
• Unique Artifacts also joins intellectual history to the development of

knowledge in children, explaining and broadening Piaget's stages.
• Unique Artifacts connects the development of theories and patterns in the

sciences with the construction of works of art, explaining how we build
knowledge generally.
• This new theory of knowledge clearly places us at the start of a great

revolution, equivalent to the Renaissance. We will see every discipline
profoundly changed with great fundamental new theories and works of
art.
Unique Artifacts provides some insight and offers guidance to the inventors of
these new works.
The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 2

Cambridge, MA
7/7/95
Dear Reader,
I feel today as if I am opening the doors for the first time on a long hidden mysterious
construction. I have had, for much of the past 30 years, two working lives, one as a
teacher and educational software developer and the other as an artisan in a secret
workshop. Even my closest friends rarely heard about the project and with the
exception of my wife, very few had any inkling of what I was spending my other life
doing.
I bring to you and to them what I hope is at long last complete and beautiful, a theory
of knowledge. If this work is what I believe it to be, then you may find it helps you to
understand and order the evolution of knowledge. If it is what I believe it to be, then
you will find it may help you to develop new theories or to see better into the future of
knowledge. If it is what I believe it to be, then we may all be better able to help our
children to learn.
One result of this long hidden incubation is that I have never published on
epistemology. The book length manuscript I wrote two years ago has not made it past
the publishers in-box. It is very hard for an uncredentialed author to get attention,
especially in deep academic disciplines. I have taken two steps to abrogate this. The
first is to write a short version, what you see below. The second is to publish it on this
wonderful new medium that I am familiar with and that is familiar with me.
I have also written this for you. I do not know how to speak to academic
epistemologists, though I look forward to learning. I do know how to teach and I hope
that I am presenting this theory in a way that each person who looks at it learns
something of value. No, I have not simplified an obscure theory for mass consumption.
I believe this theory, as it is presented here, to be a human construction in the fullest
sense of that word, and I hope that I have presented it in such a way that each of you
can understand its deepest implications.
I thank you, as I do all of those in my sources, for the time and effort afforded to my
artifact. I look forward to your thoughts, and like you, cannot wait to see what the
future of knowledge brings.
Sincerely,

Table of Contents
1. THE PATTERN 6
A Theory of Knowledge 6
The Periods of Knowledge 8

The Entities - Singular and Plural 18
The History of Knowledge 24
A Fork in the Road 25
2. THE THEORY 27
Free Inventions 27
Artifacts 29
Constructing Artifacts 30
Uniqueness 31
The Forms of Uniqueness 32
Uniqueness and Knowledge 34
Language and Unique Artifacts 36
The Pattern of Knowledge 41
The Pattern in Elementary Mathematics 46
A Visit to the Pre-Socratics 47
The Pattern to the History of Knowledge 51
3. CONNECTIONS & PREDICTIONS 53

A Theory of Knowledge 53
Unique Artifacts - The Theory 53
Invention by Children - Piaget's Stages 59
Invention by Adults - Thought and Knowledge 63
Inventing the Elements 66
The Great Surprise - Connecting Science and Art 73
The Unique Artifacts Period 74

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)

1. THE PATTERN
A Theory of Knowledge
This work is a new It is hard to imagine a theory of knowledge. We have so little experience with
theory of
knowledge, a them. Unlike theories in the sciences which many of us hold and use with great
theory in the clarity, theories of knowledge have traditionally been difficult to understand and
fullest sense of very hard to use. To be honest, since the Greeks, broad based theories of
the word.
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 This lack of powerful theories, or even of comprehensive patterns to the history of
comprehensive
pattern to the knowledge, makes us deeply suspicious of the possibility of their existence. Even
history of though the great theories of physics encompass the universe, the great theories of
knowledge. 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 Unprecedented inventions do have a way of suddenly appearing, changing beliefs
seem to come out
of nowhere. 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 I believe that such a new tool is just now available, and that breakthroughs in
fundamental tool
for constructing knowledge, while often the result of individual genius, are enabled by such tools. I
knowledge makes believe that this new tool will lead to the construction of wonderful new
this theory knowledges, for it is not a matter of how much the ground has been plowed or
possible.
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.

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 In order to understand this new tool, we need to look at the fundamental tools of
the great morass
of knowledge to the past. To see them, I like to imagine knowledge as a great, richly detailed map
see a pattern. 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 The closest to us of these great explosions was perhaps also the most remarkable.
were the most
extraordinary in
In less than half a dozen years, starting in the waning days of 1859, revolutionary
all of human and defining works were produced in nearly every major discipline. In all of human
knowledge. 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

Political
Das Kapital Karl Marx 1859/66
Science
Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll 1865 Literature
"On the Organic Corpuscles Which Exist in the
Louis Pasteur 1863 Medicine
Atmosphere"
"Luncheon on the Grass" Eduard Manet 1863 Art
James Clark
"A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field" 1864 Physics
Maxwell
"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 James Clerk Maxwell produced "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field;"
discipline was
revolutionized by this seminal work of 19th century physics connected electricity, magnetism, and
a single work of light with a single fundamental new idea - the field. Louis Pasteur's most important
great work established modern medicine, seeing the causes of disease as bodies in the
importance.
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 I found this singularity by accident 30 years ago when I was trying to teach my
revolutions was
built on the same high school physics students to understand electromagnetic fields. Searching for a
new idea, the metaphor for these abstractions, I was comparing the idea of the field to similar
environment: ideas in other disciplines. Maxwell's field was like the selecting "nature" in Darwin,
surroundings,
field, nature, the surrounding "atmosphere" in an Impressionist painting. It was an
atmosphere, social environment. This word that I accidentally blurted out seemed to capture the
class, essence of all of these great inventions. Maxwell's field, "the space in the
populations.
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 The invention of environment, a brand new tool for building knowledge, spawned
element has
remained the this 1860's amazing revolution in knowledge. I call such fundamental tools -
fundamental tool elements. The environment element first invented in 1859 defines our knowledge
for knowledge to this day. Indeed, those disciplines not revolutionized during the 1860's
building to this
day.
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 Going back in time, the next great knowledge revolution is easy to spot. It started
the Renaissance
was an equally just before 1500, an explosion of knowledge so new, so different, so pervasive
extraordinary that we name it "Renaissance. “I mark its beginning with a singular work,
time. 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 The signature theory of this revolution was the heliocentric system of Copernicus.
was the object -
a body, an For him, the heavens were made of real objects; the earth and the planets were
organ, a state, a objects - massive, actual bodies, whose locations and paths were governed by the
thing. 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 All of these works had commonality. The object was the new element for the
central object
controlled other knowledge of the Renaissance, with the central objects acting on other objects.
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 An intellectual explosion of similar intensity marked the sudden and dramatic arrival
invented the
world anew. 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- Once again, it was a new element that produced this great revolution; logic,
principles,
properties, proof, first principles, truths, and geometrically perfect shapes were all universals.
elements, The Greeks invented the universal in 600 B.C. Universals were truths; they could
generalizations, be proven, they could be figured out logically. Universals were first principles, the
and when proven
fundamental elements upon which all things were built. Universals were
-truths.
perfections, geometric forms in art and architecture, the fundamentals of human
social and political relationships. The Greeks were the first to see knowledge as
The Greeks were
not the only human creations. It was Thales who invented the first science, proclaiming that
inventors of water was the first principle of all things. Solon invented the Polis and the first
universals - constitution, the Constitution of Athens. It was Aesop who with his fables,
Deuteronomy's
authors and invented conceptual metaphor to portray the universals of human actions. The
Confucius built search for universals, for truths, for logical proofs was the foundation of Greek
with universals. 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 Rising above the Greek mountains, we return to the search for great revolutions
dominated
knowledge in and quickly find two. One appears multiple times with the great empires of Egypt,
tribal societies and Sumer, India, China, and Mayan America. The other, buried under the detritus of
in the great time, requires us to reconstruct the great human revolution from tantalizingly few
empires.
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 We turn first to that - to the inventions of the "first humans" - combining
revolution - a
burst of
circumstantial archeological evidence with anthropological studies of surviving tribal
invention. 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- Of all the things that made us human, the most distinctive were our rich
representations,
names, art, languages. They were constructed of symbols. Symbols were the first element
language, myth, and it enabled this species to construct the knowledge that we think of as human.
magic, ritual. 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 - Here, then, are the large-scale tools for the construction of knowledge, the
elements: symbols, universals, objects, and environments. Each enabled the
Symbols invention of great quantities of new knowledge. Each produced its own form of
Universals
Objects knowledge over long prosperous periods. Each finally gave way to a new and
Environments 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 Returning to the revolution we skipped, we could focus on the inventions of the
breaks into two
empires of Sumer and Egypt around 3000 B.C.; China a thousand years later; India
parts -
"singular" and or the Aegean about 1500 B.C.; Mayan America after 600 A.D.; or in several others
"plural" 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 Of course they were symbolic, but these symbols were different from tribal ones.
began with
In order for people to become literate they had to reduce the thousands of oral
empires
(Sumerians and word symbols to a relative handful (hundreds) of pictures. An Egyptian glyph was
Egyptians were an icon - a symbol - representing a class of either words or sounds. These icons,
the first). 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 This new plural symbol was categorical, enabling true classification for the first
represent time. Their statues were symbols of classes, carefully including dress or attributes
groups.
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 When we look across the great periods of knowledge, we find this same dichotomy
represent
in each. During the first half of the period the entity is singular, one thing, unitary.
individuals or
groups? 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 We can find the start of the plural parts of the periods by again looking for
began c. 440
B.C. Universals
revolutions. In Greece the universals entity shifted from singular to plural about
became 440 B.C. The Parthenon, begun in 448 and completed in 432, was not only the
perceptual. 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 469-399
Democratus 460-361?
Euripedes 485-406
Hippocrates 460-377
Parthenon 448-432
Protagoras c.480-411
Thucydides 460-404
Dying Nioboid 450-440
Hippias 460-?
The Enlightenment
Plural objects In the objects period, the break was clear; it came in 1686 with the publication of
began with
Newton and Newton's Principia. For Newton the objects were the "particles of bodies."
Locke. The Laws
of Nature were ...for I am induced by many reasons to suspect that [mechanical
interactions
between bodies
principles] may all depend upon certain forces by which the
within. 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 1629-1695
Locke 1632-1704
Leeuwenhoek 1632-1723
Newton 1642-1727
Leibniz 1646-1716
Bernoulli 1654-1705
Halley 1656-1742
Defoe 1660-1731
Swift 1667-1743
Watteau 1684-1721
Berkeley 1685-1753
The 20th Century

Plural In the environments period, the beginning of the 20th century was marked by the
Environments
began with the
revolutions of Freud, Einstein, Matisse, Wright, Pavlov, and Conrad. Their
onset of the 20th environments were plural - perceptual, realistic, internal and relative -
century. environments known by interaction. In physics, Relativity and Quantum Mechanics
Environments
became internal. 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 1849-1936
Poincare 1854-1912
Freud 1854-1939
Shaw 1856-1950
Conrad 1857-1924
Planck 1858-1947
Bergson 1859-1941
Dewey 1859-1952
Hilbert 1862-1943
Curie 1867-1934
Matisse 1869-1954
Wright 1869-1959
Russell 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
The pattern follows

"Western" tradition
We have, of course, left out many historical times and many different cultures
but applies to all from this description of the patterns of the history of knowledge. The use of the
cultures. 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
The sequence simplicity, I have mainly followed and will continue to follow the "Western"
repeats after 476
A.D., the fall of the tradition from the Greeks on. In that tradition we can create a complete and
Western Roman continuous picture of the pattern of knowledge. I believe that other cultures
Empire, starting show the same pattern, although their indigenous knowledge building generally
anew with Northern
European tribes. did not traverse all of the phases seen in Western intellectual history.
Singular Tribal Pre-history-3000

Symbols
Plural Early Empires 3000-600
Singular Archaic Greece 600-440
Universals
Plural Classical Greece/Rome 440 B.C.-476 A.D.
Singular Tribal Europe 476-800
Symbols
Plural Feudal Europe 800-1050
Singular Medieval Europe 1050-1250
Universals
Plural Late Middle Ages 1250-1498
Singular Renaissance 1498-1686
Objects
Plural Enlightenment 1686-1859
Singular Victorian 1859-1900
Environments
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 We now have a broad scale pattern to the development of knowledge, a pattern to
center stage.
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 There is good reason to believe that we are near the end of a great period and that
new element!
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 The descriptive path, delving further into the periods, does lead to a detailed
breaks down
further into a
pattern to the history or knowledge. Each half period, with either a singular or a
series of plural entity is made up of six parts or phases that are common to all. The result is
consistent a Pattern of Knowledge that is well formed and that, I believe, fully defines the
phases.
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 Inventions
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 The work of finding patterns is always less difficult than the work of making a
patterns do now
grow out of theory. The pattern is a matter of laying brick upon brick, built by adding more
experience - they and more information and of finding some kind of sameness in that information. It
are inventions. 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 Thus when we start building a theory of knowledge by finding this new element,
must be a larger
idea than we make a great leap of faith. We have not yet seen this element. We hope that
environments. 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 Yet the sequence of elements is one of increasing generality. A universal is a
environments
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 We also know that each element is quite different. An object is very distinct from
different from
environments 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 I imagine that you are currently rummaging through your word attic in search of
element?
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 That first metaphor - the starting point for any thinker is usually very personal and
of all knowledge
construction. We often improbable. For Galileo it was a swinging chandelier, for Darwin it was birds
choose a starting on a remote and deserted island. For me it was technology. I love the making of
point and hope things and have been fascinated, for as long as I can remember, with how things
that it leads us in
the right work and how they are constructed. So as I looked at the pattern of knowledge
direction. 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 I began to see knowledge as a human construction - a construction no different in
human
construction. 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 or objects, it could not come from nature; it had to come
from the things that humans fashion.
Artifacts
Physical and Artifact is the word we use to describe our physical constructions. If knowledge is
conceptual
constructions are
a human construction, then we could use this same word to describe our mental
artifacts. or conceptual constructions as well as our physical constructions. We are makers
of artifacts, both physical and conceptual. If an artifact is any human construction,
it could be a chair, a statue, a building, or a word, an idea, a concept, or even a
theory. Force and species are artifacts like wheels and writing. Energy and
molecule are artifacts just like automobile and house. Even a tree can be thought
of as an artifact, for we construct trees in our minds to give coherence to a
collection of experience. Whatever we fashion, from the simplest stone tool to the
most complex theory, would thus be a human artifact.
Artifact is the new element of knowledge. It is a human

construction, every human construction, conceptual as well
as physical.
Environments, objects, universals, and symbols are
artifacts. We build knowledge with our minds as we build
things with our hands.
Conceptual Artifact is singular - a single word and a singular, external, individual, element. It
artifacts can be
the most general can be very general, and it can represent any piece of knowledge that we fashion.
ideas we can Indeed, environments are artifacts, objects are artifacts, universals are conceptual
make. artifacts, and of course, symbols are artifacts. An artifact - since it is anything we
can fashion with our minds - is a larger idea than environment. Every environment
is thus an artifact. The union of environments is also a human construction and
would also be an artifact.
We can use Artifact is thus a fundamentally new tool for constructing knowledge. Imagine
physical
construction thinking about knowledge as the fashioning of conceptual artifacts, just as physical
analogies. structures are the fashioning of physical artifacts. Our words become artifacts, our
concepts become artifacts; our works of art, our designs, and our patterns will be
constructed of artifacts. Our causes, our theories will be based on artifacts and not
environments.

Artifact- When we invent new ideas we always start off by judging them both logically and
knowledge is a
human psychologically. Artifact is a very large idea, it is a single word, and it is not made
construction. up - which means that we have powerful metaphors with which to explore these
new realms. I like it psychologically because artifact forms knowledge as a human
activity. It connects the construction of knowledge in the sciences with the artist
and with the craftsperson. It brings with it ideas of beauty and building. And like
any existing word which we could choose, it has its drawbacks. For we do define
extraneous consequences as artifacts of the data. But from the first, I liked it. I
found it compelling. I liked the feel of it, the smell of it. And, in the beginning, that
is all you have. For we have chosen a path on the flimsiest of evidence and the
weakest of logics. But that is certainly what Einstein meant by "free invention."
And that is what we always do with new ideas. Always! It is only when we have
constructed the knowledge that our new words gain their naturalness and
obviousness.
Constructing Artifacts
Following the Pattern of Knowledge we know that

these artifacts will be "singular entities.” This gives
us a powerful vector for building a logical
framework. We now must begin to break away
from "plural entities" and environments as the
basis for our ideas - a difficult task.
In which we If artifacts are the new entity, then by understanding artifacts we should both
define the nature
of the central
understand this new entity and have the basis for a theory of knowledge. What,
artifact of then, will knowledge constructed of artifacts look like in this new period? We know
knowledge from the Pattern of Knowledge that we will not be interested in the great variety of
artifacts that can be built, just as the inventors of the Renaissance were not
concerned about just any object. Rather, we will focus on special artifacts, on
singular artifacts - on the ones that stand out - that we can build our theories and
patterns on. This will be a singular phase of knowledge, and we would expect that
there will be "central" artifacts.
Those are our Indeed, it is easy to argue that we already think this way; that singular, special
most important
artifacts. artifacts in the physical and artistic world are the ones we pay attention and even
homage to and always have. The buildings, the inventions, the physical objects,
the artistic works, are the patterns that are special, rare, and beautiful - the
objects of our attention and affection. We protect them, put them on display, and
venerate them. These singular artifacts are distinct; they are rare; and we would
say that they are unique. We make conceptual artifacts by the millions just as we
do physical artifacts, and yet we choose only a few, only the special, the singular
ones to pay real attention to.
The unique
I would argue that these singular artifacts are unique. Something about them
artifact is the key
to knowledge. makes them rare, special, and valuable! We are constructors of unique artifacts!

Uniqueness
Singularity is uniqueness. Unique artifacts are

rare, special, and singular. We treasure them and
form our knowledge around them.
Uniqueness is a What, then, makes an artifact unique? Uniqueness, like most words we could
measure of
rareness and not choose, comes with some everyday bias that needs to first be dispelled, for it is
arbitrariness. often used to describe arbitrary distinctions. Colloquially, we call a teen with wild
rebellious clothes and a face full of ornaments unique. We call off-the-wall ideas
unique. And we call an artistic creation unique, even when we think that it is
nothing at all special. We sometimes go so far as to suggest that anything that
slightly distinguishes one work from another makes it unique. But these arbitrary
distinctions have nothing to do with real uniqueness. There are thousands,
perhaps millions of slight variations among teenage styles, weird ideas, or even art
works sold on a highway's shoulder. If everything that is arbitrarily distinguished is
unique, then everything would be unique, and we would have lost a wonderful
word and a wonderful idea.
No! Uniqueness is what distinguishes special works of artisans and craftspeople, of

artists and scientists, of scholars and inventors. Unique is the opposite of arbitrary.
It applies to what is rare. It is a measure of specialness. It is not arbitrariness
because, to an extraordinary degree, people agree on which artifacts are unique. I
would also argue that uniqueness is not in the mind of the beholder; it is not a
perception; it is not different for each person or each group. Uniqueness is
fundamental, recognizable by most people within a short time, and broadly agreed
upon within and between cultures. Unique, as its linguistic root implies, is one -
singularity.
We all have the I am not, certainly not, suggesting that we don't have to learn to appreciate
same
fundamental uniqueness. But once people are familiar with a collection of artifacts, either
sense of what is physical or conceptual, they have a very high degree of agreement on which are
unique. unique and which are not. We create museums to house those things that are
unique, whether they be great works of art, beautiful gems, or well-formed
‘primitive’ artifacts. People from the world over come to see and admire them,
consider them special, and regard them as the foremost reflection of our
humanity. Worldwide, we believe in the same theories and patterns of nature. We
visit the same tourist attractions no matter what country we come from. And while
styles differ among cultures, and we may not all agree on which styles we like or
prize; a wonderful work, a beautiful creation, a striking artifact is unique whatever
its style, whatever its pedigree, wherever it may be found. No matter what our
tastes, if we ask people to list the greatest human works, we would find broad
consensus. An artifact is valuable because it is unique, and because we agree on
what is unique.

Uniqueness is It has been common for us to believe in relativism as we have since the beginning
external and not
internal. of the 20th century, a natural consequence of a plural entities period. Cultural
relativism remains to many a standard for judging new works - that each of us
individually and culturally perceives the world through our own eyes and that each
of these perceptions must be respected. We easily say that each of us perceives
our environment differently. I would not argue that this view is wrong- it is the
perception of the plural environments knowledge builders. Rather, I would argue
that we will focus now on a fundamentally different vision; that there are artifacts
which we all agree are unique and that these will become the significant building
blocks of knowledge. Once we begin to construct the world of unique artifacts, the
common singularity fundamental to uniqueness will overwhelm the minor
differences and relativism of individual perceptions.
The Forms of Uniqueness
In which we get If humans see uniqueness in the same ways, and I would argue that we do, then
to the heart of
we would logically expect to be able to enumerate and define the forms of
the theory
uniqueness. If uniqueness is well defined, then we should be able to find some
simple standards by which we judge whether an artifact we make or see is unique.
Forms of
Uniqueness
Then, what makes an artifact unique? The most obvious answer is that it is
different. If an artifact is different, fundamentally different, from other artifacts
Difference
then it is unique. For if an artifact is significantly different from all other artifacts,
Sameness then it must be rare and if it is rare then it is unique.
Matching
Uniqueness as difference is one absolute, one form in which an artifact can be

distinctive. At the other end of the spectrum are artifacts that are absolutely the
same. Like identical twins, these too are equally rare and distinctive. Sameness,
like difference, is unique.
And if both difference and sameness are unique, then their combination, matching
will also be unique. When artifacts match perfectly they are certainly unique and
certainly as rare and distinctive as difference and sameness.
These are the three, and only three, forms of uniqueness: difference, sameness,
matching. An artifact is unique because it is different in a significant respect from
other artifacts. An artifact is unique because it is the same in some significant way
among other artifacts. An artifact is unique because it matches, or produces a
match, between other artifacts. Of all the artifacts that exist or that we can create,
only those that are fundamentally different, that are inherently the same, or that
match can be called unique. These are the only ways we compare artifacts, by
how different, how similar, how close a match there are. These are the ways we
determine uniqueness.
An artifact may be unique by being different from other

artifacts, by being the same among other artifacts, and
by matching two or more artifacts together.
Difference, Sameness, Matching are the building blocks

of all knowledge.

