Changes, Self-Education, and History

It occurred to me that, although I'm talking a lot about the Sapience Knowledge Base, I didn't have a link to it. I thought I did, but it might have been on one of my posts which is now buried in the archives. It has also occurred to me that I might do well to link the blog to other blogs, and reserve reference links for the web site. I have also begun to add labels for specific topics that I discuss. So, I have completely revised and reorganized the links section.

Although the title of this blog would lead one to expect that there is something about self-directed education here, I've posted precious little on that specific topic. One of the reasons is that I consider self-directed education to be a part of education. More specifically, it has a lot in common with research, which I take to be a part of education. Without that connection to other areas of education or even other subjects, I feel like I'm discussing in a vacuum, as a meaningless abstract generality. Give it a context and a connection to something else, give it parts, and I can then say something meaningful about it. With today's developments, I have an application: specifically history, so I can now say something meaningful about education in general and self education in particular.

When I first began considering how to structure the topic of education in this knowledge base, and what its parts and processes were, I decided that the foundation of education is the discovery of new knowledge, which generally involves a research process. One cannot teach what one has not first learned. Then comes teaching, and then comes the organization of the process, and finally, schools. Since I'm working outside the school system, I decided that I needed to pay attention to the roots of the subject, but because I had structured my studies from a "top down" approach, I had trouble getting to that particular area. Now I have a connection.

I've noticed for some time the complaint that "history is boring", at least, as it's often taught in school. I'm not sure that I have a better answer for that than anyone else, but I might just observe not that a child's knowledge and memory start at the self and the immediate environment, and go outward. A child is far less likely to be interested in the history of the world, than in the history of his own local neighborhood, and less interested in what happened long ago and far away than what happened yesterday or last month, unless there is something in that tale of long ago and far away that makes a connection to right now. Another has to do with the approach taken by professional historians in the past century or so. In their attempts to be scientific, factually correct, and manageable the amount of source material they have to work with, they have tended to become highly specialized, and technically dry. Many works of professional historians are unreadable to the nonspecialist. While historians have been accused of concentrating too much on the "his" in history, many have forgotten the "story" part.
But enough rant on that subject. In general terms, a self-directed student might wish to focus on research, on learning from someone else, on organizing a learning project, or pay for a pre-compiled package (complete with certification) from a recognized school.

I hadn't expected to add any new links from the history main page for a while yet, but one to Democratic (national) governments appeared. I got a lot further in checking links than I had expected, and in the process rewrote the section on how education applies to history. Since that's been an area I wanted to get around to for some time, I was very pleased to finally see it appear. I was expecting a fair amount of demand for prehistory, and there was, but it came mostly in the form of checking already existing links, rather than creating new one. Antiquity has a new link to hunting and gathering societies, and Classical and Medieval history a new link to Judaism. No new links from Modern history main page: I'm doing a lot of checking links to particular countries and cities of Western civilization. The 18th century, though, ahas a new link to Southeast Asia, the 19th century to pagan religion, the early 19th to institutions, the late 20th century to social structure and change, and the current quarter of 2007 a link to institutions.
I have nothing new for the main page in sociology. For peoples and nations I'm examining virtual links to communities, and for communities, virtual links to nations, and for social structure and change, I've wrapped up history for the time being and am about to start checking real links to nations. (A virtual link is one that exists only on my development guide, for the purpose of helping assure that I don't develop low-level topics before having considering them at a higher level.) I am actually looking at pages to nations and cities, but mostly these include already-developed links to history, so it's checking, not any new development.
For the main institutions page, I'm also checking links to nations, so there's no news there. But, for the individual sections, things are starting to move. For particular religions of the world, I now have a link to this year's news. I can connect pagan religion to the major peoples. Abrahamic religion to this decade. I gave Government connections to the 19th century, and government activities back to prehistory. Economics is linked to the 19th century, economic activities to modern history, and industries to history in general. I also added a new page, for building and construction industries. I also have links to the history of teaching and the history of research. I especially wanted to get to these the first real, tangible development of these subjects.
As a bonus that I wasn't expecting to get to today, I have culture linked to the current quarter and month, so that now when the catalog of recent events lists sports and the like, I have some place to discuss them. (Personally, I don't think I could care about them less than I do, but since they are highly visible part of society, I almost have to give them some attention to them.) The area of applied science now connects to antiquity, at least better than it did.

