Monday, October 17, 2005

Conceptual culture

Continuing the review, I recently did a major update of the introductory and help section. There are plenty of connections to science and nature, but these aren't yet specific enough. The various subjects of conceptual culture are not only rooted in the human body and mind, but there is also a category for important authors, artists, mathematicians, philosophers, and other innovators. Like areas of study, these are not solitary activites, but are strongly influenced by interaction with other people and membership in groups.
This area specifically includes language, literature, graphic arts, mathematics, applied science, and philosophy as major categories, though I have considered elevating rhetoric to the same level.
These are connected closely to such things as customs, occupations, performing arts, and to various material objects, such as physical books. All the institutions of society, including families, education, economics, government, and religion make use of and help shape these areas of culture. The ways in which social structure, type, and change, and particular communities influence, and examples from specific peoples such as english-speaking or asiatic peoples are also connected. Roughly speaking, language, rhetoric, graphic arts, and parts of applied science have existed since prehistory; literature, mathematics can be reliably traced not much before antiquity, and philosophy has arisen mostly during classical and medieval times.

A major portion of conceptual culture is applied science. This includes subjects such as agricultural science, engineering, navigation, communication theory, accounting, and medical science, many of which involved applied mathematics.
In material culture, I have been working with major classes of tools.

In economics, I have finished a rough classification of industries. In government, I have a rough categorization of particular governments as local, national, and international.

The major area of sociology, in the social structure and change section, I'm working with factors of change. For communities, I added some notes on Karachi, Pakistan; continued working on Northeast European peoples, and for nonwestern peoples, I am working with South Asia, (yes, including Pakistan; later I hope to connect the cities to particular nations.)

In history, I started in on the early 3rd millennium BC, (Sumer and the Old Kingdom of Egypt, primarily), I'm still working on the 4th century BC (Greeks), and the early 20th century (1900-1920, which includes most notably World War I). I can include only the most broad, general notes about these so far, but as I progress, the details become clearer.

That's a ride through areas that I've been particularly working on. From here on, I'm going to continue to make notes of areas when I finish one section, start another, or have found something particularly interesting satisfying about some one I'm working on.

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