Difference
It is amazing how good we are at picking out the most valuable diamond in a
group of cut stones, or a masterpiece in a collection of artworks, or a good idea
from all the ones we throw away. From the time we are toddlers we are given
difference problems to solve. On Sesame Street, "Which of these things is not like
the others? Which of these things doesn't belong?" is repeated daily. And
obviously, uniqueness is just that, which one of these is not like the others. We are
naturally capable and constantly taught to recognize differences. Difference means
that the artifact stands out in our minds; that it is separate from all other artifacts;
that it is distinct. We certainly judge an artifact to be unique on the basis of
difference.
Sameness
We crave continuity - a car without dents, a newly painted room, a lawn looking
like golf course greens. It is amazing how much time and effort human beings
spend on producing continuity, smoothness, evenness, sameness. We are lovers of
patterns, creating them for all kinds of decoration. We tile, tessellate, search for
and create symmetry, weave, and in general make patterns of all kinds. We like
our artifacts to share, to have something in common, to replicate elements:
silverware to have the same design, shapes to be repeated in an oriental rug,
themes to be replayed in our music. And just as we teach our children what things
are not like the others, we also expend serious energy teaching them when things
are the same: these things are all round, they are all blue, those are all baby
animals. Indeed, the Sesame Street "difference game" is often turned into a
"sameness game." Artifacts are unique when they have or produce continuity,
consistency, and design; they are unique when they have sameness. When we
search for uniqueness we find it in commonality as well as individuality. Our
jewelry can highlight a single, unique stone, or a common collection, a large
diamond or a string of pearls. We can judge the uniqueness of artifacts on the
basis of sameness and search for common properties or qualities.
Matching
We also love artifacts that are a perfect fit and consider them to be of great worth
and unique. We mate, we join, we create symmetries, we explore yin and yang,
and we make intricate designs based on matching of colors, shapes, sizes.
Whether we clothe ourselves, decorate our dwellings, or produce beautiful things,
we are concerned with making artifacts fit together. We also teach our young to
make matches, giving them puzzles to put together from a very early age. When
we decorate we start out by selecting shapes or artifacts that are distinct, that are
different. We group them together into commonalties looking for sameness and
continuity. And then we try to get these common groups to fit together, to match.
Matching creates the union between artifacts that are both different and the same.
A unique match takes two artifacts that are fundamentally different - often
opposites - and joins them by finding something that creates sameness between
them. That is in large measure what we do when we fall in love.
These are the Thus these are the three forms of uniqueness; difference, sameness, matching.
only forms of
uniqueness. They Artifacts - both physical and conceptual - are unique when they are different, when
are the basis for they are the same, or when they match others. We find these three forms of
the construction uniqueness in many different areas. As we have already seen they make up the
of all knowledge.
games we teach our babies. They are the heart of most tests of IQ as well as the

cornerstones of puzzles that test our mental muscle. It does not matter whether
we are constructing physical or conceptual artifacts; we make them unique when
we make them different, the same, or matching. We make artifacts in the same
way whether we use our hands or our minds, because, we are always using our
minds. Nor does it matter whether the artifacts we are constructing are our
everyday dishes or our fine china, little explanations, or our great theories; they all
take the same forms of uniqueness. Whether we build or we judge artifacts, we
search for uniqueness, and that uniqueness can only take the form of difference,
sameness, or matching.
Uniqueness and Knowledge
From the forms of uniqueness we build the complete

Pattern of Knowledge. The three forms of uniqueness
fashion the three building blocks of knowledge:
entities - our names

sites - our classes
fasteners - our explanations
In which the
forms of
uniqueness are It is upon this foundation, I believe, that we will be building the knowledge of the
connected to the new period. These are our singular artifacts; they are unique. Like the "central"
elements of objects, the "first" principles, and the "natural" environments, the "unique"
knowledge.
artifacts will be the key elements in the knowledges we will be constructing. The
great explosion of new knowledge - the thrilling revolutions in the disciplines that
we expect to occur over the next few years will all be constructed of unique
artifacts. And these fundamental elements - difference, sameness, and matching -
will be the forms upon which we build a new theory of knowledge.
Entity Artifacts
The elements that The first step in constructing a physical artifact is to cut it out of a substrate. The
hold experience
first step in constructing knowledge is the same, cutting out a portion of
experience by giving it a label, a name, a definition. When we make a conceptual
artifact, we are naming a piece of experience, differentiating it from all others.
Each name is thus an artifact that has been created by difference, each "sets
apart," separates that experience from everything else. These separate pieces of
experience we can call entity artifacts, because they have the form of the
fundamental entity - the unique entity - the tool from each period that were used
to construct all of its entity artifacts. The unique entities - symbols, universals,
objects, environments, and now artifacts, are the most fundamental of all artifacts
because they are the tools by which we cut up - differentiate and name -
experience.
Site Artifacts
The collectors of The second step in fashioning physical artifacts is to collect them, to bundle and
entities
package together those that are the same or similar. This, too, is the second step
in our construction of knowledge. We use sameness to gather artifacts together,
to group and collect entity artifacts. This is what we do when we build classes,

groups, and categories. We construct containers or frameworks that bundle
together "like" artifacts, making them the same or representing attributes that are
the same. I like the name sites to describe these artifacts that are our collections
and categories, the places where we put common entities. When we build
knowledge, we first separate and name experience, then we collect those names
that have commonality. We first make entities and then we collect them into sites.
We may create a hierarchy of sites, as sites within sites, but that is not all we do.
Fastening Artifacts
The links between The last step in constructing physical artifacts is actually to join the separate
sites
pieces or collections together. We do the same with conceptual artifacts by using
matching to join disparate sites together. These are our theories, explanations;
what we often call our concepts. To make such an artifact we invent a site artifact
that takes on special characteristics linking other sites together by matching or
mating them. These new artifacts are no longer sites, they now become the glue
that joins sites. I like to call these kinds of artifacts fasteners, because, as the
name implies, they fasten sites together. The fasteners are very special artifacts;
they are much rarer than sites which, naturally, are much rarer than entities. We
pay great attention to fasteners for they unify our knowledge, connecting classes
and thus bringing unity to our world. They are the most unique of all artifacts, the
rarest.
These are the three elements of knowledge - entities, sites, and fasteners - based
Entities, sites, and on the three forms of uniqueness - difference, sameness, matching. The entities
fasteners are the
separate experience, cutting it up; the sites collect the entities, in essence
elements that
form the Pattern connecting similar experiences; and the fasteners tie all of these sites together
of Knowledge bringing a fundamental unity to our world. I would argue that we do this on all
as well as the
levels, from the simplest day-to-day knowledge building to the great theory
elements of
thought. constructions. We start making pieces of experience by naming them. When we
have a number of pieces, we collect them together into groups by finding or
giving them a sameness. And lastly, we join these collections together. We do this
all of the time. It is particularly noticeable when we learn something for the first
time; for example, when we go to a new country and learn the names of the plant
life. We first name them, which allows us to pick them out from the background
of "weeds." Then we classify them into types, which allows us to collect and hold
more names. And finally, we try to explain the classes, make links between them
and the climate, the geography, the type of gardening, ... putting the classes into
a theoretical framework.
The great knowledge builders work in exactly the same way. Linnaeus took
collections of named plants and animals and constructed a hierarchy of categories
based on principles of sameness. His most important category type was the
species, defined as a group whose members could interbreed, but could not breed
with outsiders. Darwin took the Linnaean categories which had a certain degree of
artificiality, as all categories will, and linked them together with his Theory of
Natural Selection, explaining their origins and existence and thus enabling us to
go past the definition by fiat and give the sites rationale.
We can now describe both processes of thinking in the simple language of

uniqueness. We first use difference to separate our experiences into unique
entities. Then we use sameness to construct unique sites to collect those entities.
And finally, we use matching to fashion the fastening artifact, joining sites and
producing our unified vision.

Language and Unique Artifacts
The forms of uniqueness divide entities, sites, and

fasteners. We can most easily see these divisions by
looking at the parts of languages. For languages like
knowledges are all fashioned from these same unique
tools.
Here we complete If unique artifacts (entities, sites, and fasteners) are so important to the
the logic of unique
artifacts and find all
development of knowledge, then we should find them to be fundamental to
of the forms of the languages as well. It would be an enormous waste of effort if languages were
elements of constructed with a completely different set of tools than knowledge, and thus
knowledge.
were used only for communication and not for knowledge building. And I would
argue that if languages are fashioned for conceptualization, then they must be
built out of these same forms of uniqueness.
Nouns and Entities

Certainly words are artifacts - they are human constructions. And nouns are the
primary artifacts of language - they name our experiences. Naming
differentiates; it separates that experience from everything else. This "label"
makes what is named distinct and unified. Thus nouns serve the same function
in language that entities serve in knowledge. We can say that nouns are the
entities of our "natural" languages. To name experience we have to separate
and differentiate it from the rest of our perceptions. That is the fundamental act
of knowledge building, and it is exactly what we do when we create a new word
or just use a word. Even the most obvious pieces of experience: a rainbow, a
shadow, or a tree are things that we learn to see, that we construct and define.
To define is to see the edges, and to construct an entity is to differentiate it
from the rest of experience; they are the same thing. The building of a name, a
noun, is thus analogous to fashioning any physical artifact; outlining it, shaping
it, detailing it. When we fashion an entity in a language, we create a noun, and
as we shape that entity we build its meaning. Nouns, of course, are not our only
conceptual entities. We can build entities in other languages like mathematics,
and we can build visual and physical entities as well.
We use the This connection between language and knowledge can help us to learn more
structure of
language to provide
about knowledge. For example, in all languages nouns come in two basic forms
experiential - singular and plural. These are the same words we used to describe the two
grounding and to basic periods of knowledge. A singular noun is a singular entity - separate and
establish the
intimate sameness different. A plural noun is a plural entity, a collection, a group in which all things
of thought and are the same. Singular and plural are thus another form by which nouns as well
language. as all other artifacts can be different or the same. If the entity or the noun is
defined by difference then it will be singular. Being different, it will be separate
from all other artifacts and outside of them. It is a thing in itself; a ball that
stands alone. If the entity is defined by sameness then it will be plural, integral,
similar in all things, and inside of them. In this case, we talk about balls as a

group in which the most important artifacts are plural, the constituents of
things. The qualities of that groupness are the key.
The entities like nouns are the basic artifacts, the

building blocks of all others. Like nouns they can
either be singular or plural - producing the two
entity periods of knowledge.
Entities Nouns When we build knowledge of singular entities; we place them on a pedestal; we
make them central, the source for all things and all actions, ideals, fashioned to
Singular Singular be truly different. We find ideals in logic, not in experience; we find them outside
Plural Plural
of ourselves in constructions that are independent of us or our perspective.
Plural entities are inside, the same, common to all, and interacting. To construct
them we have to look at experience, to be realistic, to search within experience
to find knowledge, to take the proper perspective and see the common
elements. The distinction between artifacts in singular and plural periods is
simply whether we construct entities based on difference or on sameness.
Nouns Phrases and Sites
Site artifacts must be nouns as well: for they are still names, but these names
represent classes. When we look at all languages we again find a variety of
common ways to specify such collections or categories. We distinguish
common nouns, proper nouns, and mass nouns. Proper nouns are entities for
they name single thing. Common nouns are generally sites for they name
collections. And mass nouns, too, are always sites, representing collections.
But it is not just the kind of noun that defines it as a site: noun phrases
produced with articles and descriptors – principally adjectives – turn any noun
into a site. We can use articles to make the distinction: “the” for an entity, “a”
for a site. Adjectives specify not only a member of a class but clarify that the
noun itself represents a collection. In the noun phrase, the red ball – “ball”
becomes a site and red refers to a specific entity in that site.
Sites are the classes and categories of our knowledge.

Like noun phrases they come in two types - parts and
wholes, splitting each entity period into two distinct
halves. For the past nearly 70 years we have been in a
wholistic phase, and now enter a parts phase of
knowledge.

Parts Wholes Site nouns, like entity nouns, come in both singular and plural forms, suggesting
that we will find site artifacts in singular and plural forms. And we do find two
large phases of knowledge within each singular and plural period that I call parts
and wholes, based on the two kinds of site artifacts. Max Wertheimer beautifully
expresses the difference in the knowledge constructed during each of these two
phases in his major work on gestalt psychology.
For a long time it seemed self-evident, and very characteristic of

European epistemology and science that the scientist would only
proceed in the following way: if I have before me a phenomenon to be
investigated as something to be dissected into piecemeal elements,
then I must study the laws governing such elements. Only by
compounding the elementary data and by establishing the relations
between the separate pieces can the problem be solved... Briefly
characterized, one might say that the paramount presupposition was
to go back to particles, to revert to piecemeal single relations existing
between such individual particles or elements, to analyze and
synthesize by combining the elements and particles into larger
complexes. Gestalt theory believes that it has discovered a decisive
aspect in recognizing the existence of phenomena and contexts of a
different - a formally different - nature. And not merely in the
humanities. The basic thesis of gestalt theory might be formulated
thus: there are contexts in which what is happening in the world
cannot be deduced from the characteristics of the separate pieces, but
conversely; what happens to a part of the whole is in clear-cut cases,
determined by the laws of the inner structure of its whole...
Max Wertheimer, Productive Thinking 1945
Verbs and Fasteners
The final major ingredients of all languages are the verbs and verb phrases.
They produce sentences. Verbs are the fastening artifacts of language; they
connect nouns and noun phrases, entities, and sites to form a web of meaning.
Every language has sentences, and in every language, the sentence is the basic
element of understanding. While verbs may have singular and plural forms, this
"agreement" - like declension and case - is a simple reinforcement of the noun.
The important distinctions in verbs have to do with the way they fasten. In
English, verbs can be linking, transitive, or intransitive.
We can clearly see how these three types of verbs connect to knowledge by
turning again to physical artifacts, in this case, the fastening tools in a
woodworker’s toolbox. There are three distinct varieties that match the three
kinds of verbs. In the toolbox the simplest and most obvious fasteners are the
glues that stick things together forming a connection. They stay on the surface
and make a simple bond between pieces. Then there are the "jointers," the
screws and things that make joints like: threads, dowels, and dovetails. Joints or
relations fit one piece into another and fittings of all sorts form a tighter bond in
which a portion of each piece is shaped to fit on or into the other. Lastly, the
"melting" fasteners actually change the pieces; disintegrating and reconstituting
them, dissolving them, welding two together, changing one into another, these
are the transformations. They typical woodworker's toolbox is full of glues and
jointers, but lacks melters. The plumber's toolbox generally lacks the weaker
glues and is full of the stronger fasteners - jointers and melters. If we could go

through all of the toolboxes used in the physical world, we will find that all the
fasteners of physical artifacts are one of these three kinds - connections,
relations, or transformations.
Fasteners Verbs
Connections Linking Verbs
Relations Transitive
Transformations Intransitive
Like verbs, which build sentences, fasteners make our

connections, building our explanations and theories. And like
verbs they "match" - joining artifacts together, and thus use
all three forms of uniqueness:
• difference – connections
• sameness – relations
• matching - transformations
We have been in a transformations phase for the past 30+

years and are now entering a connections phase.
The fasteners of our languages are the same. Linking verbs are connections,
gluing disparate nouns and forming the weakest link between them. Transitive
verbs are relations, requiring an object noun as well as a subject noun to
produce a match. And intransitive verbs, which do not have objects, are in effect
transformations of the subject noun. Three kinds of verbs, three kinds of
fastening artifacts; each represents one of the three forms of uniqueness.
Connections maintain the differences between artifacts. Relations match

artifacts. And transformations make two artifacts the same, changing two into
one. We will find these three fastening artifacts - connections, relations,
transformations - repeated as the phases of knowledge during each period.
There are three fastening artifacts and three kinds of verbs, because there are
three forms of uniqueness and thus three ways to fasten anything.

Language and Knowledge
The connection The connection between language and knowledge, touched on so lightly here,
between thought
and language has significant ramifications in the ongoing controversy between language and
thought. Does knowledge create language or does language create knowledge?
This battle dates back centuries and recently the debate has turned particularly
lively. Though the history is fascinating we must, as we rush to conclusion, jump
to the modern view that the elements of language - in particular the deep
structures of the grammar - are pre-wired in our brains coded in our DNA. There
is good reason for some of our most prominent linguists, like Noam Chomsky, to
argue for this "grammar organ" in the brain. The essential elements of grammar
are present in every human language, and groups of children who are exposed
to "words" without grammar (deaf children and children whose parents speak
Pidgin languages) will construct grammars that exhibit the same fundamental
properties as those of established languages.
It is uniqueness and From the point of view of unique artifacts, I would argue that it is not grammar
not grammar
that is inborn, but rather the capacity to recognize uniqueness. And, further, it is
uniqueness that gives us the primary elements of our languages as well as the
primary elements of our knowledges. It is uniqueness that gives us an
understanding of why we use nouns and verbs, why single words are so
powerful, and why we make the peculiar combinations of these words that we
call sentences.
The human brain constructs grammars because the human brain constructs
artifacts, and our languages are simply reflections of the unique tools we use to
construct all of our artifacts. It matters not whether we are fashioning a new
physical artifact, a new cognitive artifact, or a story, we are using the same
fundamental set of tools - the forms defined by uniqueness from which we build
entities, sites, and fasteners. These are the elements of knowledge and the
elements of language. It is the nature of these elements that produce our
grammars and the order and use of our languages. It is not their joining medium
but rather their particular forms, and it is the forms of uniqueness and their
application to all artifacts. In this new period it will be the structural artifacts of
language that become our focus. Our languages are reflections of the elements
of uniqueness, the artifacts of knowledge, in both their units of meaning and
their grammatical patterns.

The Pattern of Knowledge
Putting it all together, there are 12 possible

ways in which knowledge based on a single
element can be constructed.
The logic of unique We can now create a complete pattern of elements upon which knowledge is built.
artifacts produces a
theoretical pattern. Unique artifact tools come in three forms: entities, sites, and fasteners. These tools
are the building blocks of all knowledge. They are fundamental to language. They
are fundamental to physical constructions. And we shall see that they are
fundamental to the construction of human knowledges. Both entities and sites can
be either singular or plural. When sites are singular we call them parts, and when
sites are plural we call them wholes. Finally, fasteners can be connections, relations,
or transformations artifacts. Putting it all together, there are 12 possible ways in
which knowledge based on a single element can be constructed.
Entities Sites Fasteners

Connections
Parts Relations
Transformations
Singular
Connections
Wholes Relations
Transformations
Connections
Parts Relations
Transformations
Plural
Connections
Wholes Relations
Transformations
We apply this logical The entity artifacts are the most ubiquitous. Out of them we build a small
pattern to the history of
knowledge, choosing number of site artifacts to bundle our entities. And lastly, we construct out of
interesting phases here and those sites a precious few fastening artifacts that connect those disparate
there to test it. bundles, unifying our experiences and our world. This is the Pattern of
Knowledge. We have built it logically, based on the forms of uniqueness. We
could have built it solely from experience (which is what I first did), deriving
it from the history of knowledge. That we can produce the pattern we find in
real experience with logic is a very strong indication that we have built a
theory of knowledge. But more on that later. For now we will do some filling
in, which I hope will help to make this pattern meaningful, perhaps
illuminate some knowledge, and start you on the path to using it.