Small steps

The threads of inquiry starting from history are pushing the development of religion and government. I recently reorganized Asiatic religions, and the history page now reflects this reorganization. Otherwise, I haven't added a great deal to my knowledge of history.
Not much has gone on in earlier areas of history, except that particular nations are starting to push prehistory a little, and the effect of that push is to develop social structure and change a little. As usual, modern history is getting the lion's share of attention I finished a review of modern history. On the plus side, this will let me select priorities for development better. On the minus side, it seems like everything is needed! This is going to be focusing for a while on particular peoples, nations, and cities; just to get them fully incorporated into the "study on demand" approach. The next time through, I hope to have a better idea of which ones to pay attention to.
For the 19th century, I expanded the discussion of Asiatic religions a bit, and finally got around to a note in the 20th century on modern world governmental organizations, such as the United Nations, European Union, and NATO. I've been wanting to include this subject for a long time, and it's nice to have a toehold. In the late 21st century, (the last 7 years, as I've mentioned), I have a start on discussion of economics.
Sociology has been helping drive development of religion, but doesn't have any new links. I'm checking virtual links from peoples to particular cities, and from nations to particular cities, and checking virtual links from communities to particular nations. This doesn't immediately contribute much to the knowledge base, but it will help later when I go to work on specific details, as in which nations have which cities and which cities belong to which nations. A historical survey of social structure and change hasn't yielded a whole lot of new and useful information, but I do have this linked to the future now.
For institutions in general I am also checking links to nations of the world, except that these are actual links. There has been progress in religion, for instance, a place for a survey of major religions in the past 7 years and more specifically in the last two. I have links from Christianity to nations, so that I can start gathering detail, Judaism in modern times, Islam and Asiatic religions in the 20th century. Government has also been progressing with a a 20th century peek ad international governments, and a modern history look at particular types of governments. (this is approximately the reverse of the other link: One starts in the 20th century and considers the role of modern international organizations, the other starts with these organizations and considered their modern history. The idea is to be able to approach the subject from either side.
I have a development plan which lists each page, the links from it, I have made and checked, and the ones that are planned to be made and checked. In many cases, there are more links already existing, than I have on the list, in other cases, these are new links to be created. I'm making a special effort to keep this matched to the actual state of work, and I also like to keep a digest so I can see at a glance where I am and guess where I will be going.
So, at a guess, I will be advancing review of nations and cities of Western Civilization, in the process giving more weight to earlier periods of history, connecting peoples and communities to each other at least in principle, and also starting to move from religion to government.
I've also been thinking about publishing all these updates I've been talking about to the web, but since the knowledge base is so thoroughly cross-linked, it more or less to be published all at once, rather than a few pieces at a time. It doesn't seem economical to do that until updates have been sufficiently significant. Some of the changes I've discussed here, and some that I haven't will make more sense when they're put together instead of in disconnected fragments, in perhaps a week or so.

Spinning wheels

I did quite a bit of link checking, but it's astonishing how little real progress I actually made on adding anything. Hopefully it's groundwork for more interesting developments. Some days are like that, whichever approach I use.

Minor progress

A minor mishap, with maybe an update or two lost. I didn't keep my list of specific areas updated, but I've made substantial progress in checking the links from history to particular cities, and a large number of links from modern history. I also completed the initial review of links from Sociology. Sometimes it's tempting to say. "It's all important!" and check everything, but that's not the idea. I skipped the opportunity to use it for a somewhat connected survey of history, and have selected a bunch of lower-level topics that I've been wanting to get to for some time. i seemed to make more progress in religion than anything else, but most of that was link-checking.

More small steps

It seems like I accomplished a bit less today than usual, but still, a few steps forward is nice. In classical and medieval history, I created a link to the class structure of society. For modern history, I made a link to industries and another to educational organization. Social structure in the 19th century and social change in the early 21st finish out the day's progress in history.
The lardest share of new links came in sociology. One of them, the main sociology page, I created a link to industrial technology. The effect of tools and machinery has a large effect on different areas of society: this is one of the detail areas I've been hoping to explore, and it's still only a beginning I have the star of a historical sketch for Saudi Arabia, so I'm not entirely neglecting the various nations. Social structure and change is now linked to the last seven years, so I can start making notes on current events. It's often hard to note the beginnings of new or major social movements. These are often only visible in hindsight. but others can be followed with a little bit of historical background. The daily news is pretty much a jumble of unrelated events if events don't follow some kind of pattern. As part of this same theme, I also have a link to social changes in the late 2000s and into the future. For types of society, I also have links to the early 21st century and into the future. Getting a little bit more specific about one type of society, I have notes on modern history for industrial society.
For education in general, I created a link to the 19th century so I have a little more history to work with, and for educational organization, a peek back into classical and medieval history.
I mentioned industrial technology, and now I have a very brief sketch for its history.

It's hard to predict exactly what the demand is going to be, but I'm anticipating a couple of milestones. More stuff coming soon.

