everything is draft – or not, it depends

introduction

“there is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words” - Thomas Reid

The ambiguity of words complicates writing.

Especially technical writing, with an ambitious objective: to communicate definite, specific, ideas, well-enough, to result in the formation of sufficiently equivalent ideas in the mind of a reader.

“it is what we know already that often prevents us from learning” - Claude Bernard

All communication must also account for existing ideas: ideas, already present in the mind. Prior knowledge, which may obscure, pollute, or corrupt, the composition, or contextual framing, of new ideas.

tbc

 

problems

  • Language is ambiguous

  • To communicate technical ideas well, problematic priors in the mind of any reader must be anticipated and addressed; to mitigate or at least minimise, conflict

    • This is a challenging task, and significantly increases the volume of ideas to be communicated

  • Common writing wisdom is:

    • Limit the scope of ideas to be communicated
    • Limit the scope of audience
      • From general interest, to special interest

  • For the project

    • The scope of ideas is necessarily ‘all universal phenomena’ ^[ Though noting, the exercise does not describe and relate all universal phenomena –the initial objective is to: build and frame a premise –of unified science; minimally demonstrate the viability of compositional mechanics –as a tool for mapping the traditionally unresolved territories of scientific anomaly; whilst also accommodating known good, reconciled understandings ]
      • Ideas which suggest alternative perspective to an established paradigm cannot always be framed with the concerns of that paradigm
      • Some synchronisation is required to communicate difference; significance; conceptual intersections; and reframe any anomaly left unexplained by prior paradigm, and explained by new ^[ See: the view from over here ]
    • The scope of intended audience is eventually everyone – a general audience ^[ A curious thing about a unified science ( and mechanics all the things ), is that when contrived complexity is minimised, more people ought to better understand more things, with less esoteric, specialist knowledge. Special cases are still unique, but fractional to general case, and commonality structures can be seen repeating, across quite different universal phenomena ]
      • The ideas themselves relate to everyone, and can be applied to any discipline
      • Diverse methods of analysis and reasoning are used throughout
    • ^[ However, until sufficiently communicated, it is quite possible that the only viable audience are those with both an eye for the speculative, and sufficient patience to weather this early iterative phase. If that is you, thank you. ]

 

a sketch of an approach

expression scopes

presentation

The first pass will be informal notes and sketches ^[ A minimal outline, to frame the premise and intuitions, and compose and relate essential concepts ]:

  1. Linear presentation – an approximate account of the original project progression: the exercise
  2. Non-linear – densely-linked, atomic notes, will be posted, referenced, and updated, as necessary: concepts and topics
  3. Meta – meta analysis, out of sequence notes, discussions, and supporting essays: here

later passes will iterate towards increasingly formal detail ^[ the eventual intention is evaluable mathematics and logic, where appropriate ]

 

temporary circumstances

writing is an iterative, ambitious process—only eventually sufficient. as such, until complete, is insufficient, in one or more ways

Speaking practically, where any idea is found to be insufficiently communicated, there are at least three options:

  1. Contact – to request more, or bump prioritisation, if possible
  2. Wait a bit, and come back to the topic or aspect at a later time
  3. Accept the temporary tension, and continue to frame or reframe context ^[ By adjacent or respective phenomenal peers ], and observe whether intuitions develop unconsciously
    1. Ideas are maps of territory, and like territory, these ideas all relate

on temporary tension, of unresolved phenomena

consider a work of fiction, whereby phenomenological explanations evolve over a scoped lifecycle – aka story arc, character arc, etc:

  • we must suspend some critical analysis until phenomenal resolution
    • we can even enjoy such suppositional headroom!
  • temporary tension is necessary, because conceptual ideas, like written prose, are composed, and composition takes time
  • contextual framing must come first, to align and relate concerns
    • ideas out of context are like words out of context. ambiguous, and often misleading
    • once the context is framed, details will be worked through, phenomena will resolve, within the constraints of the context

alignment before distinction

 

publishing

Content is published programmatically, with periodic snapshots of source markdown saved to github.

To report issues, or request access, please contact.

 

 

tbc

[email protected]