Entities We have already seen the results of the singular and plural entities in the
division of all of the periods into two parts - the individual, idealistic, action,
The shift in the entity from
singular to plural produces external period; and the group, realistic, internal, atomistic, interaction period.
the biggest change in each These formed the division in knowledge between the tribal and the first
period. civilization symbols, the archaic and the classical Greeks, the Renaissance and
the Enlightenment, and the 19th and the 20th centuries.
In the arts of the universals periods, the differences between singular and
plural were striking. Greek archaic sculpture was designed to geometric
perfections; bodies were sculpted to exact proportions and human features
were based on geometric shapes. The forms and features were all designed to
fit a logical geometry and proportion. During the Classic Period the sculptures
looked real. While they did not entirely lose their geometric (universal)
underpinnings, that geometry was now in the service of perception and
realism, producing Greek and Roman works of great fluidity and beauty. We
see exactly this same shift between the early and later Medieval sculptures in
Europe. There, the universals were not geometric but religious. Before 1250
these works were completely stylized, and after 1250 they were, in the words
of Giovanni Boccaccio about Giotto, "real:"
The genius of Giotto was of such excellence that there was

nothing by nature...which he did not depict by means of
stylus, pen or brush with such truthfulness that the result
seemed to be not so much similar to one of her works as a
work of her own, wherefore the human sense of sight was
often deceived by his works and took for real what was only
painted.
Boccaccio, The DeCameron, 1348
Sites
Each of these half periods The change in sites from parts to wholes divides each of the singular and
breaks into two phases,
parts and wholes. plural entity periods into two halves. We see it clearly in the 20th century; we
Plural
are surrounded by the conceptual artifacts of an wholistic phase. All our
Environments environments are wholes: gestalts, systems, complexes, ecologies, structures,
Wholistic unified realms. We have been embedded in our wholistic environment for
Connections
1927-1948
almost 70 years, during which we have seen, described, and invented whole
earth, wholistic lifestyles, searching for oneness, and enjoying stories of
Wertheimer 1880-1943
Keynes 1883-1946 complete lives and histories.
Weyl 1885-1955
Wittgenstein 1889-1951
Chadwick 1891-1974
This is very different from the environments prior to 1927, when the parts
Vygotsky 1896-1934 were of the essence and the whole neglected; when unity was to be found in
Calder 1898-1976 the pieces being brought together rather than in the greater whole. In 1927
Dirac 1901-1984
Fermi 1901-1954
Werner Heisenberg developed his Uncertainty Principle, a new formulation of
Godel 1906-1978 the underlying nature of quantum mechanics, in which he postulates that there
Yukawa 1907-1981 is a fundamental uncertainty in our ability to measure and completely know
Bourbaki fl1939
Wilder 1897-1975
everything about elementary particles including their position and momentum
at the same time. There is uncertainty in knowing the whole. In 1928,
Thornton Wilder published The Bridge of San Luis Rey, the story of the
connections between a group of complete strangers who die together when a
bridge collapses. For Wilder, we are all tied together into a whole.
Soon after, Einstein began his culminating and frustrated work to create a
unified field theory. Piaget moved from looking at individual stages of a child's
mental activities to constructing the entire sequence of their development of
knowledge. Bourbaki, the French mathematicians' collaborative, began to
collect the whole of mathematics into a single organized body of work; just as
Euclid had done in an earlier wholistic period. In 1931, Kurt Godel destroyed
the belief that mathematics could be developed as a complete logical system
arguing that such a system would necessarily be incomplete. And in the mid
1930's Alan Turing developed the basis for computer languages, the complete
set of instructions to create a computer program. Perhaps the seminal work of
this fascinating phase was Thought and Language by Lev Vygotsky. Published
in 1934, months after his premature death, it continues to drive many of the
paradigms of cognitive psychology today.
In our opinion the right course to follow is to use the other type
of analysis, which may be called analysis into units.
By unit we mean a product of analysis which, unlike elements,

retains all the basic properties of the whole and which cannot be
further divided without losing them. Not the chemical
composition of water but its molecules and their behavior are
the key to the understanding of the properties of water. The true
unit of biological analysis is the living cell, possessing the basic
properties of the living organism.
What is the unit of verbal thought that meets these

requirements? We believe that it can be found in the internal
aspect of the word, in word meaning. Few investigations of this
internal aspect of speech have been undertaken so far, and
psychology can tell us little about word meaning that would not
apply in equal measure to all other images and acts of thought.
The nature of meaning as such is not clear. Yet it is in word
meaning that thought and speech unite into verbal thought. In
meaning, then, the answers to our questions about the
relationship between thought and speech can be found.
Vygotsky, Language and Thought, 1935
Fasteners
The final breakdown into The three kinds of fastening artifacts produced vividly different kinds of
the smallest phases -
connections, relations, knowledge in a lovely sequence of ideas in physics, starting with the work of
transformations. Newton. His three "Laws of Motion," which opened the Principia in 1686, are
among the most famous ideas of all time. I would imagine that aside from
religious phrases, a few lines of Shakespeare, and a few great speeches, more
people can paraphrase them than any other single work. But while we may be
able to mouth the words, few of us know why there are three, though that
question speaks to the essence of their meaning.

Connections
Plural-Objects The first law -

Parts
Connections
1686-c.1730 Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right
line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed
Huygens 1629-1695
Locke 1632-1704
upon it.
L'wenhoek 1632-1723
Newton 1642-1727 describes the non-causal state; constant (uniform) motion in a straight (right)
Leibniz 1646-1716
Bernoulli 1654-1705 line is natural and requires no explanation. This law set up two broad sites in
Halley 1656-1742 our terminology; those motions of bodies which are constant and those which
Defoe 1660-1731 are accelerated (changing speed or turning).
Swift 1667-1743
Watteau 1684-1721
Berkeley 1685-1753 The second law -
The change of motion is proportional to the motive force

impressed; and is made in the direction of the right line in which
that force is impressed.
commonly written as
F=ma
joins the cause (force) to accelerations. Force - the fastening artifact - unites
all accelerated motions in the same standard way. When we see any object in
the real world following a curved path in space or in time, then there is a force
acting on it in the direction of that curvature.
The third law -
To every action there is always opposed and equal reaction; or,

the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always
equal, and directed to contrary parts.
now defines the nature of forces. They are the interactions between objects,
and such interactions are always equal and opposite. This is the "logical" form
of the fastening artifact. We construct forces as the interactions between
objects. Newton's most famous force, the Universal Law of Gravitation, was
designed in exactly this way, as the interaction of gravitational masses.
Newton's laws, which completely dominated physics for more than 200 years
served as archetypes for much of the knowledge build until 1860, are three in
number because: the first defines the natural state, the second the causal
state, and the third the nature of the cause. Every theory of physics - indeed,
every theory - has these three components, though most of the time the first
and sometimes the second are left unstated. Newton brought a clarity to
theorizing that we have rarely seen since.

Relations
Plural-Objects Newton's laws, in the form he expressed them were extraordinarily successful
Parts-Relations when the forces were gravitational or like gravity. They were not nearly so
c. 1730-1775
easy to use for calculating the results of collisions. Oh, they explained what
Bach 1685-1750 happens when two objects collide with each other, but computing the actual
Voltaire 1694-1778
Bernoulli 1700-1782 changes in motion was nearly impossible. The forces between two hard
Hartley 1705-1790 colliding objects are extremely complex, changing all the time, and very
Franklin 1706-1790 difficult to measure. D'Alembert, in 1743, introduced a new way to think about
Fielding 1707-1754
Linnaeus 1707-1778 the laws of motion that enabled collision problems to be readily solved.
Euler 1707-1783
Johnson 1709-1784
Hume 1711-1776
He built this new conceptualization on the physics of statics, which as
Rousseau 1712-1778 originated by Archimedes, was all about balance and equality. D'Alembert
Diderot 1713-1772 argued that in an elastic collision - where objects bounce off each other - the
D'Alembert 1717-1783
total momentum before and after the objects collided remain in balance. The
momentum (simply the mass of the object times its speed) was, in
d'Alembert's view, the measure of the motion that a body could transfer. He
concluded that in elastic collisions the motions always transferred so as to
remain in balance. This transfer and balance we study today as the Law of the
Conservation of Momentum. Balances are relations; the fitting together of two
sites so that they are equal or proportional. D'Alembert constructed a relations
fastener - momentum - a direct derivative of Newton's forces and interactions,
but very different. It was a new fastening artifact which connected motions
and allowed him and us to solve a wealth of new problems.
Transformations
Plural-Objects There was another class of problems - also difficult to solve using Newton's
Parts Laws of Motion - of which the swinging pendulum, first studied by Galileo, was
Transformations
c. 1775-1800
an archetype. These motions have forces that, unlike collisions, can be
calculated, but the calculation is very difficult because the accelerations vary
Smith 1723-1790
Kant 1724-1804 continuously and often in complex ways. Joseph Lagrange, in 1789, formulated
Cavendish 1731-1810 another new version of Newton's Laws to deal with such complex motions. He
Haydn 1732-1809 started with what he called living forces and dead forces, what would soon
Priestley 1733-1804
Coulomb 1736-1806 come to be called the energy of a body. Living force - kinetic energy - is a
Lagrange 1736-1813 different measure of the motion of a body and dead force - potential energy -
Gibbon 1737-1894 is another way of describing forces. Energy, this term that we use today in an
Lavoisier 1743-1794
David 1748-1828 almost magical way, is simply a way of describing motions and forces among
Goya 1748-1828 other things so that their quantities have the same units and transform into
Goethe 1749-1832 each other.
Mozart 1756-1801
In a pendulum, force (potential energy) is transformed into motion (kinetic

energy) as it falls down, and transforms back as it rises up. Force to motion
and motion to force is just the transformation of energy from one form to
another. The total amount of energy is invariant; a body or a system of bodies
simply transforms one kind into another as its motions change. This became
the Law of the Conservation of Energy, which today, is at the heart of physics.
Energy, the fastening artifact for Lagrange, was still fundamentally Newtonian,
but it now enabled the solution of a great new set of problems. Eventually in
the hands of other physicists, just before the middle of the 19th century,
energy fastened a wide variety of new sites including heat and chemical
activity.
It is instructive to return
now and then to the
But that takes us to a new story and takes leave of this wonderful 110 years
Pattern of Knowledge chart when Newton's fundamental ideas were stretched and expanded to solve

to see how these examples nearly all of the problems of the mechanical universe. All of these
fit patterns to the history of
knowledge across all ages. conceptualizations were Newtonian. The fundamental laws of the universe,
though unchanged, were reformulated in each knowledge phase to be
represented by different fasteners - each enabling the development of more
generalized forms. We continue to use all three formulations: force, the
conservation of momentum, the conservation of energy. Each was a broader
idea that subsumed the previous formulation. And each elegant fastening
artifact was a product of its phase of knowledge: connections, relations,
transformations.
The Pattern in Elementary Mathematics
This pattern pervades knowledge. We

find it across the history of knowledge.
We find it in natural languages. And we
find it in mathematics.
These fastening artifacts - connections, relations, and transformations - extend

beyond natural language and physics. If you have either taught or helped children
learn elementary mathematics, you must have wondered why students are taught
three ways to set up and solve the same kind of simple addition problem. There is
the operation, or algorithm, that an adding machine mimics; the method for
performing the basic operations - addition, subtraction, multiplication. There is the
equation, with numbers on the left and numbers or blanks on the right separated
by an equal sign. And there is the function, which we model to young children as a
machine into which one number is poured and another falls out. These three
representations of the same operations are in the curriculum because they are
actually central to mathematics.
Operations We teach three kinds of fasteners for numbers - which is what operations,
Relations
Functions
relations, and functions are - because there are three fundamental fasteners for all
mathematical quantities. The operation is a connection, gluing numbers or other
quantities together. The equation is a relation, a balancing of two sides so that
they are equal. And the function is a transformation, taking a quantity through a
transmogrifying process to create a new quantity.
This small Like the different representations of Newton's laws, these three ways of fastening
connection
between the quantities together remain in use because each fulfills a different need and enables
Pattern of us to solve a different class of problems. In mathematics, which is fundamentally a
Knowledge and language, these fasteners are the "verbs" that tie the numbers or other quantities,
mathematics is
only the tip of the the "nouns," together into sentences. The quantities need not be numbers; they
iceberg. could be variables, vectors, matrices, or sets. Each of these quantities holds more
Unfortunately, we information. They can be either an entity or a site, depending upon how they are
cannot, here,
fully explore it. used. But no matter what kind of quantity it is, we bind these entities or sites
together with connections, relations, or transformations fasteners. If we probe
mathematics we would expect to see the same forms we find in knowledge, and
we do.

A Visit to the Pre-Socratics
The pre-Socratics show simply and

clearly the pattern of Parts & Wholes,
and Connections, Relations,
Transformations in an entity period.
They also show how the pattern of
knowledge can illuminate the history of
ideas.
In which we see a In large measure, what we focus on in intellectual history are the fastening
complete singular period
in full glory. artifacts. They are the great theories, laws, explanations, and models upon
which patterns are based; they are the glues that hold together works of art,
architecture and literature. To help you get a more complete sense of how all
of the elements of the Pattern of Knowledge work together, let me take you
through one of the most fascinating of the periods, when a single line of
powerful attempts to conceptualize the physical universe dominated intellectual
history. The pre-Socratics, the predecessors to Socrates, were a sequence of
philosophers who, unfortunately, we rarely come in contact with. And when we
do, it is most often as academic foils against which modern methods and
concepts of science are compared. In part, this is because we have so little of
their actual works. In part, it is because we have developed a system of
training of our young scientists in the "methods" of science requiring that we
significantly narrow the box we keep science in. And in part, we have not had
any powerful means by which we can understand what they were thinking
about.
By following their fascinating trail we can learn more about the Pattern of
Knowledge and by using the Pattern of Knowledge we can understand them
better. To set the stage - the pre-Socratics were all focused on the same
problem, the search for what the Greeks called the "first principle of all things."
These first principles were the elements of which everything was made. They
were universals, the most important universals. As we turn back more than
2500 years, I hope you will find that these early Greek thinkers were the first
real scientists, doing then what we continue to do today. They created theories
that brought order, meaning, and predictability to the universe. We know very
little about what they actually thought, for these early Greeks lived in an oral
society, and it was not until much later that they widely committed works to
writing, and much of what was written down early was undoubtedly lost or
destroyed. Despite the paucity of actual words, these early "philosophers" were
venerated by later Greeks who understood their great accomplishments. And if
we understand what they did, we too shall find that they deserve our
veneration.
Thales
Water is the "First The first was Thales of Miletus, who must have been a quite extraordinary
Principle" -connections
between parts. human being - the originator of philosophy, the inventor of mathematical
proof, perhaps a predictor of eclipses, and a widely traveled explorer and
businessman. He was also the first person in all of human history to whom we

Singular can clearly credit real ideas. He lived in Miletus on what is now the coast of
Universals Turkey. About "the first principle of all things," we are told by those who
Parts
Connections
followed him that Thales said - the first principle was "water." That is virtually
600 - c.550 all we know about what he said. We know that this was the first time in human
Thales c.600 history that anyone sought to describe the fundamental element of all things.
Anaximander c.575 It has been hard for modern commentators to take this idea seriously; it seems
Solon c.600 so simplistic and so wrong. For obviously water is an important element, but
Polis c.600
Black-Figure c.600 how could it be the first principle, the universal of all things. With unique
Doric Order c.600 artifacts we get an explanation.
Archaic Art c.600
Kouros c.600
Aesop c.600 In this first phase of the singular universals period he would have been
Lao-tse c.575 constructing his most important artifacts, fastening artifacts that acted, that
Deuteronomy c.620
Zoroaster c.620
were external, that were distinct and individual. His sites, also singular, would
be focused on the parts. And his fastener in this connections phase would be a
glue, binding and sticking other universals together. Understood as the
fastening universal of all things, as a connections artifact, water is a brilliant
choice. It certainly was the glue of life, the glue of dust into clay and clay into
rock, the glue of flour into bread, the glue of sand and dirt into soil, and the
glue that connected the Greek trading peoples to each other. Upon it floated
the earth, and perhaps all of the heavenly bodies. Water connected all things.
It appeared in so many places in the world and it explained so much that when
Thales talked about water as "the first principle of all things," the glue that
binds all together, it must have appeared to his contemporaries as if their
world suddenly was unified and understandable.
Connections artifacts are often like Thales' water - glues in which the
mechanism is less important than the union. Water is much like Maxwell's field;
pervading all, an aether connecting the universe. A different kind of glue was
devised by Thales' most important associate and pupil, Anaximander. He said
that all things were joined at birth and for him the connecting universal was at
the origin of all things. He was interested in birth and the source of life. This
version of connections fastener, in which the glue existed and acted at the
origin of the "elements," reappears periodically in knowledge and can often be
very significant. Darwin's On the Origin of Species is a prime example.
Pythagoras
Number and Harmony - Hidden behind the mysticism of his followers and by his great impact on
relations between parts
geometry, we rarely see the profound advance that Pythagoras made in
Singular
Universals
understanding the first principle of all things. He said it was number,
Parts irrevocably linking mathematics to science. For Pythagoras, proper numbers
Relations produced harmony and thus explained the relationships between things. He
c. 550 - 525
used certain numbers to join the planets, creating the first comprehensive
Pythagoras c.540 cosmology. He used number - the ratio of simple whole numbers - to explain
Confucius c.525
Buddha c.525 the relationship of musical notes in chords. And he believed that number was
Psiax Vases c.525 the means by which the elements were joined, because certain numbers
created harmony, balance, and perfection. He found harmony in the simple
ratios of string lengths that produced musical notes and beautiful chords, and
carried that same metaphor into the numbers that represented the planets and
produced the music of the heavenly spheres.
Numbers were certainly universal; Pythagoras believed that they were part of
all things. Mathematics with its wonderful relationships, whose universality

could be proven, now becomes the basis for uniting all things. For, just as
numbers fit together to form wonderful patterns, like the odd numbers
summing to the square numbers (1+3 = 4, 1+3+5 = 9...), so all things were
fitted together into patterns by their intrinsic number. Number, a singular
universal, separate and external, fitted the parts together and by that fit
created balance and harmony. Relations phases are full of words like harmony,
ratio, and balance. During these phases the unique artifacts of knowledge mate
together to produce the "proper" relations, to produce balance, to produce
harmony, to produce equality and evenness. Number was a brilliant choice for
a relations universal, and the impact of Pythagoras was profound. Our science
today is based on his view that the relationships found in quantity are the
relationships found in nature.
Heraclitus
Fire - transformations of Heraclitus was the first pre-Socratic whose work we have in his own words,
parts words that even today are wonderfully evocative and clear.
Singular
Universals
Parts The transformations of fire are, first of all, sea; and of the sea
Transformations one half is earth, and the other half is lightning flash...
c. 525 - 490 All things are exchanged for fire, and fire for all things; as
Heraclitus fl-500 wares are exchanged for gold, and gold for wares.
Dying Warrior c.490
Herakles c.490
Kore (Chios) c.520 For Heraclitus, the first principle of all things fastened by transformation. What
more appropriate element than fire to be that transformer? Everything was fire
and fire transformed into everything. We remember Heraclitus in our textbooks
as the first to focus science on change, telling us: "You could not step twice in
the same river; for other and yet other waters are ever flowing on." He
transformed forever the way we think about what science has to explain; it has
to explain change.
Transformation phases are always interesting, perhaps the most fascinating

phases. The fastening artifact must both account for change and, at the same
time, represent invariance - that which does not change. For without the
invariant there would be nothing to bring unity to knowledge; everything would
be in a state of constant flux and there would be nothing to explain. Heraclitus
first tells us "all things are one." Fire was thus an especially brilliant choice for
the fastening universal of all things, always changing and yet always fire, itself
invariant under transformation while it changed everything that it touched.
Parmenides
"Being" - connections of Though Heraclitus' clarity was in direct contrast to the obscurity of the words
wholes of Parmenides, Parmenides was held in higher esteem by later Greeks. His
Singular element of all things, "Being," was the first true abstraction; a newly minted
Universals
Wholes
universal unlike any other. And while Heraclitus taught us to see change,
Connections Parmenides claimed that change was illusory and required no explanation. His
c. 500 - 480 fastening artifact was not one of the parts, but was now a new kind of artifact,
Parmenides c.490 a whole:
Classical-Art c.480
Kritios Boy c.480
Red-Figure c.490 There is left but this single path to tell thee of: namely, that
Aeschylus c.480 being is. And on this path there are many proofs that being is
without beginning and indestructible; it is universal, existing
alone, immovable and without end; nor ever was it nor will it
be, since it now is, altogether, one, and continuous.