Small steps

I did record one of my threads of review and development, but decided it was too long, so I'll try a shorter one. Not much happened in development of history, but I created or expanded links from classical and medieval history to hunting and gathering societies, from modern history to government activities, from the 19th century to the Industrial Revolution, and from the early 21st century to Western civilization.
Even less happened in sociology, except that social change, and particular changes, were linked to the early 21st century, and agrarian societies to modern times. There was mostly a lot of link-checking and review among these areas.
I made more progress among the institutions. I have Christianity in the 19th century and Roman Catholicism in modern times, Islam in classical and medieval times, and secularism in classical and medieval times. Then there is government in early medieval times, particular governments in classical and medieval times, a new page for traditional empires, national governments in classical and medieval times, a new page for dictatorships, and government structure in antiquity.
I also added a note on antiquity to material culture, and created a page for communications technology.
This kind of refinement among the institutions is the kind of thing I have been itching to do. I decided some time ago that I would be better off starting my studies of political science almost from scratch, rather than by studying the works of other so-called experts, since there is so much disagreement among them anyway. There is also a tendency to ignore the history of government and only consider modern forms. What I have so far is a rough sketch, which will be refined as I gather more information.

A bit slower

I didn't make a whole lot of progress in history. The systematic review of links from history has now switched to starting threads of connected links in areas which seem to be particularly useful to history. I started with various peoples, a couple of areas within social structure and change, and began inquiries into religion. I skipped over particular cities this time. The systematic review of links from Classical and medieval history pulled ahead of antiquity, and began to include various areas of sociology for it. The review of links from Modern history pulled further ahead and has served as the source for inquires about religion and government. Inquiries beginning from the 19th century advanced a little, into social structure, and those starting from the 20th century went a little further, into social structure and change. The early 21st century continued to develop, and even connections for 2007: I may get to the point where these growing stubs of pages can support actual content.
There is also minimal progress in Socioology, although inquiries on religion, government, and economics have been starting from here. The current set of inquiries into history starting from the peoples of the world is done for now, and here particular communities will have something to contribute. Within social structure and change, there is some progress; mostly, I expanded my page on what I call the agrarian revolution.
The most significant progress came in the area of Institutions. I completely revised the page on Asiatic religions, so that instead of having eight pages below it, there are three: Persian, Indian, and Oriental. I also expanded the page on educational organization.
There was still minimal activity in culture.

It occurs to me that I ought to post a sample thread to gve a better idea of what I'm doing. I hope to do that tomorrow.

Wandering

In the newer approach I've been using, when I start out on a topic, I never know here I'm going to end up. However, if I start out enough times, the paths cross and recross often enough that I wind up developing the topics that most need to be developed, or so I hope. At he moment, because I start everything with history and work down into more detail. history is getting a lot of attention. Also, since I tend to start at the present and working backward while I'm researching a history, there is a heavy focus on more recent periods of history. Most of these trips are starting and ending at the major history level, which has a set of things to go after next that I'm reasonably happy with. A sizable fraction of these went through modern history, Another good fraction went through the 20th century, and more than I expected went through the new early 21st century page. For the sociology page, I've also done a good job of reviewing its links, all the way into education. For peoples of the world, I got a long way through history links, though not much detail in the particular peoples. I did quite a few inquiries starting from general history about nations, which wound up extensively developing my list of theoretical links from the nations page, but not much for any one of them. (Since that's just an alphabetical list, I'm not linking it to other areas the way I do most other pages). I intend to handle the communities page similarly. I didn't get very far through the social institutions, but there was a little bit of spillover from the three or four areas that were reviewing links to it.
A couple of areas that I've been curious about, such as the history of modern types of international governments, the history of forms of government, and economic prehistory, and the 18th century history of world religions, opened for examination. These are still huge areas.
The other day I got curious about how much I've actually written on this knowledge base, so I totaled up the file sizes on my system and came up with a total of about 3300 K, which I estimate to be in the neighborhood of 600 pages of text. It's past the point where anyone can go through the whole thing in one sitting.

More progress

In the last few days, I'd been continuing this need-based approach to development of the knowledge base. One advantage of it is that in the process, I'm doing a fair amount of link checking. I finished a review of everything that supports history and added a number of new pages in the process. Not all of these are equally valuable, and a lot of my approaches to deciding which ones to work on have been far too mechanical.
One of the frustrating things about the approaches I have been using is that, although I have been adding nations to the knowledge base in approximate order of decreasing population, this is only weakly correlated with their historical significance. For instance, Indonesia is far larger than the United Kingdom, but the latter had a globe-spanning empire 70 years ago, while the former did not. It didn't help any that I was developing them in the same order I had added them, and didn't have any way to fix or adjust it. I hope this new approach works better.
Prehistory, antiquity, and classical and medieval history have all been progressing slowly and prompting examination of the major peoples. I did expand a few nations before I decided that my former approach to nations and the new one were incompatible, and set them aside for later. Modern history has been progressing rather faster, and is starting to prompt examination of social structure and change. There is also a fair concentration on the most recent 20 years.
In the area I call sociology, I have been expanding my consideration of the religious roots of society. Other areas are going more slowly, but there is progress.

