This
website is the online version of a book I am writing, called A Tree of
Knowledge. It was conceived several years ago, when I
started trying to research a field of study that turned out not to
exist. I was a graduate student
in psychology, and I was getting frustrated with the extreme specialization
and conceptual fragmentation that divides the disciplines of
academic knowledge. People in different fields see the world through very different
glasses, and they don't spend much time comparing notes. This
keeps the disciplines disconnected from each other, and makes big
pictures hard to see. I like big pictures (obviously) and had
become interested in ways of integrating various fields, by searching for unifying themes.
In other words, I was interesting in the academic field devoted to
connecting and integrated other fields of knowledge.
But when I went to the library to find books on the subject, I found that they weren’t there.
In fact, the subject
didn't really exist - not in any coherent way. I thought it should.
So, being young and
foolish, I decided to leave school and write a book about it myself. After several years of research and writing, I'm
very happy to say it's almost finished. I set up this site to
introduce people to the
book, to explain what I'm trying to accomplish, and to ask for
feedback
THE PROBLEM:
INTELLECTUAL FRAGMENTATION
A Tree of Knowledge
is about the value of nature, science, and history as sources of
unity in the great diversity of human ideas. Diversity is
great, but we also need unity. These days, knowledge
has become so specialized, and ideologies so numerous and divergent,
that the intellectual landscape has fragmented into countless
disconnected regions. The world seems more complex and confusing all
the time, and it gets harder to find common ground, or see big
pictures. This causes real problems, ranging from intellectual
alienation to sectarian violence. We
face massive, intertwined global challenges, such as economic
under-development, rapid population growth, and environmental degradation;
which can only be understood by seeing big pictures, and can only be
solved by finding common ground in our responses to them.
THE NEED FOR CONCEPTUAL INTEGRATION AND BETTER PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING
OF BASIC KNOWLEDGE
But where do we begin? I think
we can start by trying to improve the conceptual integration of factual knowledge–of
basic academic disciplines like economics, biology, and history.
Citizens in today’s democracies–and the politicians we elect–need to
understand these fields. But how many of us really do? How many
people can explain what entropy is, what the counter-reformation
was, or how savings rates influence economic growth? I know I
couldn’t before I started writing this book. The fact is, most
people bluff. They act like they know a lot more than
they really do. But if you went out and randomly quizzed
people on the street, you would find that public
understanding of basic knowledge is simply embarrassing.
You'll find people who don't know what DNA is, or can't point to
India on a map of the world. Lots
of people don't know lots of things that they really ought to know.
There are many reasons for this, but one is that even basic
knowledge seems so disconnected that it's hard to form a coherent
big picture. So, one way to
improve this situation is to show how different fields fit together–how
chemistry connects to biology, for example; or how history connects to economics. For conceptual integration to work, though, we have to find
sources of unity between the fields. What might those be?
NATURE,
SCIENCE, AND HISTORY AS SOURCES OF UNITY
I believe one source is nature.
Whatever we know or believe, we all live on the same planet, and
it's been around a lot longer than we have. Nature is, quite
literally in this case, a source of common ground. The unity of
nature is deep and profound.
Everybody, and every living thing, lives within the context of basic
laws of physics, principles of chemistry, fundamental features of
biology, and so on. In other words, the branches of science
are concerned with finding universal, or at least pervasive, laws of
nature. But what ties the sciences together? Here’s a suggestion.
The different disciplines of science reflect the history of
the natural world in the largest sense - the evolution of the
universe and life on earth. According to modern science, the
universe began 13.7 billion years ago, when basic particles, forces,
and laws of physics were created in the Big Bang. This means that
physics reflects the fundamental features that were stamped on the
universe in its first instants. Because everything began then,
everything in the universe is made of those particles, and obey
those laws. It doesn't get much more universal than that.
TREES OF
UNITY AND DIVERSITY
After the Big Bang, though, things began to diversify.
Elementary particles started
combining into atoms, stars, and galaxies; and the trunk of nature’s
tree grew branches. On one of those branches–our little planet–a new
tree began to grow, as simple single-celled organisms evolved and
diversified into all the millions of species on earth today. As the
illustration here suggests, the bigger trees in nature contain smaller trees, and
when we zoom inward to examine them, they may be even more complex
than the big ones. These smaller trees may contain even smaller trees.
For example, one branch on the tree of life–an unusual upright primate–developed
a big brain, language, and the ability to pass tools and ideas
across generations. Before long, a new tree of culture and history
began to grow and diversify. All these trees, with all their many
branches, can be traced to the same roots. Unity remains
amidst growing diversity.