The syntax may be hard to follow, but the idea is not. "Being" was a wholistic
universal; everywhere, pervading, surrounding and encompassing, connecting
all things.
Wholistic-connections fastening artifacts often have this aetherial quality. As

connections, they do not focus on the particular nature of the fastening, for it
is just a gluing. Instead, they emphasize the whole as against the parts. All
fastening artifacts create unity and oneness, but wholistic connections make
the whole the singularly most important thing. Unity is to be found in the
container, in the forms into which all things fit. Such wholistic artifacts are
always abstractions, representing newly constructed ideas not found among
the ordinary ones. For Galileo it was inertia; for Yukawa it was the pi meson,
the glue of the nucleus; for Dalton it was the atom. All wholistic connections
are inventions of new artifacts that surround or are within things.
Empedocles
Love and Strife - Each of these monumental figures had his own very distinct personality, one
relations of wholes that comes through even in their precious few extant fragments. Parmenides,
Singular so abstract and logical, contrasted strongly with his successor Empedocles, so
Universals
Wholes
romantic and mystical. But these personalities and styles do not hide the
Relations fundamentals of the fastening artifacts that they invented. For Empedocles, the
c. 480 - 460 first principles were Love and Strife, great currents surrounding all things,
Empedocles c.494 coupling and separating them - fastening by wholistic relations:
Diogenes
I shall tell a twofold tale. For at one time it grew to be one

only from many, while at another it dispersed again to be
many from one...And these never cease changing places
continually - at one time all coming together into one
through Love, at another each being borne apart again
through the hostility of Strife.
While we tend to discount this anthropomorphic theory, and even the later
Greeks considered him the least significant of these early philosophers,
Empedocles left us with a much clearer notion of what science should be. He
defined the elements as he understood them - earth, air, fire, and water - and
he set the fastening artifacts as clearly distinct from the elements they joined.
Relations phase artifacts are often based on the human relationship metaphors
of love and war or male and female. They produce science in which the
elements are all defined and organized: the taxonomy of living things
developed by Linnaeus, the Periodic Table of the Elements organized by
Mendeleev. Wholistic relations phases add hierarchy to these organizations, as
in Erik Erikson's "Eight Ages of Man," wholistic because it was a complete
sequence and relational because each stage was a balance between positive
and negative development.
Anaxagoras
"Nous" - Mind - In an odd twist, Anaxagoras was born before Empedocles, but was, as Aristotle
transformations of
wholes
described him, "older in years, younger in works than Empedocles." The last of
the profound pre-Socratics, he constructed a new universal that as we could
guess was wholistic and transformational. Like all of the wholistic group, his
"Nous" or "Mind" was a new invention, not an existing element, and it was also
everywhere. "[Mind] is infinite and self-powerful and mixed with nothing, but

Singular exists by itself." Mind organized the elements, transforming chaos into order,
Universals and thus shaping and fastening together all of the things in the world.
Wholes
Transformations
c.460 - 440 And when mind began to set things in motion, there was
Anaxagoras c.460 separation from everything that was in motion, and however
Sophocles c.460 much mind set in motion, all this was made distinct...the
Zeno c.460 dense, the moist, the cold, the dark, collected there where
Herodotus c.450 now is the earth...
Wholistic transformation phases often have fastening artifacts featuring flowing

fluids. This was true of Rene Descartes' concept of gravity as a kind of
magnetism emanating from the sun, and Michael Faraday's concept of
magnetism as lines of force emanating from the poles of the magnet.
Transformation fastening artifacts are the most distinct and defined, the
mechanism by which they work is laid out clearly. We can picture how "Mind"
joins elements - we cannot picture how "Being" does it.
The phase we have been living in has these same qualities; we speak of
systems, of fluids, of transformations. Our conceptions are full of such
"mechanisms," wholistic transformations flow through society as well as our
physical world. Today's "new age" interest in holistic medicines, ecology,
recycling, spiritual unity, the occult, energy paths, and even acupuncture
represent just a few examples of our general focus on pervading, transforming
substances that comes with significant ideas in the disciplines like "family
systems" therapy and Big Bang theory. Mind and Big Bang are fascinatingly
similar, they both attempt to explain the origin of the universe. Mind is
external, Big Bang is internal, and of course, Mind is a universal and Big Bang
is an environment, but they both fasten in a great transformation that orders
and organizes the structures of the all of the elements.
The Pattern to the History of Knowledge
More on the fastening Anaxagoras, who lived until about 420 B.C., would have known some of the
artifacts
extraordinary new ideas of Socrates. Born in 469, Socrates looked for his
Plural-Universals
Parts-Connections
universal truths internally, in assiduous questioning and a search for logic
440 - c.390 within. The Sophists and other competing philosophers sought truth in
Socrates c.430 experience, in sensation and perception, or in internal logic. Democratus, born
Democratus c.430 in 460, invented atoms as the "first principle of all things," which he used to
Euripedes c.440 explain sensation and perception. Atoms were within; a plural entity. Realism
Hippocrates c.430
Parthenon c.440 was the hallmark of the first true history written by Thucydides, also born
Protagoras c.440 around 460. And both realism and the internal source of disease distinguished
Thucydides c.420 the first great theory of medicine developed by Hippocrates, again born in that
Dying-Niobid c.440
Hippias c.420 same year. But now we have passed the pre-Socratics and are getting into
plural universals, where there were many more players during each phase
offering exciting and competing first principles. We must, therefore, reluctantly
leave the Greeks and the pre-Socratics whose simple and pure path produced
such an elegant sequence in the Pattern of Knowledge.
Connections Phases
The pattern that we see in the pre-Socratics repeats across the periods of
knowledge. And while each period - with its own unique entity artifact -
produced new knowledge, the fastening artifacts fashioned during each phase

have a familiarity and family resemblance. For Copernicus, the great body
bringing the earth its heat and light was in the center of the universe naturally
connecting the motions of all the other bodies. Copernicus' sun, unlike Thales'
water, was an object and not a universal, but it was central, distinct, singular
and it also connected individual elements together. For Maxwell, this central
principle was not a universal or an object, but an environment, the
electromagnetic field, an external singular glue for electric and magnetic
matter. And Newton, in the same phase as Democratus, constructed matter of
"bodies," not universals, but hard, tiny objects whose glue was the force of
gravity.
Relations Phases
In relations phases - with emphasis on harmony, balance, and human relation -
we find the work of Archimedes on the principles of statics, balancing forces in
levers and the other simple machines; the conservation of momentum by
d'Alembert, the cascading affairs of a Henry Fielding novel, the hierarchical
relationships of Auguste Compte's conception of knowledge, and, of course,
the relationships between observers and the laws of motion in Einstein's
"Special Theory of Relativity." The relations phase templates range between
mechanical balance and the sexual relation between men and women. We see
a great range of knowledges constructed during these phases with a variety of
physical metaphors from which to draw.
Transformations Phases
I love the connections between those philosophers whom we find perhaps the
most compelling and yet mysterious: Plato, Dante, Kant, Einstein and
Wittgenstein. They all sought that powerful invariant in a world of
transformation (Einstein's Special Relativity was developed in a relations phase,
his General Theory was developed during the next phase, parts-
transformations.). As you peruse the Pattern of Knowledge as I hope you will,
adding inventors you know and making new connections, be warned that
humans are complex, that most knowledge was developed over substantial
incubation periods and thus may have elements and remnants of a variety of
phases in it. Interpreting a single piece of knowledge my not be easy and may
be subject to question. But overall, the pattern is well defined, and it can serve
as an aide to interpreting and teaching knowledge. It may also enable a better
understanding of both the act of invention and the motivation of the inventor.

3. CONNECTIONS & PREDICTIONS
A Theory of Knowledge
Unique Artifacts - The Theory
I believe that what you now have in your hands is a

theory of knowledge. We look now at a great and
beautiful theory in physics, Maxwell's Electrodynamics,
to better see and understand what it is we have.
How to think I believe that what you now have in your hands is a theory of knowledge. It starts
about a theory of
knowledge? with the most fundamental idea; that knowledge is constructed of artifacts. People
construct and choose artifacts based on uniqueness. We pay special attention to
the important artifacts, assuring that they are generally unique; for we believe
that unique artifacts, both physical and conceptual, are precious. Uniqueness gives
us a flexible way of differentiating, handling, and organizing the vast realms of
experience that we face; a way to choose what we must focus on and to construct
artifacts and patterns of artifacts for holding our experience.
There are only three different ways that an artifact can be unique; by being
different and thus distinct from other artifacts, by being the same across other
artifacts, or by matching and mating other artifacts. These three forms of
uniqueness define the three fundamental tools and, therefore, the three elements
of thought and knowledge. We produce entities - our names and definitions - by
differentiating. We fashion sites - our categories and classes, our concepts and
generalizations - by collecting entities based on their sameness. And finally, we
make fasteners - our theories and explanations - to link different sites by
matching.
We constructed this theory and then connected these unique artifacts to the
Pattern of Knowledge to see whether these abstractions, which we derived from
uniqueness, fit our legacy of intellectual history by explaining its periods, phases,
and sequence. The fit seems exact and strongly suggests that all of the knowledge
we create is explained by this theory. This is what a theory of knowledge looks
like: a simple, purely logical argument which provides a template for constructing
a pattern that then holds and connects experience in epistemology, intellectual
history, natural language, and mathematics.

A Theory in Physics: Electricity and Magnetism
A short stroll into Since a theory of knowledge is unfamiliar, it may be instructive to look at what a
a very special part
of physics great theory in the discipline of physics is like; and Maxwell's theory of the
Electromagnetic Field is the most beautiful example I know. Forgive me for again
choosing an example in physics, but this discipline does give us our purest and
most well thought out theories. James Clerk Maxwell, by 1860, had already
established his reputation as a first-rate physicist working on a wide variety of
problems when he turned his attention to the work of Faraday and the difficulties
in electricity and magnetism. It was this work that marked him as the greatest
physicist of the 19th century, and while he is less well known, he is on a par with
Newton and Einstein. Unlike mechanics - the study of the motions of ordinary
objects - which was well understood and elegantly theorized by Newton and his
followers, electromagnetism was then in a chaotic state.
First a little There were a variety of different and often complicated laws dealing with
background
electricity and magnetism, which generally melted down to three key ones. The
electric force between two static (not moving) charges was the easy one - Auguste
Coulomb defined it in 1775, exactly mimicking Newton's Law of Universal
Gravitation.
Coulomb replaced the masses (m) by the charges (q) and the constant of
Gravitation (G) by a constant for electricity (k). The force of electricity, like the
force of gravity, varied as the square of the distance, indicating that it spread out
in straight lines. Coulomb carefully constructed an electric balance to assure that
this law fit the experimental data. Other than being either attractive or repulsive,
this force was very Newtonian.
Magnetic forces proved to be much more complicated. Magnets always come with
two poles locked together. The force between magnets does not spread out in
straight lines. And to make matters worse, by Maxwell's time, the magnetic force
was known to be produced by electricity. What was clear was that a new force,
the magnetic force, was generated when an electric object moved - a very un-
Newtonian notion. Andre Marie Ampere, in 1818, formulated a law describing the
force between two parallel wires carrying electricity.
It was a mutation of Newtonian laws; the force varied as the distance (d)
between the wires and not the square of the distance. And while the force was
proportional to the currents (I) in both wires, it was also a function of the length
of the wire (l). Things were getting messy.
Michael Faraday, a wonderful teacher, perhaps the greatest experimentalist of the

19th century, and the inventor of the dynamo, which produces nearly all of our
electricity, found that moving a magnet produced an electric current. His Law of
Induction was still generally Newtonian because it was still based on forces

between objects, but these forces no longer followed lines that were straight
(witness iron filings over a magnet) and Newtonian forces were straight lines. He
called these curves "lines of force," and their whole, the "magnetic flux." If it
flowed through a loop of wire and it produced a current in that loop. Faraday's
Law of Induction related the electric force (EMF) that produced a current in a wire
to the rate of change of this flux.
More than 75 years of attempts by world class physicists had produced these and
other laws of electricity and magnetism under the Newtonian umbrella. Each was
descriptive, based on a familiar pattern and not on a fundamental element. Each
was very different and generally unrelated to the others in its form, in the way it
looked, and in the way it worked. The result was complex and ugly.
The Electromagnetic Field
Maxwell opened his great paper "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field"
published in the fall of 1864:
The mechanical difficulties, however, which are involved in the

assumption of particles acting at a distance with forces which
depend on their velocities are such as to prevent me from
considering this theory as an ultimate one...
I have therefore preferred to seek an explanation of the fact in

another direction, by supposing them to be produced by actions
which go on in the surrounding medium as well as in the excited
bodies, and endeavouring to explain the action between distant
bodies without assuming the existence of forces capable of
acting directly at sensible distances.
Even without a His theory, today written in the simplified notation of vector Calculus with just four
background in
mathematics or equations, is so elegant and esteemed that we decal it on sweatshirts for college
physics you will students and babies. While the symbols used may appear foreign, the
be able to fundamental ideas can be appreciated by all of us, just as we can feel the wonder
appreciate the
beauty and the
of Beethoven's 9th Symphony even if we can't read a note or play an instrument.
simple of this
work. The theory I propose may therefore be called a theory of the
Electromagnetic Field, because it has to do with the space in the
neighbourhood of the electric or magnetic bodies, and it may be
called a Dynamical Theory, because it assumes that in that space
there is matter in motion, by which the observed
electromagnetic phenomena are produced.
A field is an The electromagnetic field is an environment - a continuum - spreading out in
environment. We
can describe it space. It is a "substance." Maxwell believed that this "ethereal medium" was real.
with vectors. While there are a variety of ways to imagine such an invisible medium that acts on
only electric and magnetic objects, if you think of this environment as an
atmosphere with winds which blow only electric and magnetic particles, then you
will have a good metaphor. This wind, this field, has a strength and a direction at
every place in this continuum. The field can be measured by placing an electric or
magnetic body at a point and plotting its direction and its magnitude. Imagine
filling the field with electric wind-vanes and magnetic compass needles, each
pointing in the direction of the field and varying in length to show the field's

strength. Such arrows are vectors, mathematical representations for both the
magnitude and direction of the fields.
In a simple case, a single charged particle produces an electric field radiating

spherically out from it, the electric field vectors all pointing straight from the
center like a pin cushion. This field produces a force on a charged particle along
that radiating vector. Even in this static case, the field proved a powerful idea
allowing Maxwell to no longer think of forces "acting at a distance" between the
charges, but instead, of forces as the result of a field generated by a charge acting
on another charge. Forces no longer needed to reach across space at infinite
speed. But it was in the dynamical situations with forces being produced by
motions that the power of this idea became apparent. The motions of electric
charges produce a magnetic field and the motions of magnets produce electric
fields.
The Calculus is The search for explanation and not just for description drives physics. The
the mathematics
of change, explanation of change is the heart of the matter. Whether it be motion or fields,
describing how the uniform is the starting point, the natural condition. The changing field, like the
fast something changing motion is where the action is. We explain it by connecting a cause to the
changes or how
much change has rate at which the change occurs. For Newton force was connected to
occurred. accelerations, for Maxwell, the cause was connected to a changing field. The rate
of change is the realm of the Calculus, invented by Newton and Leibniz, and
initially developed in one dimension along the path of the motion. But the field is
three-dimensional and fortunately by the 19th century the Calculus was extended
to rates of change in three dimensions using double and triple integrals and partial
differentials. You may have seen the "curly d" , perhaps on one of those
Maxwell sweatshirts, that represents the "partial" derivative, which is the rate of
change of a function with multiple dimensions in just one of those dimensions.
Thus a vector with three dimensions has three partial derivatives, one in each
direction.
Now the last Vector Calculus, developed soon after Maxwell's great work, greatly simplified the
piece of the
logical pattern -
model and the notation, enabling us to combine his original 20 equations into just
there are two four. A single symbol pronounced "del" represents the sum of all of these partial
different forms of derivatives in all three spatial dimensions. Finding the rate of change of a field is
change of the
vector field - just a matter of multiplying by the field. But vector multiplication unlike normal
Divergence and multiplication, generates two different kinds of products not one - the "dot"
Curl. product ( ) and the "cross product" ( ). The dot product of and a vector field
is a scalar, a number. It is so important in physics that it has its own name, the
"divergence," because it represents the change in a field generated by a point
source. Like the pincushion, this field diverges radially and never changing in
direction only in magnitude (weakening with distance as the sphere through which
it passes gets larger).
The cross product is a vector that we call the "curl." Like its name implies, this
field is always changing direction, turning or curling around its source. Returning
to our wind metaphor, if we blow from our mouths, we create a source and that
wind goes straight out, diverging and weakening as it gets further from our face.
Wind in nature, however, is always curling, rotating clockwise around highs and
counterclockwise around lows. We see it in dust devils, tornadoes and on a larger
scale in the satellite images of cloud formations and of hurricanes.
And 2 kinds of
fields:
There are two kinds of fields in electromagnetism, the Electric (E), and the
Electric Magnetic (B), (M is an already overused symbol in physics). Here, then, are the

Magnetic logically defined left sides of Maxwell's equations; the divergence and curl of the
electric and magnetic fields. There are four, and only four, possible forms. If the
field is fundamental then we should be able to connect this complete structure to
the experience of electricity and magnetism - to the descriptive laws of Coulomb,
Ampere, and Faraday, rewritten in terms of fields rather than forces. That is what
Maxwell did!
1. The first equation connects a diverging electric field radiating in space with
an electric charge. It restates Coulomb's Law.
2. The second defines a diverging magnetic field, which would be the result of
a magnetic "charge." But none has ever been found and thus the magnetic
divergence is set equal to zero.
3. The third links a circulating magnetic field, curling through space, with an
electric field changing with time (an electric current). It expands Ampere's
Law.
4. And the fourth ties a circulating electric field which would produce a
current in a loop of wire, with a magnetic field changing with time (a moving
magnet). It is Faraday's Law.
This is a Theory
The aim of science is, on the one hand, a comprehension as complete

as possible, of the connection between sense experiences in their
totality, and, on the other hand, the accomplishment of this aim by
the use of a minimum of primary concepts and relations.
Albert Einstein
It is a logical This is what a theory looks like. It is a logical system (the left side of Maxwell's
construction by Equations) - defined in this case by the unique mathematics of a new element, the
which a fastening
artifact defines
environment; which creates and connects a set of logical sites. When these
and connects fastening artifact sites are linked to the empirical sites - the patterns of
sites, to which the experience, then the theory encompasses and connects our experience. When that
sites and entities
of experience can
happens, the empirical sites become connected, fastened into a new unity, which
be linked. now brings uniqueness to our knowledge liberating us from the arbitrariness of the
experiential names for the sites and the pretense of their links. It is a very
powerful thing. We suddenly have a logical understanding, a model for our
experience drawn together by simplicity and the power of human thought. It is a
fastening artifact, the electromagnetic field, which has four dynamic forms that
now join together the experiential patterns. Each form of the fastening artifact is
connected to an empirical site (a well-defined collection of experience as described
in each law). And the fastening artifact, in its full glory, now links all of these
descriptive sites together into a unified picture.

The theory of The theory of knowledge fits this formula. It is constructed with a new element -
knowledge has
the same form. the artifact - and builds a logical structure for sites based on the forms of
uniqueness and thus the uniqueness of artifacts. We then linked those basic forms
to the descriptive Pattern of Knowledge - the empirical sites. And by that action,
the unique artifact brings a fundamental and beautiful unity to this pattern. No
longer are the sites or their names arbitrary. No longer do we wonder if this
pattern is unique. No longer do we wonder why it exists. For we have a theory, a
theory that connects the sites we pulled from experience by linking them to a
unique purely logical form.
There are three and only three forms of uniqueness: difference, sameness,
matching. With these three forms we construct the three elements of knowledge
and only three: entities based on difference, sites based on sameness, and
fasteners based on matching. We can further differentiate these elements based
on uniqueness: the entities into singular and plural (difference and sameness), the
sites into parts and wholes (difference and sameness), and the fasteners into
connections, relations, and transformations (difference, matching, sameness). We
build knowledge by starting with a unique entity, a template and tool
fundamentally different from any other: a symbol, a universal, an object, an
environment, and now an artifact. We fashion with it our individual entities, from
which we choose a few unique ones to become sites that group and collect the
others, and finally, from a unique site we build a fastener that connects the other
sites together. This is how we construct knowledge. And when we lay out all of
the possible forms, they build the structure of the Pattern of Knowledge.
I hope that you now find that all of those mysterious symbols in Maxwell's
Equations were worth following. For without seeing them, it is difficult to really
understand how simple and yet powerful a great theory can be, and how we build
them. I apologize to those physicists who may complain that I have left out some
of the fine detail. There is a bit more pattern that in this short work, I have
deleted. But the essence is here and I hope that you can see why Einstein loved it
so; and why, though a full understanding and more importantly a useful
application of a theory may be complicated, its basic elements are so very simple.
Without a theory the way we name and unify a pattern of knowledge is quite
arbitrary. I had all of the elements of the Pattern of Knowledge by the mid-1970's,
but I did not publish. The names I used for each of the forms were arbitrary; they
came from the best description of the empirical content and did not represent any
theoretical-logical meaning. I did not publish because I did not want the wrong
names, the mislabeling of these ideas, and so I struggled with the theory to get
the names right. When we create sites outside of theory, we get interesting names
like those which label Quarks - color, flavor, up, down. Without theory we make
up names and hope that they illuminate. Without theory we cannot change our
vision of experience. Without theory we do not extend our ideas.
This started it all Before we start to follow our theory of knowledge into new and uncharted
for me.
territory, let us linger for just a moment longer at the wonder of Maxwell. In my
favorite passage in all of the literature of physics and the one that more than any
other single thing enabled me to understand the great leap of Maxwell and the
others in the 1860's, Einstein describes the genius of Maxwell's contribution.

Neglecting the important individual result which Maxwell's
lifework produced in important departments of physics, and
concentrating on the changes wrought by him in our conception
of the nature of physical reality, we may say this: before
Maxwell people conceived of physical reality -- in so far as it is
supposed to represent events in nature -- as material points,
whose changes consist exclusively of motions, which are subject
to total differential equations. After Maxwell they conceived of
physical reality as represented by continuous fields, not
mechanically explicable, which are subject to partial differential
equations. This change in the conception of physical reality is
the most profound and fruitful one that has come to physics
since Newton....
Einstein & Infeld, The Evolution of Physics, 1938, Norton
Theories Take Us Further

They connect Beyond the sense of completeness and clarity that Maxwell's unification brought to
aspects of
experience that laws of electricity and magnetism now directly tied together, his theory also
are totally produced some exciting surprises and totally unexpected results. Not only did his
unexpected. theory join together Coulomb's, Ampere's, and Faraday's laws, but it made sense
of and integrated many other electrical phenomena including capacitance. And in
one great and totally unexpected result, a direct extrapolation of these equations -
Maxwell joined light to electricity and magnetism and paved the way not only for
an understanding of light, but also for the development of radio, all of our
electronics, and our electromagnetic communications. Our theory of knowledge, if
it is powerful, should extend to other parts of knowledge that were not included in
the development of the theory and provide us with some wonderful surprises.
Invention by Children - Piaget's Stages
There is only one set of tools for constructing artifacts.

