Structure of Knowledge

The modern world is complex. It’s hard for everyone to acquire a comprehensive understanding of how everything work together. Knowledge is inevitably dispersed. That’s why specialisation is more important than ever now.

But Complexity isn’t difficulty. Using the analogy of computer, the complexity I refer to causes a bottleneck in RAM, not CPU. Unfortunately, human can’t be easily patched. We cannot just insert a bigger RAM.

In recent years I only feel stronger that most knowledge can be acquired via Effective Method because they are either First-Order or “low” Higher-Order, i.e. directly corresponding to a real-world entity or a few levels meta to it. In other words, they are not too abstract. Abstract knowledge is the true difficulty. Maths is one of it.

Knowledge is a model of some part of the universe. Although the map isn’t the terriority, it is useful if we could establish a lingua franca for all knowledge, i.e. a meta-description of their common structure. To me, jurisprudence is a lot like the study good software engineering practice. Economics, sociology, psychology, physiology, their essence feel the same to me, just that they are the manifestation of the same “physics” on different layers of this world. I haven’t found the words for these ideas. It’s always on the tip of the tongue. Isomorphism? Maybe, but also more than that.

Language is inherently linear, while knowledge isn’t. I feel that knowledge is beyond finite dimension. Maybe it’s actually a lack of dimensionality. Or we need some new high-level construct for this smooth, continuous, yet layered and recursive concept. Maybe someone is working on it now? I sincerely hope so.