A tree, then, is a useful way of
thinking about situations where diversity is blended with unity. The
pattern shows up throughout the world, from genealogical trees to
organizational hierarchies, to the history of life on earth. Our
minds rely on the same pattern. Human memory forms categories based
on hierarchies of inclusiveness. Take pets, for example. “Pet” is a
broad-scale category. More specific categories might include dogs
and cats. More specific still are Bulldogs and Schnauzers;
Himalayans and Siamese. So,
we have a branching tree of
categories, with "Pets" at the trunk,
and things like "Bulldog" and "Siamese" forming the branches. This is
one way we make sense of the world; by organizing smaller, more
specific categories into larger, more general ones. Books,
especially textbooks, reflect this fact. A book has a main theme,
which it divides into a set of chapters, which are further divided
into sections, sub-sections, paragraphs, and sentences. This brings
us to the basic idea for this book
HOW A
TREE OF KNOWLEDGE WORKS
If human memory, the organization of books,
and the history of the universe can all be seen in terms
of branching trees of unity and diversity, why not combine all
three? That’s what I have tried to do; writing a book that tells a
brief history of the universe, life on Earth, and humankind; by
highlighting the tree-like pattern to fit the way our minds organize
knowledge. That’s why this book is patterned like a textbook (as you
can see by looking at the table of contents) with several levels of
headings and sub-headings. This pattern makes information easier to
find, both in memory and in the book itself. For similar
reasons, the book
relies on a series of timelines, many of which show how things have
branched out and diversified over time. Volume I discusses some
common patterns in nature, such as branching trees, hierarchies, and
networks, and how they can help us understand big pictures. Volume
II is the narrative part, which traces the history of the universe
as scientists and historians currently understand it, by zooming
inward: from the universe at large, to life on earth, to recent human history.
WHAT I'M
TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH
This book is my attempt to further the
conceptual integration and public understanding of basic factual
knowledge, by highlighting the unity in the world’s diversity. Of
course, I know what some of you are thinking: "Who does this guy
think he is? The history of the universe and the unity of
knowledge...isn't that a little
ostentatious?" Maybe it is, but I
don’t mean for it to be. Actually, the book is quite limited. It's
about the unifying themes in factual knowledge. There's a great
deal more to life than factual knowledge. Much of human
experience - relationships, spiritual meaningfulness, or the arts,
for example - might be clarified with the help of science and
history, but they will never be reduced to those things. That
would be beside the point, because these things are about experience
as much as they are about explanation. As to the scope of the book,
I think of it has having a different intellectual geometry than most
books of a similar size–it's wide but shallow, as opposed to deep
but narrow. The total volume is about the same.
Nevertheless, if you look at the
table of contents, it’s obvious this is a
big book. In fact, it's really a small, narrative encyclopedia.
I've decided to make it available (at least temporarily) on the
Internet, for several reasons. First, it gives people access
to its ideas immediately, bypassing the long process of publishing
and marketing. It's set up so people can read it from "front
to back", or simply browse subjects they find interesting.
Another reason I put it online is that much of the information it covers is constantly changing. I
think the Internet format will allow me to keep it updated much more
efficiently than a traditional hard-copy book. As it grows, I
may even get specialists in various fields to help me update it.
Finally, hyperlinks allow a website to do things a book can't do,
such as offer instant links to related subjects, both within the
book and across the web. Like it or not, the Internet is
transforming traditional publishing, and will surely transform the
way
we think of books.
I don't know whether a Tree of
Knowledge will be published traditionally. I haven't
contacted any publishers yet, though I probably will. It's big
and it falls between the cracks in traditional academic disciplines,
so it may be tough. That's another reason I'm putting it
online, to get it out there and hope that it attracts interest.
The thing about offering it for free online, of course, is that you
can't make any money that way. Eventually, I'll have to find a
way to make the project pay for itself, because it takes up a lot of
my time (and money). I may offer hard-copy editions for sale
from this website, or simply ask for donations from individuals and
foundations. Perhaps I will set up a non-profit organization
to streamline that process. I may even have to make it
subscription based, or include advertising. For now though,
it's available (at least the parts that are finished). All I
ask is that you cite it if you reference it in writing, and please,
please don't plagiarize it. If you like it, I would love for
you to tell people about it. Finally, if you have advice or constructive
criticism, or if you would like to
contribute specialized knowledge, please
contact me. Thanks for your
time.