Children use it as well as adults, and we see it in Piaget's
Stages of the development of knowledge by children.
Unique Artifacts Thanks to Jean Piaget, we know a lot about how children construct knowledge.
apply to children as
well as to adults and His stages of development of knowledge are well documented in children across
explains the stages a wide variety of societies and cultures. The sensori-motor stage runs from birth
of Piaget. to 2, at which point most children begin to speak in sentences and become pre-
operational. At about 6 years of age, children become concrete operational and
are able to apply and use standard operations on symbols and conventional
classification. Lastly, between 12 and 14, children become formal operational
and start to use logic, abstract metaphor, and formal reasoning. If we look at
the new things children do at the onset of each of these stages with the

inventions at the start of the periods of knowledge, the connection between the
pattern of knowledge in children and in human history is plain.
Concrete Operations
Concrete operations At the onset of concrete operations, children's learning explodes suddenly. They
uses plural symbols -
empire knowledge "get" reading, going from words to sentences nearly overnight; they learn do
meets 6 year-olds mathematics, count to any numbers, add and subtract, tell time, follow
calendars, understand sophisticated classification, play their own and adult
games with complex rules, and work together in large organized groups on
major projects. They even draw with standard methods, often that they invent,
and they draw full-featured human faces and figures in profile or frontal poses.
These knowledges match those of the empires. It is uncanny how close the
resemblance is. The inventions are the same!
The inventions are the same because the tools are the same - both concrete
operational children and "empire" adults use plural symbols to construct
knowledge, symbols based on sameness. We can teach concrete operational
children to read and write because they can use a few symbols, common
elements, to represent all words. They invent well-defined representations in
their drawings because these are visual underlying symbols that remain the
same throughout a wide variety of pictures. They can do mathematics because
they can use number and operation, categorical symbols, and see these same
elements as common to anything that is countable. And they can play rule-
based games because games are built on symbols, fastened by rules which are
entirely independent of the players. A quarterback is a position and a type of
player, and an touchdown is a well defined rule for the interaction of these
players. We could, in fact, call concrete operations the game phase. Concrete
Operations is the use of rules on symbols. To have rules, symbols must be
constructed on sameness; they must represent a class or category. Thus the
knowledge constructed or learned by 6 to 12-year-old children and by the
empires appears, and is, fundamentally the same.
Formal Operations
Formal operations is Formal operational children search for truths; construct proofs, attempt to build
singular universals -
Greek knowledge logical systems, use variables, and start to argue formally and universally. Their
and 13 year-olds entry into formal operations is accompanied by explosive growth. They change
before our eyes both physically and mentally; suddenly making arguments and
explanations that are adult-like abstractions; they enter into conversations about
religion, society, evolution, politics, and all manner of philosophical subjects.
They can make and follow a long, logical argument. They can learn to solve
logical puzzles, and they can use variables. We can teach them to prove
geometric theorems, to be critics of essays, and to understand abstract
metaphors. Their inventions, their interests, and their reactions are very much
like those of the early Polis Greeks. They are formal operational, they use
universals instead of symbols, seeking truths and logical meaning.
The universal enables formalisms, proofs, logic, abstractions, theories, and, of

course, true metaphor where an entire idea is given broader meaning,
universality, by being associated with a new word. Like the Polis Greeks, the
world of logic for formal operational children starts with singular universals,
absolute truths, and individual visions of themselves and their world. They

become very independent, creating their own rules of behavior which they
consider logical. They form identities separate from the family, around local
universals, local "guilds," joining gangs, and forming small but very strongly
defined groups. And they love making new rules for society- formed to be just,
ideal, and equitable. This is the singular universal as the unique artifact for
constructing knowledge.
Pre-Operations
Pre-operations is We do not find it at all odd that developmental psychologists call the pre-
singular symbols -
tribal knowledge and
operational period "the magic years." Most children burst into language between
2 year-olds. two and two-and-a-half-years; jumping, nearly overnight, from using just a
handful of individual words to speaking in sentences with rapidly expanding
vocabularies. They tell stories, develop rituals, believe in magic, make up names,
fashion fantasies, recognize traffic signs, become fascinated with familial
relationship and kinship systems, and create elaborate magical formulas and
mythical explanation for all sorts of things. They construct stories and
explanations that are "magic" and ignore the constraints of the real world. They
personify objects and natural forces, telling us "the thunder is angry." They
confound fantasy and reality, cause and effect (the clouds make the wind). And
they invent names out actions. Their magic orientation, their new capabilities,
and their inventions- including their art - look just like those of the tribal
societies. They are using symbols for the first time, and whether their symbols
are borrowed or invented, they are recreating the world. While their language
certainly has a mimicry component, must of their syntax is of their own
invention. Their creations and actions and those of tribal peoples are very similar
in form and in kind. They even like to dress-up, decorate, engage in socio-
dramatic play, and tell action stories.
Children and Adults - The Connection

Knowledge building This connection between the development of knowledge in children and the
in children and
adults follow the
historical development of knowledge is not, definitely not, part of that weary
same pattern ontogeny-phylogeny debate. The issue isn't one of recapitulation, but rather that
because both are the pattern to the development of knowledge in both children and in intellectual
based on the same
tools - that is - the history is constructed with the same tools. Children and adults construct
same theory applies knowledges that are fundamentally the same, because the sequence of unique
to each. entities and entities, sites and fasteners that both use is based on uniqueness
and cannot diverge. Thus, the patterns we find in their respective development
of knowledge must be the same. The Unique Artifacts theory applies to the
construction of knowledge by children just as it applies to the construction of
knowledge by adults.
What is different, of course, is the nature of the knowledge that is constructed.

Children replicate the adult construction of physical artifacts; they make
pictures, build block buildings, dress up, cook pretend food, dig ditches in the
sand, carve shapes in clay, and invent all kinds of things that mimic our adult
creations. But they do not create the kinds of wonderful, complex, and
profoundly beautiful artifacts that adults do. They may build knowledge artifacts
out of the same kinds of tools, but they do not build the same qualities of
knowledge. They do not have the patience, maturity, or skills to do so. It is no

different for conceptual artifacts than it is for physical artifacts, the tools and the
types are the same, but the results are different. What is clear is that forms of
these artifacts, no matter how crude or fine, are totally dependent upon the
tools that are being used, and these tools follow the same, the exact same,
patterns of uniqueness. The unique artifacts from which humans construct
knowledge are the elements of all knowledge.
Children seem to have natural mental maturations at Piaget's key ages, and if
their society has enabling entities, they naturally jump to the next step. Indeed,
if we were to analyze the development of knowledge in children more carefully,
we would actually find the same pattern of phases we found in historical
knowledge. These are not fully delineated in Piaget's work, but they are not
difficult to articulate when we look at how and what we teach children at each
grade level or at how they behave before formal schooling.
Sensori-Motor
The Sensori-motor I did leave out the definition of a phase that exists in children but does not have
stage is pre-symbolic
and does not have a a counterpart in the Pattern of Knowledge. Sensori-motor is the stage from just
comparable phase in after birth to about 2 years of age and the one Piaget initially studied. It is the
the Pattern of stage before formal language, where words are things and drawings are
Knowledge.
scribbles. It must represent a different entity, one that I call signals. A symbol is
a name for an experience, a signal is that experience: hunger, thirst, fear, joy.
It may come from the external world to be dealt with or it may emanate from
inside the organism as an expression. For most children up to 2 years-of-age,
words are such signals, as is crying or laughing or making signs with their
hands. Their art works are signals, like so many of their physical actions. This
entity was undoubtedly used by our pre-symbolic ancestors, and likely underlies
learned animal behavior in chimps, dogs, horses, and other species. While
signals, particularly shared signals can be complex; they are limited in number
because each represents a single action or sequence of actions. Trained
primates seem to be limited to about 250 signals. Though a new entity, it
follows the same sequence of phases as the other entities - phases that can,
with minor variations, be connected to Piaget's stages of sensori-motor
development.
Children & Knowledge

Sensori-Motor Plural Signs
Pre-Operations Singular Symbols
Concrete Operations Plural Symbols
Formal Operations Universals

Invention by Adults - Thought and Knowledge
Unique Psychology, established a little over 100 years ago as a separate discipline, rapidly
Artifacts
applies to grew beyond its initial study of the way individuals behaved in different physical
thought as environments. It quickly accrued cognitive development, abnormal behavior, and
well as to learning theory, which had been elements of either philosophy or medicine during
epistemology.
its first two decades, and it has continued to add interesting parts of other
disciplines, like linguistics from the humanities, or build new disciplines like
cybernetics. Psychology has been the vibrant discipline of the 20th century. Today
we learn about thinking in courses mixing behavioral psychology, the learning
process, human development, the nature of language, and advanced programming
and the visual display of information. We do not learn about thought in connection
with knowledge. And while Piaget and his followers may describe themselves as
epistemologists, they do not connect the study of thinking and intellectual history.
Detached from philosophy, cognition severed its ties to knowledge.
And there it remains today, thought and knowledge in separate realms, considered
to be completely different, studied in different disciplines, and virtually unrelated.
Obviously this cannot be the case. Perhaps it is time to extract knowledge from
philosophy and thought from psychology; to bring them together into a new
discipline. While this short work is not the place to indulge in a thorough analysis of
thought and its connection to knowledge; we should, before we conclude, look at a
few familiar elements of cognition and their obvious connection with unique artifacts
and thus with knowledge as a means to illuminate both. I am convinced that there
should be no fundamental separation between thought and knowledge - that the
way we construct artifacts and the artifacts we construct are fundamentally
connected.
We can tie the tools for constructing knowledge to

the standard types of cognition, Bloom’s Taxonomy.
We have only one set of tools for constructing
artifacts. Thought and knowledge are connected!
Thought
I know of no comparable pattern of thought in adults to Piaget's stages. The closest
thing to even a list is Benjamin Bloom's Taxonomy of Cognitive Objectives developed
by a committee of educators and scholars headed by Bloom and published in 1956.
Bloom listed six stages of thought- knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis,
synthesis, evaluation- a comprehensive hierarchy, as we would expect from a
pattern developed in a wholistic relations phase. The last three of his objectives,
Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation, were drummed into our teacher heads as the most
important aspect of what we were to do with kids, the higher order thinking skills!
Much of the focus of today's educational curricular reform can be traced to this
Taxonomy. And while, it is not at all clear that the Bloom Taxonomy is a complete
description of the tools we use to think, it provide us with a much needed and well-
established pattern that we can work with. We will start with the higher order skills,
and return to look at the complete pattern which has, I find, an interesting structure.

Analysis Analysis is the act of differentiating. Bloom describes it using verbs like - compare,
contract, differentiate, discriminate, examine, experiment. Analysis is a fundamental
cognitive process because it is the search for difference. Whenever we take apart
something, be it ideas or physical objects we are either creating or looking for
difference. This is the act of cutting up experience. It is not difficult to see that our
tool - analysis - is based on the uniqueness form - difference.
Twilight is a good time for us to see how the world looks to babies and to see how
we come to analyze a section of experience for the first time. If there is just that
right level of darkness after it has gotten just dark enough for our color cones to no
longer work well and while there is just enough light to enable us to still discern
shapes if we work at it. And if we are in a new place, perhaps driving down a
highway or waking in a strange room in the middle of the night. And if we are
suddenly brought to attend and look out at that world, we catch a glimpse of
unrecognizable experience. We suddenly do not know what we are looking at.
Everything seems strange.
We start to stare at things, to try to make out shapes. We look for edges; we search
for differences to start building shapes. We cut out a form here, and then another
there, looking for something we recognize. Once we have constructed a few of these
entities by difference, we usually know where we are and the rest of the vaporous
shapes fall into a pattern. But it is in that first few seconds that we can see our
minds at work. We can see how the infant begins to shape their world. And we can
see what we do when we analyze anything. We look for edges, for discontinuities,
for differences, and we begin to construct artifacts from that experience by cutting it
up. Thus analysis is the thinking process we use to create entities, the basic artifacts
fashioned by difference.
Synthesis Bloom describes synthesis with words like - arrange, assemble, categorize, organize,
plan - the act of putting things together. To synthesize is to find sameness, to collect
common artifacts, to build patterns, even taxonomies. It is the opposite of analysis
just as sameness is the opposite of difference. Here are the two form of uniqueness
- difference and sameness- playing such a fundamental role in cognition.
When we synthesize knowledge, we are literally finding sameness. While in everyday

language we may talk of synthesis as both the collection of things and the making of
theories, we will, as Bloom did, connect it to the former. A synthesis is the making of
a collection, the finding of a pattern. In our language it is the construction of sites. It
is thus fashioning using sameness. When we synthesize, we make a new container
for our experience, grouping disparate experiences into a single unified artifact. We
do so by looking for what is the same in that collection.
Evaluation At first glance, evaluation does not seem to fit our pattern. And perhaps there is a
better word for what it is we do at this level of thought. But when we look again at
the descriptive verbs that Bloom uses- attach, judge, evaluate, argue - words that
we connect to fastening, to the linking of artifacts into a theory. When we create
theory, we explain, we give reason, we join, we integrate. It is theory that allows us
to evaluate. For in evaluation we are making a match and matching is the third form
of uniqueness. It is the fastening artifact that connects our world together that
enables us to join disparate experiences and the act of doing that is in essence an
act of evaluation. That is why Bloom and his group have chosen this odd word, and
that is why it is based on matching.

The higher order skills of Bloom's Taxonomy, the cognitive skills that most of us
would agree our young must learn and master, are based on exactly the same forms
of uniqueness, as are the fundamental artifacts of knowledge, entities, sites, and
fasteners. Analysis, synthesis, and evaluation are based on difference, sameness,
and matching. When we analyze we seek differences, when we synthesize we seek
sameness, and when we evaluation we seek matches.
The Whole It is not surprising that uniqueness plays this essential role in cognition. We would
Pattern
hope not to find a fundamental separation between knowledge and cognition, but we
can now see that they are constructed on the same basic forms. As I said earlier, the
full pattern of Bloom's Taxonomy, which includes knowledge, comprehension, and
application, is fascinating. If we now go back and look at the first three stages -
knowledge, comprehension, application - we notice that they look surprisingly similar
to what we have already done. When we create knowledge (in Bloom's use of the
term, actually factual knowledge), we define, label, name, recognize; in other words
we differentiate. And when we comprehend, we classify, select, describe; we are
collecting and finding sameness. And finally, when we apply, link, connect, use; we
are matching disparate ideas. Knowledge, comprehension, and application, like
analysis, synthesis, and evaluation are our use of difference, sameness, and
matching.
Taxonomy Uniqueness
---------- Singular
Knowledge Difference
Comprehension Sameness
Application Matching
---------- Plural
Analysis Difference
Synthesis Sameness
Evaluation Matching
The first group applies to singular experiences and the second to plural
experiences. Thus the second group of stages appear to us to be much higher
order thinking skills because they apply to much more complex ideas. With good
reason we reserve teaching them to our middle school students and above. And
with good reason the forward pedagogical thinkers emphasize them in a
curriculum that has too often, simplistically, focused on the most minuscule parts
in an attempt to make evaluation easy. But when we look at both sets from the
standpoint of Unique Artifacts, we see them as the same, the tools to construct
artifacts based on difference, sameness, and matching. These are clearly the
essential tools of cognition. They are intimately connected to entities, sites, and
fasteners. Knowledge and analysis construct entities. Comprehension and
synthesis construct sites. Application and evaluation construct fasteners. They are
the same because thought like knowledge is the fashioning of unique artifacts.

Inventing the Elements
Simplicity
'Tis the gift to be simple, 'Tis the gift to be free;

'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be;
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd
To turn, turn will be our delight,
'Til by turning, turning, we come round right.
Elder Joseph Brackett (1797-1882) Simple Gifts c.1875
The odd This wonderful old Shaker song seems so at odds with the real world, much as the
dichotomy
Shaker's themselves were with the rest of 19thcentury America. The world is
complex, broad, and multifaceted. We expect theories to be complicated and large.
Our disciplines are driven by great organizations - numerous practitioners jointly
sign new works, large scale funding is required to advance the state of the art, and
we have the belief that significant new knowledge will come out of massive
collaborations, “Manhattan Projects." And while we may yearn for simpler times, as
did the Shakers, we are generally unshaken in our belief in the complexity of our
world.
Yet there are a few bits and pieces which should cause us to pause. When we listen
to those who worked with the great thinkers, Einstein, Bohr, Fermi, we are told of
their most special qualities, the ability to ask simple questions. We love the child-
like nature of Picasso, of Richard Feynman, of Linus Pauling. And when we describe
people as child-like we are most often describing their essential simplicity. It does
seem odd that often the deepest quality of great inventors should be described in
these ways. Just maybe, that old Shaker prayer really does express something truly
profound.
Simplicity- An We can get a better sense of this by looking at our most prominent physical
Auto Example
artifacts, automobiles. The Model A Ford, introduced in 1928, was wonderfully
simple, indeed it was much simpler and easier to use than its predecessor the
Model T. Perhaps the first truly modern car - it was manufacturable, had all of the
same components as today's cars, and was designed to be cheap and easy to
assemble. When we try to restore one, we see all of the parts that are still
fundamental to today's cars. Compared to our automobiles, its parts were much
simpler, but it was actually more complex to construct. Despite the great strides we
have made in the sophistication of our automobiles, we have actually made them
simpler to put together. The roof of the Model A was fabric, covering metal cross
bars, screwed, clipped, nailed, and hooked into the body. Compared to a modern
car with a single stamped welded roof, it was very complex with many parts.
Starting my son's Model A requires turning on the gas valve, setting the spark
advance, the choke, and the idle speed, pumping the gas petal, turning on the key,
holding in the clutch, and pressing the starter button with your foot. Starting my

Saab requires turning the key.
We no longer make a separate body and frame (chassis) of a car, but instead mold
them together in giant presses of the same steel. We no longer make the
floorboards of the car from multiple pieces of plywood carefully cut to shape, but of
a single sheet of molded steel. The parts of a modern car are certainly much more
sophisticated than those of the Model A, they are no longer machinable or fixable
by a home mechanic, but the overall construction is actually simpler. The
automobile companies make it easier and cheaper to put together.
The history of the automobile is a mirror of the history of knowledge. The first
horseless carriages were very simple affairs, equivalent to a golf cart. As they
became automobiles, they grew more and more complex with new parts added
year after year, lights, brakes, doors, locks, transmissions, reverse, electric starters,
fuel pumps, heaters, automatic transmissions, and on and on. At first, each of these
new parts was just added on, effectively bolted onto the machine. Thus the trunk
was actually a wooden "truck" that could be found in any home, strapped to the
rear of the car. Then came an integration, when separate parts were collected into
a new part or anew whole. The car looked different, worked differently, and was
manufactured in a new way. The Model A was such a car. The pattern follows an
increasing complex collection being replaced by more complex and sophisticated
elements and more highly integrated wholes. The automobile industry has just been
through another such cycle, today producing a car that is much better built and
much more satisfying to drive then those of the 1970's and '80's.
Simplicity and It is the same with conceptual artifacts and the Pattern of Knowledge. We start
Knowledge
simply; build complexity taking in more and more parts and more and more
experience. The sites and fasteners become complicated. We then invent new
fundamental elements greatly simplifying the sites and fasteners.
Simplicity is the This is exactly what happens when a new element of knowledge is invented. It can
answer to an
interesting hold much more, and it can contain a much wider variety of experience. It enables
question about us to greatly simplify our constructions, the building of other artifacts. Simplicity is
the elements of the answer to an important question. Why do so many, but not all, of the greatest
knowledge.
ideas appear at the biggest changes in the "Pattern of Knowledge?" Why did the
revolutions of the 7th century, of the 1500's and the 1860's produce so many new
and fundamental works? It is because such new fundamental elements enable great
simplifications in our knowledges.
The new element is more powerful, more sophisticated, capable of holding much
more. And the fasteners are so much simpler. It makes our world look simple and
understandable. Once such an element is fashioned, it creates the potential for such
vast simplification that it opens the floodgates to invention and with lightning speed
passes from discipline to discipline.
While at first blush, we may think of a new element, as complicated, as difficult, as

sophisticated, as hard to create; as we come to understand it, we see it as
profoundly simple. We stop seeing what it took to construct this element and begin
to see it as our essential building block. It is more abstract, and harder to get our

arms around initially, but as we do learn to understand it, we see its essential
simplicity and how it simplifies the world around us.
We thus do treasure simplicity as the Shakers did.
Parsimony
One comes nearer to the most superior scientific goal, to embrace

a maximum of experimental content through logical deduction
from a minimum of hypotheses.
(Albert Einstein)
Uniqueness The search for simplicity is fundamental to the work of our scientists and
implies rarity, philosophers. It is described as parsimony. The quest for parsimony seems to be at
which explains the heart of the invention of knowledge by its greatest inventors. Over and over
why parsimony is
so important in again they have told us that they follow Ockham's Razor, the fewer the propositions
knowledge. and the simpler the foundations, the closer knowledge comes to the "truth." Nearly
unanimously they viewed their task as the creation of unity using the fewest
assumptions.
Unique Artifacts turns this personal philosophy into a fundamental postulate - a

general philosophical principle. For the very essence of uniqueness is parsimony. To
be unique is to be rare, and we postulate that the invention of human knowledge is
the fashioning of unique artifacts. Therefore, unique artifacts must indeed be very
rare. Parsimony is the essence of our belief that a construction is in fact unique,
that another artifact cannot be built which will have fewer assumptions and unite
the same experience. Parsimony gives us great confidence that our fastening
artifacts are rare and thus unique. That is why our greatest thinkers use the fewest
possible assumptions. That is why it is futile to try to devise a new field theory of
gravitation to replace General Relativity. If the assumptions are few then we have a
high level of certainty that the idea is unique.
Fastening artifacts are very precious. We invest great effort and energy into them.
We reorganize our cognitive world based on them. We concentrate research on
them. We extend them, building an entire scaffolding of knowledge upon them. And
we teach them to our children with proper diligence. We humans are knowledge
conservative; we do not change our knowledge or belief systems readily - it takes
too much effort. It is thus very important that the fastening artifacts we choose be
unique, that we will not have to reorder our knowledges, particularly our
fundamental concepts, very often. Therefore, we search for parsimony as a
powerful vector to uniqueness. It is this drive for uniqueness that motivates the
search for the fewest and the simplest set of assumptions upon which to build
works. This demand for uniqueness underlies the greatest of our theories, the best
of our art works, as well as the most beautiful of our physical artifacts.
Parsimony, a simplicity of assumptions, the use of the fewest possible foundation

concepts, is the expression of uniqueness in thought. We love simplicity and
parsimony because we crave uniqueness and we believe that fastening artifacts are
unique when they are simple.

Abstraction
Uniqueness Abstraction has proven to be a very powerful and yet very elusive idea. While we
explains the shifts
between the use it all of the time to describe thought, we never seem to get a full grasp of it.
Elements - Uniqueness provides a measure of clarity. The abstractness and uniqueness of
symbols, artifacts are clearly connected. The more abstract an artifact is, the broader its
universals,
objects, reach and the more likely it is to be unique. When we think, we try to construct the
environments, largest idea that we can to hold our experiences, for that idea will necessarily be
artifacts. rarer, more unique. It will also be more abstract. We are always trying to replace
many entities with fewer entities, many sites with fewer sites, many fasteners with
fewer fasteners. We try to make larger artifacts that will replace a multiplicity of
smaller ones. Such larger artifacts, further from individual experiences because they
encompass greater quantities, are more abstract. Our drive to uniqueness is
necessarily a drive toward abstraction.
We often confuse and denigrate the abstract, when we are given a generalization
as an explanation. It is common for people to say - "It is the environment. “It is
human nature." - and for us to feel that we have been told nothing useful. This is
no more mysterious than the difference between a complete physical artifact and
one that is just beginning to take shape. The unfinished project may appear
wonderful to the artisan, because their finished vision is clear. But for the rest of us
that vision must be fully constructed. So it is, for the artifacts of our imaginations.
They must be fully constructed for us to appreciate and accept them. Thus a broad
generalization is not necessarily an abstract artifact, unless it is complete.
Abstraction explains the differences between the artifacts developed by children and
adults, even when they are based on the same unique entities. The adult's artifacts,
generally richer in experience, are more abstract than the child's. They are thus
more unique and more powerful. While superficially the artifacts seem the same,
upon closer examination they will show substantial differences in abstraction. As our
minds grow stronger and our experience increases, we seek artifacts that are more
abstract for they are more unique as vessels for larger quantities of experience.
In this same vein, abstraction helps us to better understand the differences

between everyday artifacts and the great human artifacts. They differ in
abstraction, in the quantity of experience they can hold. The great human artifacts
are abstract; they are models for other artifacts. Of course, they must be finished,
and they must be complete. The difference in abstraction is thus the difference in
uniqueness. Abstraction is a measure of uniqueness.
Now, finally, we return to those artifacts that started our quest, the unique entities
(symbols, universals, objects, environments, and now artifacts). These elements of
knowledge are also the greatest abstractions that we have. And it is of great
interest that our most powerful abstractions should only come in these few forms.
At its most fundamental, abstraction must then not continuous. It must have
discrete levels. We build abstraction on the broadest scale in large and singular
steps. Symbols, universals, objects, environments, and now artifacts are the most
abstract and the most unique ideas that we have. Each is the next largest idea that
encompasses the previous one. We can make environments bigger and bigger,
more and more abstract; but if we are to construct an element that is different, that
enables simplification and not just greater abstraction; then our invention jumps a
significant level of abstraction. Each of these Unique Elements is fundamentally

different from the other. Each is a new stage of abstraction.
Here we come to a crucial point. There are two great engines driving thought,
simplification and abstraction. We seek to construct ideas that are simpler and thus
more unique. And we seek to construct ideas that are more abstract and thus more
unique. Artifacts are unique when they are different and when they are the same.
When we seek simplicity we are searching for difference. When we seek abstraction
we are looking for sameness. The essential tools for the construction of knowledge,
sameness and difference are also the essential tools that drive thought. To simplify
is to group together, to fashion sameness in our artifacts. To abstract is to
differentiate, to separate, to define a difference from other artifacts.
This combination of simplification and abstraction is the basis for the unique
entities. Each is more abstract that the previous one. Each produces a great
simplification. Without simplification, abstraction only leads to complexity. And
without abstraction, simplification leads to triviality. These ideas are the heart of
thought because they are the fundamental unique elements of thought in the
construction of singular artifacts.
Incredible as this may seem, it provides us with an explanation for the unique
entities. We commonly think of concrete to abstract as a continuum, but when
artifacts are most fundamental, their abstractness comes in very discrete packages.
Abstraction also helps us to understand the shifts in the unique entities from
symbols, to universals, to objects, to environments, and now to artifacts in the
Pattern of Knowledge. The sequence is growth in abstractness of our fundamental
elements. Each is the next level of uniquely abstract entity. Each element allows a
new level of abstraction, a new unique step in the capacity of our artifacts to hold
experience. And each brings with it a new level of unity.
And here, finally, we return to the beginning of this work, where we found the
fundamental elements that produced the great periods of knowledge. These
elements - Symbols, Universals, Objects, Environments, and now Artifacts- are the
basis for knowledge, the templates upon which we design the artifacts we use, the
forms for the entities and thus the forms for all of the artifacts. They are the very
essence of our knowledge, the most fundamental building blocks. We have already
said that each is unique, fundamentally different from the others. And now we can
say why.
Each new element is unique because it is different from the one that came before
it. Each element is unique because it is a union of the one that came before it,
collecting all of those that came before it as the same. Each is unique because it is
different, fundamentally different from those that came before it.
Thus we can fashion ever increasingly complex environments, adding more and
more, larger and larger environments together, but we fail to produce increased
uniqueness or even increased abstraction. For to create fundamentally new
uniqueness we have to construct a new kind of artifact, a new element. It must be
different from those that came before and yet include them. Such are the unique
elements.
Now, since we have made one, why can't we construct others? We have the
formula! We have the formula - but unlike singular, plural, parts, wholes, and

connections, relations, transformations - the unique entities do not form a regular,
repetitive pattern that we can apply an algorithm to. The unique entities are free
inventions, we cannot imagine the next one until we have used, fully explored the
current one. We make a new one by fashioning a union of the old ones and then
creating something fundamentally different. That is what makes them unique. This
last is an invention, an act of creation, and we have been witness to a history of
new invention that cannot leapfrog the pattern.
We can thus predict the pattern of knowledge in broad brush for the artifact period,
but we cannot construct it out of sequence. And we shall have to wait until this
period is complete before we will find what it is that will govern the knowledge
building of the next. We need not at all fear that we can see the end of our
construction of knowledge. Indeed it is just beginning. And it remains, as it has
always been, an act of profound and wonderful invention.
The Great Surprise - Connecting Science and Art
I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to
have been only like a small boy playing on the seashore, diverting
myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell
than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered
before me.
(Isaac Newton c.1727)
This is an Powerful theories always produce wonderful surprises; connections not expected
extraordinary
result, totally and often far from the main thrust of the theories themselves. This is because
unexpected, and theories and explanations bring more order and broader connections than the
potentially of original patterns these constructions sought to unify. Sometimes, like the
great import.
connection between light, electricity and magnetism in Maxwell's theory of the
Electromagnetic Field, these surprises are almost immediately apparent.
Sometimes they lay hidden and emerge slowly, as did the Black Hole hypothesis
from Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. For me, the Unique Artifacts theory
produced a startling surprise - a connection between science and art.
The realms of science and art have been separated since the Greek revolution- the
one logical and dedicated to the search for universal truths; the other mysterious,
affective, and dedicated to the search for beauty. Science has traditionally been
viewed as objective, representing the rules of the external world, while art has
been personal, portraying the individual artist’s perspective on a reality full of
emotional overtones. And while all art can be said to replicate reality, even the
most "realistic" represents a personal vision of that reality. Today, science seems
to be getting more logical and rigid in its attempt to form its consensus on the way
the world works. At the same time, the arts seem to be moving further and further
away from what we think of as reality in their search in "abstraction” for collective
visions. Of course, there have been attempts to make art scientific; like the works
of George Seurat, Alexander Calder, and M. C. Escher. And the sciences may from

time to time lean on artistic metaphors as in the choices of names like "quark" and
"charm" in particle physics, and the efforts by Hermann Weyl and others to focus
on symmetry. But no one would confuse the two, or even claim that either has
much to learn from the other.
A Few Incongruities
Why is it that Yet, if we begin to look for connections between the arts and sciences, we do find
aesthetics playa
role in scientific
odd points of correspondence. The great theories in the sciences, particularly in
theory building? physics, are often described aesthetically, as beautiful and elegant. The invention
process in the sciences is described by the great scientists not in logical terms, but
rather in words like intuition, guess, feels right, elegance, that we associate with
the arts. Certainly these links are tenuous threads across what is a great gulf. But
they are anomalies, and it is in such odd occurrences - which poorly fit our models
- that we often find reasons to rethink fundamental assumptions. Nor should we
forget that the Pattern of Knowledge dramatically links inventions in the arts with
those of the sciences, suggesting that these great domains may indeed be much
more tightly connected then we might have imagined.
Decoration
Why is it that we Art and aesthetics have always been a major part of being human. We take it for
human beings are
so artistic and so
granted that, as a species, we are artistic. From the earliest times, humans have
decorative? decorated their clothing, painted and tattooed themselves, drawn on cave walls,
scribed rocks, carved stone, and made trinkets and icons of bone and other
materials. Most assuredly, like contemporary tribal peoples, the earliest humans
must have decorated most everything. Even the Neanderthals decorated their
graves.
It seems odd, when we really consider it, that so much time and energy should
have gone into decoration. If evolution is only about survival and procreation, then
what is the value of all of this decoration? Why, if we are fighting "tooth and claw"
for food and shelter, do we have an aesthetic sense that we work so hard on? I
even believe, that while the cause and effect can be argued, the most successful
tribal peoples were those that produced the finest decoration. They seem to have
often been the most powerful, the most prosperous, the most inventive, and
generally the dominant societies. We are so taken with both the quality and the
quantity of decoration that we consistently credit it to religious purposes. But the
pervasiveness of decoration - the connection between fine art and successful
survival, and the huge investment that humans have put into aesthetic activity -
certainly suggests that there is much more to our interest in beauty than we
generally acknowledge. It must be a matter of survival!
Inventing Theories
Why is it that we The literature on scientific invention is filled with both autobiographical comments
know, nearly
instantly, when and first hand reports of the process of invention. The common and striking aspect
an idea is right? of these reports could be called "instant knowing." Most discoverers tell us that
they knew they were right almost immediately. They had been on a long search
when suddenly - whether walking in a field, sitting under an apple tree, waking
from a dream, or experiencing a revelation while stepping off a streetcar - they
saw the idea, the theory, the model, and instantly knew it was right.

Those who had the magical opportunity to be among the first to study new
inventions often replicate the reaction; the instantaneous sense of rightness. And
from both the inventors and the scholars, the universal sense of "knowing" a
theory is correct and "seeing" that it is beautiful, is pervasive. When the 1919
eclipse results matched Einstein's General Relativity prediction, Arthur Eddington,
when asked what he would have done if they had not, replied: "Then I would have
been sorry for the dear Lord - the theory is correct." We determine rightness very
rapidly. We do not initially rely on tests or on careful consideration - but on
intuition, on a sense of beauty, on aesthetic qualities.
Inventing Artifacts
How do we know We invent artifacts constantly, throw most of them away, and fashion and perfect
a unique artifact?
We know it by its very few of them. We are constantly bombarded by the artifacts of others, and we
beauty. cling to very few of those; most we dismiss without attention. We do not apply
deductive or inductive logical tests to these artifacts that we accept or dismiss; we
don't have time to do that. We are using some other method for determining
which artifacts we will pay attention to, which artifacts are unique. For physical
artifacts it is the ones that are the most beautiful, and I would argue that it is the
same for conceptual artifacts. We screen for uniqueness by beauty.
It is our aesthetic sense that is the basis for our intuition, and it is that sense
which seems to choose those artifacts we will attend to. Perhaps that is why we
have two sides to our brains: the serial, logical, linguistic, left side, and the artistic,
aesthetic, right side. I imagine that the left side is constantly inventing new
artifacts or bringing new artifacts in from the outside world, while the right side is
watching, screening, using its sense of beauty to find those artifacts that are
unique, different, the same, or matching, and grabbing those for our attention.
Our minds have to be able to spot uniqueness quickly, to value it, and to discern
what is unique and rare from what is arbitrary and common. I believe that we do
so based on aesthetics.
The Search for Beauty - The Connection Between Art and Science
Uniqueness is How do we know when an artifact is unique? We know by how beautiful it is!
beauty - we judge
it by aesthetic
Whether we are creating physical artifacts in the arts or conceptual artifacts in the
principles. sciences, we are doing exactly the same thing; we are searching for uniqueness in
the artifacts we fashion, and we know that uniqueness by its aesthetic qualities.
Certainly we test out that uniqueness later, but we always make our first
judgments of a new artifact by its beauty. The arts and the sciences are both the
same form of human construction; one is physical, the other conceptual. Both
build artifacts in exactly the same way. Both require the aesthetic sense of beauty
for us to determine the uniqueness of the artifacts.
That is why people decorate. That is why we hold the arts in such high esteem.
That is why we talk about scientific creation in artistic language. That is what
underlies our humanness. We know uniqueness by beauty, and we are constantly
striving for uniqueness in all areas of our lives and thus for beauty in all areas. It
does not matter whether we are painting a cave wall or developing a new theory
of physics, we are looking for and fashioning unique artifacts, and we are using
our aesthetic sense, our sense of beauty. We care about art because we care
about uniqueness. We fashion beautiful things because that is the best way we
have of organizing our experience. We decorate because the people with the best-
developed aesthetic sense will be the ones who can think most clearly, invent the

better tools, and have the greatest chance of survival. Or perhaps we decorate
because beauty is so important to us that we cannot help but exercise our
aesthetic sense. We are human because we love beauty.
What is unique is beautiful. What is beautiful is unique. We find beauty in

difference. We find beauty in sameness. And we find beauty in matching. Such
artifacts are unique, and such artifacts are beautiful.
Perhaps we should be spending a great deal more time developing aesthetic sense
in our schools for this may lead not only to better invention, but to better
understanding of invention.
The Unique Artifacts Period
Inventing Unique Artifacts

As we embark on this new period of invention powered by a new entity - the artifact -
and a new kind of fastener - uniqueness -we can look forward to a time of wonderful
and extraordinary change, as well as a time of some confusion and discomfort. It is
always so at the beginning of a new period.
How does the You may find unique artifacts as defined in this theory of knowledge to be an
unique artifact
produce incomplete explanation. What drives knowledge, what causes it to transform? It is not
knowledge? What easy to move from transformation phase during which we create strong fastening
is its mechanism? mechanisms to connections phases in which our fasteners are weak. Newton faced a
I have no answer.
I don't believe similar difficulty with gravity, eventually proclaiming: "I do not frame hypotheses!"
there is one. Gravity was simply the interaction between objects; it did not have a "mechanism.” I
see uniqueness in the same way. I cannot say what drives the development of new
knowledge, what causes knowledge to transform. I do not know what the mechanism is
that makes us construct a new entity artifact or that makes an inventor move to a new
phase. This issue of transformation was at the heart of the work of Piaget in his last
years when he built his theory of "Genetic Epistemology." I sought such a mechanism
for uniqueness for many years without success, slowly breaking the hold of wholistic
transformations and environment on my thinking. It is an odd thing that we learn to do,
for slowly we will come to no longer ask this kind of question. We will come to accept
the power of this new fastening artifact and no longer require the strong mechanism.
We will be looking to explain why a particular theory exists and not what caused it to
occur.
There is no We do have significant historical reason to not frame a mechanism. When Darwin
mechanism for
the hypothesized Natural Selection, he did not frame a mechanism. He could not explain
transformation of the mechanism of variation, and it was only when he finally broke ties with object
knowledge. It is transformations and the search for such a mechanism that he could complete the On
all a matter of
individual the Origin of Species. Maxwell spent several years searching for a mechanism; a
invention. system, a mechanical process by which the fields actually "worked." In a 1861 paper he
proposed a medium full of mechanical parts - rollers and balls - to carry and explain the
actions of electric and magnetic forces. The vestige of these ideas remained in his
"aether," adding little value to his theory and engendering fruitless searches and
theoretical confusion until Einstein sent it to its final rest. As you invent with these new

tools, you may want to remember these hard-fought battles. I doubt that we can
construct new knowledge without such conflict.
Is there a And how should those of us who seek to create exciting new inventions in this new
roadmap to
invention? period proceed? The Unique Artifacts theory lays out no path to conceptual invention.
We can describe what the tools of invention are. But as with any extraordinary physical
artifact, a powerful conceptual artifact does not just come from the hands of those who
have the proper tools - or even necessarily from those who are good with the tools -
but is rather a special creative act that remains mysterious and wondrous. The Unique
Artifacts theory may lay out these tools and set up the workbench, but it cannot
produce the unique new knowledge. That is the work of artisans and it is surely
precious.
A Personal Look Into the Future

I imagine that you, like I, are now brimming with curiosity about what this new
knowledge will look like. I have tried to give you a single example, the Unique Artifacts
theory of knowledge. But the other disciplines - the sciences, the arts - what will these
look like? I have wondered about this. Unfortunately, Unique Artifacts is not a
manufacturing process and I have no great insights into the next great theory of
physics or the next new art form. As I have said before, invention is a creative process
of the imagination, and we shall have to wait for those who have the insight to actually
create the knowledge of the future. But it might be helpful if I set out a few personal
reflections on the nature of this new knowledge.
Physics In my discipline of physics there are three great theoretical frameworks that dominate
the subject - Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, and conservation/symmetry. The first two
are well known and well understood. The last is a collection of ideas that are sometimes
at the center of physics but often float on the periphery, important to arguments but
not explicitly appearing in the equations. Physicists often talk in terms of both
conservation and symmetry, but neither have significant theoretical foundation. The
conservation laws, as we saw earlier, were derived from Newton's laws. In 1848, they
generated new ideas, the laws of thermodynamics - Conservation of Energy and
Entropy. But, while these conservation laws are broadly used, they do not have an
inherent logical basis in our science.
The same is true for symmetry. No idea today has more widespread use in modern
physics, and a number of patterns based on mathematical symmetries have been
successful in predicting sub-atomic particles and even new quarks. But we have not yet
seen a powerful theory based on symmetry. We use symmetry, but we do not have a
fundamental conception of symmetry or its requirement in the physical world. While
both symmetry and conservation have long histories and a variety of interpretations,
they are vital today because they are both forms of invariance under transformation.
The "Standard Model" which describes the physics of quarks and subatomic particle, is
based on such invariance.
Yet these are powerful artifacts whose uniqueness may be shorn of invariance under
transformation form. Perhaps we can find in the forms of uniqueness, difference,
sameness, and matching, the basis for symmetry and conservation, just as we did the
basis for the elements of knowledge. And that new elements of physics, either derived
from symmetry and conservation or other unique artifacts, may then become the basis
for a new theory and Einstein's dream of uniting of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.
Evolution and Having a deep love of Darwin, I have naturally played with the direction of evolutionary
Biology
theory. In this area, too, I believe that we can make some great strides, creating

superseding theories. Natural Selection provides us with a wonderful understanding of
the origin of the species. It gives us a deep confidence that we know what and how
species change. But there is a small hole in this great theory, one that I never see
discussed, but that nevertheless troubles me and I would suspect others. For to me the
amazing thing about evolution is that we have species, stable configurations that last
for long periods of time. Evolution is not a continuous thing. It is not just that it is
punctuated. It is that it reaches stability, that there is something about a species that
has evolved to a particular state that stops that evolution. There is a sense of
"perfection." And once again we see the potential for uniqueness to play a significant
role.
What was it about Triceratops or Homoerectus that established their long existence and
stable configuration? What was it about the evolution of the horse that produced nearly
continuous change until the modern horse stabilized? It was not just a stable
environment, for the environmental variations existed and continue to exist. I believe
that there is something stable, unique about these forms, totally separate from
environment that represents them as a stable and long existing species. When we
understand this uniqueness, then we shall understand a great deal more about the
evolution of the species.
Art In the visual arts, it certainly seems as if every possible visual style that could be done
has been done. Modern art runs the entire gamut from realism to abstractionism. Many
artists today are searching for new styles in new media, believing that painting has
come to the end of possible styles. But again and again in the history of art it seemed
as if the greatest work had already been done. I see no reason why the same is not
true today, and that new styles of both two and three dimensional works will come in
both new media and old.
I do not know where it will be found, but unique artifacts suggests many artistic
possibilities in the exploration of uniqueness. That is the realm of art, and I am sure
that there is great depth to which it can be explored. For the true aim of art is the
representation of uniqueness, and now we will see what artists do without constraint in
such a search. I only wish that my imagination were good enough to picture such new
works.
The Future
Fear not, we still We do not have to be afraid that with such a theory of knowledge, our future is
cannot predict the
future with preordained. We cannot know or invent artifacts beyond the entity we are in or that we
anything but a will be moving into. I know of not a single instance in all of the history of knowledge
broad brush. where an inventor of new knowledge jumped a phase. Not a single one! That is
powerful evidence that we cannot invent knowledge based on the tools of a future
phase. I also have no reason to believe that, just because we now have a clear
understanding of the sequence of the development of knowledge, we have the ability to
change this. Knowledge is far too difficult to create even with a toolkit we know well,
for any of us to imagine becoming facile with a very advanced set, inventing the distant
future.
How is it that
While I do not frame hypotheses about what drives the change of these tools and
these revolutions
in the disciplines phases of knowledge, I do believe I understand: why major shifts in the tools produce
are clustered so new knowledges across disciplines; why changes in fastening artifacts so quickly
closely together?
pervade all of the disciplines; why there are revolutions in knowledge. Do they just float
The answer lies in
the nature of in the atmosphere? No! I try hard not to use the environments artifact, though I am not

inventors. always successful. The answer is much simpler and much less mystical.
Inventors are people in search of uniqueness. They are always looking for the
connection, the suggestion, the insight, the model that will allow them to fashion the
entities, sites, and fasteners that bring us definition, pattern, and meaning. These
pioneers are constantly searching inside and outside of their disciplines for new
metaphors, new patterns, new links. They cast their eyes on everything, scrutinizing a
wide variety of inventions, hoping that something or someone will provide a trigger, a
clue.
It is frustrating out there as an inventor of fundamentally new artifacts. It is lonely and

difficult. You look everywhere, furtively searching for artifacts in other disciplines that
could be of help. Often there is a community agitating for invention, pushing its
members. The Impressionists were such a community. In the past, universities have
provided such a community. Sometimes the solitary inventor, like Einstein, sees a flaw,
a hole, a difficulty in their discipline. Einstein's sense of the unity of physics was
bothered by niggling issues that others dismissed. Sometimes, invention comes from
just a feeling that wonderful new works are not being created, that the theories and
arts are stale, and that new ideas and new forms are needed. And sometimes, there
are a few who have accumulated vast knowledges and who find them difficult to
integrate, who search for new containers, and new ways to simplify.
Within a period or a phase, the tools are well known; the metaphors and patterns well
established, and most new knowledge is just their application, the fashioning of the
right artifacts. Like wonderful physical artifacts, some new conceptual artifacts are very
distinctive and others are just well constructed. We can see this in the arts; some
painters will do fine works within a well established genre, and some will seek to
reframe, to find a new way of using the tools that they have, to establish a new art
form. Within a phase we all use the same tools. Some of us create works that are very
different, using the tools in a new way, and some of us create works that are beautiful
and well formed, but their use of the tools does not break virgin soil. When we enter a
new phase and even more so when we enter a new period, we must look for ideas that
are really different, that are breakthroughs of the imagination. So others and I may use
this theory of knowledge to speculate on the future of the disciplines, but our ideas will
not be breakthroughs, they will not have that extraordinary uniqueness that separates
the defining fundamentally new artifacts from the works of good craftsmanship. And
while I may speculate about the Unique Artifacts period of knowledge, I do not pretend
to invent it in other disciplines. I offer my poor notions only to provide a few signposts
to those who will really map the future.
Our greatest As we venture into the artifacts period, everything will be new. Inventions made with
thrills come from
learning and this unique entity and with these tools, will be fresh and wonderful. The thrill and
inventing. Join me excitement of human construction, when everything is new and open, cannot be
as we begin the matched. It provides the drive and the courage to venture into uncharted territory. We
artifacts period
and reinvent our
will need to have some patience with these inventors, for they may not yet be able to
world. argue with the conviction and sophistication of those that fish the old waters. New,
really new, ideas take time to develop and a good deal of getting used to. It takes some
practice to understand what new tools can do and what fundamentally new artifacts
mean. I invite you to join me in this wild and thrilling adventure. For to learn and to
invent are the most magical and profound of all human activities - the greatest soaring
of the human spirit.

References
THE PATTERN
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, A Facsimile of the First Edition, Harvard University Press, 1966
Elements - The Periods

Neil Rudenstine, President, Harvard University, 1993, Address at Mount Auburn Hospital, Cambridge, MA.
THE THEORY
Uniqueness
Max Wertheimer, Productive Thinking, 1945, excerpt in Treasure of Knowledge, P.1214
Uniqueness and Knowledge

Boccaccio, DeCameron
The Pattern of Knowledge - Entities

Lev Vygotsky, Thought and Language, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1962

Isaac Newton, The Principia, The Great Books -- Great Books Edition of the Principia, translated by Andrew
Motte from Newton's original Latin version.
A Visit to the Pre-Socratics

Heraclitus, Milton C. Nahm, Selections from Early Greek Philosophy, 2nd Edition, 1940, NY, F. S. Crofts P. 90
Parmenides, Ibid P. 115
Empedocles, Ibid P. 130
Anaxagoras, Ibid P. 151
CONNECTIONS & PREDICTIONS
Unique Artifacts - The Theory

James Clerk Maxwell, "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field," 1864, The Scientific Papers of
James Clerk Maxwell, ed. W. D. Niven, 1965, Dover
This is a Theory
Albert Einstein, Physics and Reality
Invention by Adults
Gerald Holton, in Holton P. 82
Inventing the Elements

Isaac Newton, c. 1727
The Great Surprise

Arthur Eddington, The Life and Times of Albert Einstein, NY, Ronald W. Clark, The World Publishing Co,
1971

Sources
It is customary in a scholarly work to acknowledge all of its sources, creating an exhaustive
bibliographic list at the end of a paper or a book. And it is customary in a popular title to provide
up-front in a preface or forward, acknowledgement of its forebears with both thank you and
disclaimers for their responsibility in the final result. Works that fit both categories, as this one
might be viewed, often are cluttered with both a lengthy preface and a massive bibliography. It
seems to me that such comprehensiveness fails to accomplish its mission. It fails to thank people
appropriately for their contributions, and it fails to mark the real sources of ideas so that readers
may understand the origins of a work. Perhaps our style is to revert to laundry lists because such
origins are always difficult for the author to fully recognize. While I am sure to fail to properly
represent them all, I will try here to list the sources of Unique Artifacts as best I now can, and to
credit and thank those who in writing or in person have, as I look back over the past 30 years,
helped me to construct and craft these ideas.
Bardige, Betty - My wife has been my chief confidant in this work, as in all things. She has always
understood it, always encouraged me in it, continuously helped with its ideas, and performed the
unrewarding task of trying to edit and make understandable its writing.
Bardige, Kori, Brenan, Arran - My oldest children, Kori and Brenan, have felt a wonderful
proprietary sense for this work which has only taken their father's time away from them, and have
edited it to be sure that he was not to be embarrassed. In that, they have added a great deal to
my view of my audience. And my youngest, Arran, has asked questions for which I continue to try
to find answers.
Callahan, Richard "Chip" - Helped me get serious about getting this thing finished, doing research.
Chicago, The University of - As I look at why I took this path, I must give substantial credit to an
education that taught me to read and love original sources and great ideas. I spent a great deal of
time with original works that are not listed here to try to understand the author's language and
view of their invention. Without this education, I doubt that I would have been willing to take on
such a task; and without the analysis I was taught, I doubt that I would have succeeded in finding
their central ideas. Most of the works listed in the Pattern of Knowledge I have studied first-hand.
Cornford, F.M. - Before and After Socrates, Cambridge University Press 1932, and From
Religion to Philosophy, Harper Torchbooks, 1957 - Once I found Cornford, I tried to find
every book he wrote in the used bookstores to help me clarify the Greeks.
Darwin, Charles - On the Origin of Species. I have returned often to Darwin as a source of
inspiration including his unpublished papers on evolution written in 1842 and 1845. And I do not
felt so bad that this project has taken so long to reach others when I think of him.
Einstein, Albert - Many works including: "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" 1905 and The
Evolution of Physics with Leopold Infeld.
Erikson, Erik - Childhood and Society, W. W. Norton, 1950 - During my sophomore year I read
two books - Childhood and Society and The Republic - which had great influence on me.
Holton, Gerald - Introduction to Concepts and Theories in Physical Science, Addison

Wesley, 1952, and Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought, Harvard University Press, 1973.
Holton, in these works and in Harvard Project Physics, has been a valuable source of vision and
a guide in the history of physics.

Janson, H. W. -- History of Art, Prentice Hall, 1962 - Has been my fundamental art history source
as it must be for so many students.
Kline, Morris - Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times, Oxford University
Press, 1972 - There are a lot of books on the history of mathematics and I have been through a
share of them. I believe this one to be the most valuable and my reference source.
Klopfer, Leo - Professor of Science Education at The University of Pittsburgh - I started this trek as
a graduate student studying under Leo at the School of Education at Chicago. His love of the
history of science, his gentle prodding, and his guidance on a difficult and obscure Masters paper
were a powerful influence. I certainly teach as he taught to me.
Kuhn, Thomas - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, 1962 - I
went to school to learn to teach science when the works of Kuhn, Piaget, and Erikson were being
discovered and rediscovered. I was quite taken by them. And certainly all were inspirations for
what was initially a stage theory of the development of knowledge.
Maxwell, James Clerk - The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell, ed. W.D. Niven, Dover,
1965. It was my desire to communicate the brilliance and beauty of the knowledge this wonderful
man created along with that of Einstein which was the wellspring for this work.
Nahm, Milton - Selections from Early Greek Philosophy, F. S. Crofts, 1940 -This little volume
is the source for all of the Pre-Socratic quotations in this work.
Owen, George, E. - The Universe of the Mind, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1971 - I have returned
again and again to this work to help me understand the physics and the sequence of ideas in its
history. The "Players in the Order of Their Appearance" appendix is of special value when you are
trying to collect and connect all of the people, their works, and good dates for each.
Piaget, Jean - The easiest access is in Ginsburg and Opper, Piaget's Theory of Intellectual
Development, Prentice Hall, 1969.
Sambursky, Shmuel - Physical Thought form the Presocratics to the Quantum Physicists,
Pica Press, 1974 has been a rich trove of original source material.
Stadler, Ingrid - Professor of Philosophy at Wellesley College - At a crucial period, when I

was able to work fully focused on this project, Ingrid would patiently spend great
amounts of time helping me to understand philosophy and tease out those significant
aspects of my thinking that would be its building blocks.

Index
Abstraction, 69 Lascaux, 17
Aesop, 48 Leonardo, 11, 12, 13
Ampere, 57 Linnaeus, 50
Anaxagoras, 50 Locke, 44
Anaximander, 48 Machiavelli, 12
Archimedes, 45, 52 Manet, 9, 10, 28
Artifact, 29 Matching, 32
Beauty, 31, 73 Matisse, 22, 23
Black Figure, 14, 15 Maxwell, 9, 54, 55, 56
Bloom, 63, 64, 65 Mendeleev, 11
Boccaccio, 42 Michelangelo, 12
Bourbaki, 43 Newton, 11
Brackett, 66 Parmenides, 49
Buddha, 48 Parsimony, 26
Calder, 71 Parthenon, 20, 21, 51
Charlemagne, 18 Parts, 37
Chomsky, 40 Pattern Of Knowledge, 25
Compte, 52 Pavlov, 22, 23
Concrete Operations, 60 Piaget, 43, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63
Confucious, 48 Picasso, 66
Connections, 38, 47 Planck, 23
Copernicus, 12, 22, 23, 28 Plato, 52
Coulomb, 52, 57 Plural, 19
d'Alembert, 45, 52 Pre-Operations, 60
Dante, 52 Pre-Socratics, 47, 51
Darwin, 5, 8, 9, 10, 28, 35 Pythagoras, 48, 49
Decoration, 72 Quarks, 58
Democratus, 20, 21, 51 Quantum Mechanics, 22, 33
Descartes, 22 Relations, 38, 48
Difference, 32 Relativity, 22, 10, 26, 29, 30, 33
Eddington, 30, 73 Sameness, 32
Egyptians, 19 Sensori-Motor, 20
Einstein, 22, 23, 27, 28, 30, 40, 59, 68, 73 Seurat, 71
Empedocles49, 50 Shakers, 66, 68
Enlightenment, 12, 21, 24, Simplicity, 24, 25
Entities, 18 Singular, 19
Entity Artifacts, 34 Sistine Chapel, 13
Environments, 8 Site Artifacts, 34
Erikson, 38, 49 Sites, 41
Escher, 71 Spearbearer, 21
Euclid, 43 Socrates, 51
Faraday, 51, 54, 57 Sophocles, 51
Fasteners, 41, 53 St. Peters, 14
Fastening Artifacts, 35 Symbols, 16
Field, 9, 28, 12, 13, 29, 36 Taxonomy, 63, 64, 65
Fielding, 22, 52 Thales, 44, 47, 48
Formal Operations, 60 Thucydides, 20, 21, 51
Freud, 22, 23 Transformations, 38, 49
Feynman, 66 Turing, 43
Galileo, 22, 28 Twentieth Century, 22
Gestalt, 38 Uniqueness, 31
Giotto, 42 Unique Elements, 69
Greek, 13, 14, 16, 20, 24, 27, 47 Universals, 14
Heraclitus, 36, 49 Vygotsky, 43
Heisenberg, 42 Wertheimer, 38, 42
Huygens, 44 Wholes, 37
Kant, 52 Wilder, 42
Kepler, 22 Wittgenstein, 52
Kouros, 15, 48 Wright, 22, 23
Kuhn, 7
Lagrange, 45
Language, 36, 40

A Note on the Pattern of Knowledge
I view the Pattern of Knowledge as an outline to be filled in. I built The Pattern
of Knowledge with the goal of representing as clearly and completely as possible
the history of human invention. To do that I have tried to include both the
greatest of human inventions for they clearly mark the pattern and must be
illuminated by it, and the exemplars of knowledge in each phase. While I have
tried to find both the greatest works and the best exemplars, my range of
knowledge is much narrower than I would like and it has limited what I have
included. I am weak in music, in literature, and non-Western cultures. My
strengths are in the sciences, in mathematics, and to some extent in the visual
arts. I tried to include only what I had read or seen, but that was not always
possible.
I also wanted this to be a chart - a visual construction - that makes it easy to

visualize and understand the pattern. I thus limited its size, and in some phases
that are rich in invention, people have been left out.
I would hope, if this pattern proves useful, that it will be filled in. I can imagine
that each of the disciplines would create their own version. And I would love to
see the debate on which inventions deserve to be listed in the first rank of
knowledge, which have been the breakthroughs, and which have been the ones
that produced fundamentally new ways of thinking about a subject.
When I first started to build the Pattern, I found that the birth dates of the
inventors were the most reliable means to mark the phases of knowledge. Often
the dates of the inventions themselves are hard to find and publication dates can
obscure discoveries. Over time I have been able to get more and more dates of
invention and publication, but I continue to find that the birth dates are the most
valuable markers and have set up the Pattern based on them. Each phase is
sorted by birth date
As you look through the Pattern as it is filled in here, you will note a glaring
reality. There are almost no women listed among the inventors. In the
intellectual history of our planet, there are few instances of women among the
first ranks of inventors of our knowledges in our disciplines. It is not for me,
here, to speculate on the reasons; suffice it to say, it is my hope that we shall
find in the inventions of the Artifacts Period a rightful share of the works of
women and others who have previously been underrepresented. Invention is
what differentiates us from all other species, and we should all share in its
wonder and its fun. We should all be able to leave our marks at whatever height
we dare to climb.

Paintings
Manet – “Luncheon on
the Grass” (1863)
Leonardo – “Last Supper” (1498) Castagno – “Last Supper” (c1445-1450)
Michelangelo “Sistine Chapel” (c1510)

Lascaux Caves (c20,000)
Black Figure Vase (c525)
Matisse – “Joy of Life” (1903)
Giotto -- “The Lamentation (1305-06)

Start c40,000 c3000 c600 c440 c400 AD c800 c1050 1250 1498 1686 1859 1900 1995
SYMBOLS UNIVERSALS SYMBOLS UNIVERSALS OBJECTS ENVIRONMENTS ARTIFACTS
Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular
tools arithmetic c.3000 Thales 624-546 Socrates 469-399 Alcuin 735-? Romanesque c.1050 Roger Bacon 1214-1294 DaVinci 1452-1519 Huygens 1629-1695 Darwin 1809-1882 Pavlov 1849-1936 Unique 1995
tombs hieroglyphic writing c.3000 Anaximander 611-547 Democratus 460-360 Charlemagne r768-814 city-towns c.1050 Parliament 1268 Erasmus 1466-1536 Locke 1632-1704 Dickens 1812-1870 Poincare 1854-1912 Artifacts
cave painting cities c.3000 Solon c.640-? Euripedes 485-406 Aachen Chapel 792-805 guilds c.1050 St.Urban c.1261- Machiavelli 1469-1527 Leeuwenhoek 1632-1723 Victoria 1819-1901 Freud 1854-1939
bone marking calendars c.3000 Polis c.600 Hippocrates 460-377 Holy-Roman-Empire c800 Pope Gregory 1073 Albertus Magnus 1193-1280 Durer 1471-1525 Newton 1642-1727 Mendel 1822-1884 Shaw 1856-1950
Connections
language inventories c.3000 Black Figure c.600 Parthenon 448-432 Carolingian script c800 Church of St. c.1062 Thomas Acquinas 1225-1274 Copernicus 1473-1543 Leibniz 1646-1716 Pasteur 1822-1895 Conrad 1857-1924
stone buildings c.3000 Doric Order c.600 Protagoras 480-411 Coinage c800 free-standing-statue c.1050 "Parzival" c.1250 Michelangelo 1475-1564 Bernoulli 1654-1705 Tolstoy 1828-1910 Planck 1858-1947
c3000
c1050
c1250
1498
1686
1859
1900
c600
c440
stone sculptures c.3000 Archaic Art c.600 Thucydides 460-404 Bureaucracy c800 Romanesque art c.1050 More 1478-1535 Halley 1656-1742 Maxwell 1831-1879 Bergson 1859-1941
money c.3000 Kouros c.600 Dying Niobid 450-440 Legal Codes c800 College of Cardinals 1059 Luther 1483-1553 Defoe 1660-1731 Dedekind 1831-1916 Dewey 1859-1952
ziggurats c.3000 Aesop 619-564 Hippias 460-? 1001 Nights c800 Bayeau Tapestry c.1073-1083 Paracelsus 1493-1541 Swift 1667-1743 Manet 1832-1883 Hilbert 1862-1943
bronze tools c.3000 Lao-Tse 604-517 Bramante c.1444- Watteau 1684-1721 Carroll 1832-1898 Curie 1867-1934
Deuteronomy 638-609 Raphael fl.1510 Berkeley 1685-1753 Ruskin 1840-1917 Matisse 1869-1954
Zoroaster 660-583 Rodin 1840-1917 Wright 1869-1959
Wagner 1813-1883 Russell 1872-1970
totemism Zoser-Step- c.2650 Pythagoras 569-500 Lysippus fl.370 Anselm 1033-1109 Meister Eckhart c.1270- Tartaglia 1500-1557 Bach 1685-1750 Brahms 1833-1897 Minkowski 1864-1909
kinship/clans pyramids at Giza c.2500 Confucius 551-479 Plato (early) 429-347 Rashi 1040-1105 Pisano fl.1258-78 Calvin 1509-1553 Voltaire 1694-1778 Whistler 1834-1903 Kandinsky 1866-1944
Hammurabi c.1750 Buddha 563-483 Archtas 428-347 Crusades 1095-> Versalius 1514-1564 Bernoulli 1700-1782 Mendeleev 1834-1907 Wright 1869-1959
symbolic cuneiform Psiax Vases c.525 Theaeteus 415-369 Scholasticism 1100-> Tintorello 1518-1594 Hartley 1705-1790 Degas 1834-1917 Rutherford 1871-1937
husband&wife- c.2600 Eudoxus 408-355 troubadours c.1100 P. Bruegel 1525-1569 Franklin 1706-1790 Twain 1835-1910 Mondrian 1872-1944
Relations
PARTS
Trent Council 1543-1563 Fielding 1707-1754 Monet 1840-1929 Jung 1875-1961
c1075
c1300
c1540
c1740
c2500
1869
1905
c525
c400
Linnaeus 1707-1778 Renoir 1841-1919 Watson 1878-1958
Euler 1707-1783 Boltzman 1844-1906 Einstein 1879-1955
Johnson 1709-1784 Picasso 1881-1973
Hume 1711-1776 Eddington 1882-1944
Rousseau 1712-1778 Santayana 1863-1952
Diderot 1713-1772 Malinowski 1884-1942
D'Alembert 1717-1783 Bohr 1885-1962
initiation rights carved temples c.1500 Heraclitus fl.500 Plato (late) 429-347 Dante 1265-1321 Montaigne 1533-1592 Smith 1723-1790 Rodin 1840-1917 Proust 1871-1929
pottery Hatshepsut Temple c.1480 Dying Warrior c.490 Mausolus c.359 Giotto 1275-1337 Elizabeth 1533-1603 Kant 1724-1804 Klein 1849-1925 Buber 1878-1965
Herakles c.490 Mausoleum c.359- Boccaccio 1313-1375 Gilbert 1540-1603 Cavendish 1731-1810 Einstein 1879-1955
Transformations
Kore (Chios?) c.520 Temple of Athena c.360 Vieta 1540-1603 Priestley 1733-1804 Joyce 1882-1941
El Greco 1541-1601 Coulomb 1736-1806 Kafka 1883-1924
Brahe 1546-1601 Lagrange 1736-1813 Le Courbusier 1886-1965
c1310
c1580
c1775
c1875
c1500
1914
c500
c370
Cervantes 1547-1616 Haydn 1737-1809 Schroedinger 1887-1961

Stevin 1548-1620 Gibbon 1737-1894 Heidegger 1889-1976
Napier 1550-1617 Lavoisier 1743-1794 Fitzgerald 1896-1940
Shakespeare 1564-1616 David 1748-1828 Piaget 1896-1980
Goya 1748-1828 Heisenberg 1901-1976
Goethe 1749-1832 Bauhaus 1918-1932
Mozart 1756-1801
shamans Akhenaten c.1365 Parmenides c.520-450 Aristotle 384-322 Tribal Feudal Manor c.900 Abelard 1079-1142 Ockham 1295-1347 Bacon 1561-1626 LaPlace 1749-1827 Mach 1838-1916 Wertheimer 1880-1943
kings Assyrians Classical Art Epicuras 342-270 Europe Abbot Suger 1081-1151 Petrarch 1304-1374 Galileo 1564-1642 Rumsford 1753-1814 Gibbs 1839-1903 Keynes 1883-1946
gods great empires Red Figure Euclid 330-275 Gothic Architecture c.1137 Oresmi 1323-1382 Caravagio 1573-1610 Malthus 1766-1834 Cezanne 1839-1906 Weyl 1885-1955
Black Elk Aeschylus 525-456 Library-Alexandria c.300 Church-of-St.-Denis 1140-1144 Buridan c1300-1385 Monteverdi 1567-1643 Dalton 1766-1844 Peirce 1839-1914 Wittgenstein 1889-1951
Connections
priests Praxiteles c.390- Age of Chivalry c1100 Chaucer 1343-1400 Kepler 1571-1630 Fourier 1768-1830 Zola 1840-1902 Chadwick 1891-1974
chiefdoms Zeno the Stoic c.330-? Portrait of Physician c.1160 Rubins 1577-1640 Beethoven 1770-1827 Neitzsche 1844-1900 Vygotsky 1896-1934
c1365
c1137
c1350
c1610
c1800
1883
1927
c480
c350
Anasazi Geoffrey-Monmouth ? -1154 Donne 1573-1631 Hegel 1770-1831 Boltzman 1844-1906 Calder 1898-1976
farming Harvey 1578-1651 Owen 1771-1858 Edison 1847-1913 Dirac 1902-1984
towns Grotius 1583-1645 Young 1773-1829 Bell 1847-1922 Fermi 1901-1954
Poisson 1584-1665 Ampere 1775-1836 Eastman 1854-1932 Godel 1906-1978
Hobbes 1588-1679 Gauss 1777-1855 Yukawa 1907-1981
Oersted 1777-1858 Bourbaki fl.1938
Ingre 1780-1851 Wilder 1897-1975
Trobriand trade Moses c.1200 Empedocles c.494-434 Archimedes 287-212 Maimonides 1135-1204 Brunelleshi 1379-1446 Desargues 1593-1662 Schopenhauer 1788-1860 Gibbs 1839-1903 Pasternak 1890-1960
animal 10 commandments c.1100 Diogonies Eratosthenes 276-195 St. Francis of Assisi 1182-1226 Van Eyck 1385-1441 Poussin c1593-1665 Gericult 1791-1824 W. James 1842-1910 Weiner 1894-1964
trading alphabetic writing c.1000 Apollonius 262-200 University of Paris c.1200 Donatello 1386-1446 Descartes 1596-1650 Faraday 1791-1867 H. James 1843-1916 Erikson 1902-1994
early towns large scale trading Aristarchus c.310- Magna Carta 1215 Fra Angelico 1387-1458 Bernini 1598-1680 Carnot 1796-1832 Cantor 1845-1918 Orwell 1903-1950
WHOLES
Stonehenge Christ 4B.C.- St. Dominic 1170-1221 Joan of Arc fl1431 Cromwell 1599-1658 Schubert 1797-1828 Gauguin 1848-1903 Von-Neumann 1903-1957
Relations
kinship Pantheon 25A.D. Master-Flemalle fl1425-28 Fermat 1601-1665 Compte 1798-1857 Michelson 1852-1931 Skinner 1904-1989
cc1180
c1420
c1640
c1830
c1885
c1200
1948
c470
c250
Lucretius 96-52 Gutenburg 1400- Torricelli 1608-1648 Delacroix 1798-1863 Hertz 1857-1894 Pauling 1907-1994
Virgil 70-19 Hugo 1802-1885 Sullivan 1858-1917 Levi-Strauss 1908-1987
Horace 65-8 Berlioz 1803-1869 Seurat 1859-1891 Pollock 1912-1956
Livy 59- Tocqueville 1805-1859 Debussey 1862-1918 Crick 1916-
Ovid 43- Hamilton 1805-1865 Hilbert 1862-1943 Chomsky 1928-
Galois 1811-1832 Lautrec 1864-1901 Watson 1928-
Kierkegaard 1813-1855 Feynman 1928-1992
farming Homer fl750-700 Anaxagoras c.500-428 Ptolemy 100-168 Fibonacci 1175-1250 della Francesco 1410-1492 Rembrandt 1606-1669 Dickens 1812-1870 Becqueral 1832-1908 Piaget 1896-1980
wheel pottery Hebrew Prophets fl700 Sophocles 496-406 Column of Trajan 106-113 Grosseteste 1175-1253 Castagno 1423-? Milton 1608-1674 Mayer 1814-1878 Lie 1842-1909 Michener 1907-
metal working coinage c700-650 Zeno 495-435 Plotinus 205-270 Frederich II 1198-1250 Bosch 1450-1516 Colbert 1619-1683 Boole 1815-1864 Roentgen 1845-1923 Solzhenitsyn 1918-
Transformations
pictographs Herodotus 485-425 Augustine 354-430 Henry II 1154-1189 Bottocelli c1480 Pascal 1623-1662 Thoreau 1817-1862 Van Gogh 1853-1890 Kuhn 1922-1997
bronze Galen c.130- Chartre Cathedral c.1194 Lorenzo DiMedici 1449-1492 Boyle 1627-1691 Bronte 1818-1848 Lorentz 1853-1928 Gell-Mann 1929-
c1230
c1480
c1650
c1890
c1963
c750
c460
1848
c150
Diophantus c.250 Savonarola 1452-1498 Vermeer 1632-1675 Marx 1818-1883 Wilde 1854-1900 Doctorov 1931-
Gospel c.100 Spinoza 1632-1677 Joule 1818-1889 Poincare 1854-1912 Vonnegut 1922-
Arch-Constantine 312-315 Hooke 1635-1703 Courbet 1819-1877 Thomson 1856-1940 Gould 1941-
Pappus c.350 Melville 1819-1899 Conrad 1857-1924 Hawking 1942-
Simplicius ?-529 Clausius 1822-1888 Durkheim 1858-1917
Kelvin 1824-1907 Checkov 1860-1904
Riemann 1826-1866 Kipling 1865-1936
The Invention of Knowledge by Art Bardige Copyright 1995,1999
Start c40,000 c3000 c600 c440 c400 AD c800 c1050 1250 1498 1686 1859 1900 1995
SYMBOLS UNIVERSALS SYMBOLS UNIVERSALS OBJECTS ENVIRONMENTS ARTIFACTS
tools arithmetic c.3000 Thales 624-546 Socrates 469-399 Alcuin 735-? Romanesque c.1050 Roger Bacon 1214-1294 DaVinci 1452-1519 Huygens 1629-1695 Darwin 1809-1882 Pavlov 1849-1936 Unique 1995
tombs hieroglyphic writing c.3000 Anaximander 611-547 Democratus 460-360 Charlemagne r768-814 city-towns c.1050 Parliament 1268 Erasmus 1466-1536 Locke 1632-1704 Dickens 1812-1870 Poincare 1854-1912 Artifacts
cave painting cities c.3000 Solon c.640-? Euripedes 485-406 Aachen Chapel 792-805 guilds c.1050 St.Urban c.1261- Machiavelli 1469-1527 Leeuwenhoek 1632-1723 Victoria 1819-1901 Freud 1854-1939
bone marking calendars c.3000 Polis c.600 Hippocrates 460-377 Holy-Roman-Empire c800 Pope Gregory 1073 Albertus Magnus 1193-1280 Durer 1471-1525 Newton 1642-1727 Mendel 1822-1884 Shaw 1856-1950
Connections
language inventories c.3000 Black Figure c.600 Parthenon 448-432 Carolingian script c800 Church of St. c.1062 Thomas Acquinas 1225-1274 Copernicus 1473-1543 Leibniz 1646-1716 Pasteur 1822-1895 Conrad 1857-1924
stone buildings c.3000 Doric Order c.600 Protagoras 480-411 Coinage c800 free-standing-statue c.1050 "Parzival" c.1250 Michelangelo 1475-1564 Bernoulli 1654-1705 Tolstoy 1828-1910 Planck 1858-1947
c3000
c1050
c1250
c600
c440
1498
1686
1859
1900
1859
stone sculptures c.3000 Archaic Art c.600 Thucydides 460-404 Bureaucracy c800 Romanesque art c.1050 More 1478-1535 Halley 1656-1742 Maxwell 1831-1879 Bergson 1859-1941
money c.3000 Kouros c.600 Dying Niobid 450-440 Legal Codes c800 College of Cardinals 1059 Luther 1483-1553 Defoe 1660-1731 Dedekind 1831-1916 Dewey 1859-1952
ziggurats c.3000 Aesop 619-564 Hippias 460-? 1001 Nights c800 Bayeau Tapestry c.1073-1083 Paracelsus 1493-1541 Swift 1667-1743 Manet 1832-1883 Hilbert 1862-1943
bronze tools c.3000 Lao-Tse 604-517 Bramante c.1444- Watteau 1684-1721 Carroll 1832-1898 Curie 1867-1934
Deuteronomy 638-609 Raphael fl.1510 Berkeley 1685-1753 Ruskin 1840-1917 Matisse 1869-1954
Zoroaster 660-583 Rodin 1840-1917 Wright 1869-1959
Wagner 1813-1883 Russell 1872-1970
totemism Zoser-Step- c.2650 Pythagoras 569-500 Lysippus fl.370 Anselm 1033-1109 Meister Eckhart c.1270- Tartaglia 1500-1557 Bach 1685-1750 Brahms 1833-1897 Minkowski 1864-1909
kinship/clans pyramids at Giza c.2500 Confucius 551-479 Plato (early) 429-347 Rashi 1040-1105 Pisano fl.1258-78 Calvin 1509-1553 Voltaire 1694-1778 Whistler 1834-1903 Kandinsky 1866-1944
Hammurabi c.1750 Buddha 563-483 Archtas 428-347 Crusades 1095-> Versalius 1514-1564 Bernoulli 1700-1782 Mendeleev 1834-1907 Wright 1869-1959
symbolic cuneiform Psiax Vases c.525 Theaeteus 415-369 Scholasticism 1100-> Tintorello 1518-1594 Hartley 1705-1790 Degas 1834-1917 Rutherford 1871-1937
husband&wife- c.2600 Eudoxus 408-355 troubadours c.1100 P. Bruegel 1525-1569 Franklin 1706-1790 Twain 1835-1910 Mondrian 1872-1944
Relations
PARTS
Trent Council 1543-1563 Fielding 1707-1754 Monet 1840-1929 Jung 1875-1961
c1075
c1300
c1540
c1740
c2500
c525
c400
1869
1905
1869
Linnaeus 1707-1778 Renoir 1841-1919 Watson 1878-1958
Euler 1707-1783 Boltzman 1844-1906 Einstein 1879-1955
Johnson 1709-1784 Picasso 1881-1973
Hume 1711-1776 Eddington 1882-1944
Rousseau 1712-1778 Santayana 1863-1952
Diderot 1713-1772 Malinowski 1884-1942
D'Alembert 1717-1783 Bohr 1885-1962
initiation rights carved temples c.1500 Heraclitus fl.500 Plato (late) 429-347 Dante 1265-1321 Montaigne 1533-1592 Smith 1723-1790 Rodin 1840-1917 Proust 1871-1929
pottery Hatshepsut Temple c.1480 Dying Warrior c.490 Mausolus c.359 Giotto 1275-1337 Elizabeth 1533-1603 Kant 1724-1804 Klein 1849-1925 Buber 1878-1965
Herakles c.490 Mausoleum c.359- Boccaccio 1313-1375 Gilbert 1540-1603 Cavendish 1731-1810 Einstein 1879-1955
Transformations
Kore (Chios?) c.520 Temple of Athena c.360 Vieta 1540-1603 Priestley 1733-1804 Joyce 1882-1941
El Greco 1541-1601 Coulomb 1736-1806 Kafka 1883-1924
Brahe 1546-1601 Lagrange 1736-1813 Le Courbusier 1886-1965
c1310
c1580
c1775
c1875
c1875
c1500
c500
c370
1914
Cervantes 1547-1616 Haydn 1737-1809 Schroedinger 1887-1961
Stevin 1548-1620 Gibbon 1737-1894 Heidegger 1889-1976
Napier 1550-1617 Lavoisier 1743-1794 Fitzgerald 1896-1940
Shakespeare 1564-1616 David 1748-1828 Piaget 1896-1980
Goya 1748-1828 Heisenberg 1901-1976
Goethe 1749-1832 Bauhaus 1918-1932
Mozart 1756-1801
shamans Akhenaten c.1365 Parmenides c.520-450 Aristotle 384-322 Tribal Feudal Manor c.900 Abelard 1079-1142 Ockham 1295-1347 Bacon 1561-1626 LaPlace 1749-1827 Mach 1838-1916 Wertheimer 1880-1943
kings Assyrians Classical Art Epicuras 342-270 Europe Abbot Suger 1081-1151 Petrarch 1304-1374 Galileo 1564-1642 Rumsford 1753-1814 Gibbs 1839-1903 Keynes 1883-1946
gods great empires Red Figure Euclid 330-275 Gothic Architecture c.1137 Oresmi 1323-1382 Caravagio 1573-1610 Malthus 1766-1834 Cezanne 1839-1906 Weyl 1885-1955
Black Elk Aeschylus 525-456 Library-Alexandria c.300 Church-of-St.-Denis 1140-1144 Buridan c1300-1385 Monteverdi 1567-1643 Dalton 1766-1844 Peirce 1839-1914 Wittgenstein 1889-1951
Connections
priests Praxiteles c.390- Age of Chivalry c1100 Chaucer 1343-1400 Kepler 1571-1630 Fourier 1768-1830 Zola 1840-1902 Chadwick 1891-1974
chiefdoms Zeno the Stoic c.330-? Portrait of Physician c.1160 Rubins 1577-1640 Beethoven 1770-1827 Neitzsche 1844-1900 Vygotsky 1896-1934
c1365
c1137
c1350
c1610
c1800
c480
c350
1883
1927
1883
Anasazi Geoffrey-Monmouth ? -1154 Donne 1573-1631 Hegel 1770-1831 Boltzman 1844-1906 Calder 1898-1976
farming Harvey 1578-1651 Owen 1771-1858 Edison 1847-1913 Dirac 1902-1984
towns Grotius 1583-1645 Young 1773-1829 Bell 1847-1922 Fermi 1901-1954
Poisson 1584-1665 Ampere 1775-1836 Eastman 1854-1932 Godel 1906-1978
Hobbes 1588-1679 Gauss 1777-1855 Yukawa 1907-1981
Oersted 1777-1858 Bourbaki fl.1938
Ingre 1780-1851 Wilder 1897-1975
Trobriand trade Moses c.1200 Empedocles c.494-434 Archimedes 287-212 Maimonides 1135-1204 Brunelleshi 1379-1446 Desargues 1593-1662 Schopenhauer 1788-1860 Gibbs 1839-1903 Pasternak 1890-1960
animal 10 commandments c.1100 Diogonies Eratosthenes 276-195 St. Francis of Assisi 1182-1226 Van Eyck 1385-1441 Poussin c1593-1665 Gericult 1791-1824 W. James 1842-1910 Weiner 1894-1964
trading alphabetic writing c.1000 Apollonius 262-200 University of Paris c.1200 Donatello 1386-1446 Descartes 1596-1650 Faraday 1791-1867 H. James 1843-1916 Erikson 1902-1994
early towns large scale trading Aristarchus c.310- Magna Carta 1215 Fra Angelico 1387-1458 Bernini 1598-1680 Carnot 1796-1832 Cantor 1845-1918 Orwell 1903-1950
WHOLES
Stonehenge Christ 4B.C.- St. Dominic 1170-1221 Joan of Arc fl1431 Cromwell 1599-1658 Schubert 1797-1828 Gauguin 1848-1903 Von-Neumann 1903-1957
Relations
cc1180
kinship Pantheon 25A.D. Master-Flemalle fl1425-28 Fermat 1601-1665 Compte 1798-1857 Michelson 1852-1931 Skinner 1904-1989
c1420
c1640
c1830
c1885
c1885
c1200
c470
c250
1948
Lucretius 96-52 Gutenburg 1400- Torricelli 1608-1648 Delacroix 1798-1863 Hertz 1857-1894 Pauling 1907-1994
Virgil 70-19 Hugo 1802-1885 Sullivan 1858-1917 Levi-Strauss 1908-1987
Horace 65-8 Berlioz 1803-1869 Seurat 1859-1891 Pollock 1912-1956
Livy 59- Tocqueville 1805-1859 Debussey 1862-1918 Crick 1916-
Ovid 43- Hamilton 1805-1865 Hilbert 1862-1943 Chomsky 1928-
Galois 1811-1832 Lautrec 1864-1901 Watson 1928-
Kierkegaard 1813-1855 Feynman 1928-1992
farming Homer fl750-700 Anaxagoras c.500-428 Ptolemy 100-168 Fibonacci 1175-1250 della Francesco 1410-1492 Rembrandt 1606-1669 Dickens 1812-1870 Becqueral 1832-1908 Piaget 1896-1980
wheel pottery Hebrew Prophets fl700 Sophocles 496-406 Column of Trajan 106-113 Grosseteste 1175-1253 Castagno 1423-? Milton 1608-1674 Mayer 1814-1878 Lie 1842-1909 Michener 1907-
metal working coinage c700-650 Zeno 495-435 Plotinus 205-270 Frederich II 1198-1250 Bosch 1450-1516 Colbert 1619-1683 Boole 1815-1864 Roentgen 1845-1923 Solzhenitsyn 1918-
Transformations
pictographs Herodotus 485-425 Augustine 354-430 Henry II 1154-1189 Bottocelli c1480 Pascal 1623-1662 Thoreau 1817-1862 Van Gogh 1853-1890 Kuhn 1922-1997
bronze Galen c.130- Chartre Cathedral c.1194 Lorenzo DiMedici 1449-1492 Boyle 1627-1691 Bronte 1818-1848 Lorentz 1853-1928 Gell-Mann 1929-
c1230
c1480
c1650
c1890
c1963
c1890
c750
c460
c150
1848
Diophantus c.250 Savonarola 1452-1498 Vermeer 1632-1675 Marx 1818-1883 Wilde 1854-1900 Doctorov 1931-
Gospel c.100 Spinoza 1632-1677 Joule 1818-1889 Poincare 1854-1912 Vonnegut 1922-
Arch-Constantine 312-315 Hooke 1635-1703 Courbet 1819-1877 Thomson 1856-1940 Gould 1941-
Pappus c.350 Melville 1819-1899 Conrad 1857-1924 Hawking 1942-
Simplicius ?-529 Clausius 1822-1888 Durkheim 1858-1917
Kelvin 1824-1907 Checkov 1860-1904
Riemann 1826-1866 Kipling 1865-1936
The Invention of Knowledge by Art Bardige Copyright 1995,1999

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ENVIRONMENTS (1859-1995)

The Explosion (1859-1866)

This work presents a new theory of knowledge. It is made possible by a new

• The theory - Unique Artifacts - explains a comprehensive pattern to

• Unique Artifacts also joins intellectual history to the development of

• Unique Artifacts connects the development of theories and patterns in the

• This new theory of knowledge clearly places us at the start of a great

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 2

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 3

The Periods of Knowledge 8

3. CONNECTIONS & PREDICTIONS 53

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 4

This Abstract, which I now publish, must necessarily be

(Charles Darwin, Introduction On the Origin of Species, 1859)

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 5

This work first describes a new pattern that

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 6

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 7

We start in search of a pattern to knowledge,

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 8

On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin 1859 Biology

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 9

"Man with a Broken Nose" 1864

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 10

Environment, the idea which we use so

Calling all of these great ideas “environment" seems inconsequential today. We

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 11

"The Last Supper" Leonardo DaVinci 1498 Art

Before environment, the element with which all knowledge

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 12

"Sistine Chapel" c. 1510

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 13

600 B.C. - Universals

First Principle is Water Thales of Miletus c. 590 B.C. Science

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 14

Black Figure Vase c. 525

The Greeks invented logos around 600 B.C. and

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 15

The First Element - Symbols

To find the first element of knowledge we

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 16

The Tools of Knowledge

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 17

The Entities - Singular and Plural

These great periods split into two parts

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 18

Singular Periods Plural Periods

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 19

"Parthenon" c. 448-432 B.C.

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 20

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 21

The 20th Century

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 22

Singularity is Copernicus' sun - central, external,

Plurality is Newton's gravity - common, internal,

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 23

The pattern follows

Singular Tribal Pre-history-3000

These common entities extend across all of the periods.

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 24

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 25

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 26

A theory connects a logical structure to an empirical

The Invention of Knowledge Art Bardige 27