Today's progress

For the general history page, I got through reviewing the connections to various areas of social structure and change, which in my new approach, will allow me to start working on those areas.
Prehistory was in demand for a few new areas, so I made a little progress. Classical and medieval history was not. Modern history was demanded by several areas, so at the main page I went through reviewing the connections to a number of peoples. There was a little progress in the 8th century, but the most significant was in the 19th, where I added outlines of the 19th century in Ukraine, South Africa, Colombia, and Myanmar.
Ukraine is an area that has more or less escaped my attention before, and during the 19th century, it was principally part of the Russian Empire. I still don't know a great deal about it: the more interesting events seem to have happened earlier and later. I was rather hazier on the details of South Africa as well. Colombia became independent of Spain fairly early. I've observed before that Latin American independence did not go nearly the same direction that the United States did. Reviewing this era brought up the reason, why? The British takeover of Myanmar in the 19th century proceeded at about the same pace as Southern Africa. Since it was called Burma up til 1989, the name still sounds unfamiliar.
This brought up a couple of other questions. I really would like to get around to working on biographies again, but have kept getting diverted. I don't have a proper historical outline of the growth (and decline) of the British Empire, but there is a place for it under the general heading of government; specifically colonial empires.
For the 20th century, I made a little progress at reviewing major groups of peoples, but this section isn't yet in heavy demand.

For sociology, I was mostly doing a detailed review of how it ought to be supported by history. Peoples of the world and communities aren't yet in heavy demand, so they got off lightly. Social structure and change is in demand, principally from history, so consideration of quite a few sections got started. I added new pages for hunting-gathering peoples, which I have some interest in, and institutional structure, which is another area where I have had some interest. Most of these are poorly developed, but since quit a few areas link to them, this section has potential for some rapid growth.

Changing directions

I got up to a certain point in the development of sociology, which involved rewriting the history section of that page, and also rewriting the history section of the peoples page, and decided I'd had enough of the linear approach for a time. I've tried what I've called a needs-centered approach before, so I'll have to try this again.

In developing in history, what I most need is to discuss peoples of the world, which has nations as the basic raw material. I gave a basic outline for a few more nations, including Algeria, Afghanistan, Peru, and Nepal. This basic outline is so sparse that it's practically useless, but it's something that can be build on. Although I have been working on histories of particular cities, I decided to skip that this time.
I didn't make much progress in prehistory, for one because few subjects demand its development, and for another because I don't have an easy source for how prehistoric anthropology and archeology have developed.
Likewise for antiquity, although I've located what should be a starting point on working on its detail. Classical and medieval history area are also less demanded.
Most of the need is for more modern history, so for Tanzania, Kenya, Canada, and Morocco, I expanded some. For Tanzania and Kenya, the outlines of early modern and colonial history were similar. Canada was more familiar, since it's North American and derives largely from British culture. I couldn't make sense of Morocco...it was late, and my source material wasn't well written, so I'm going to have to attack that in more detail later. Within modern history, I have a clearer idea of how I'm going to attack the 8th, 18th, and 20th centuries, and I haven't forgotten about the newly created early 21st century.

Sociology doesn't need history as much as it does other areas such as institutions, but history is available to work with, so it's being examined. Since I just did a major examination of sociology and peoples from the point of view of history, there's nothing much to add here. I did decide to release more nations for development. I'm also starting to work on Western civilization, Asiatic peoples, African peoples, and American Indian peoples, though these are in the early stages of having their history examined again. As I mentioned, I'm de-emphasizing communities and cities, but there are quite a few of them that can be developed.

Late 20th and early 21st century

I got almost further than I had planned on. For the main page of the late 20th century, I did a little bit of cleanup with some important missing incidents, and did some looking up of the United Kingdom, Congo, Italy, and South Korea. I've kept reasonable track of Great Britain, so there weren't any surprises there. but I hadn't known about the Congo. This used to be known as the Belgian Congo back in the bad old colonial days, and not too long after independence, it was renamed Zaire. Then, when I wasn't paying attention, its name was changed back to the Democratic republic of the Congo. The history of Italy in this period turned out to be an almost incomprehensible mess, full of detail and party acronyms that mean next to nothing to me. This is another of the kind of things that motivate this project in the first place. With a little bit of earlier history for background, links to what else was going on at the time, and a little bit of detail on political parties and the Roman Catholic church, this should begin to make more sense. I've also paid little attention to South Korean politics, so this didn't make a whole lot of sense to me ether. But at least I know a little bit more than I did before. I also did the usual extending of links to other areas. I haven't worked as far back in this period, comparatively speaking as I have in others, but I did get a fair amount done.

For the early 1990s, I made connections to the United States, China, India, and Indonesia. I had a hard time recalling events of the early Clinton administration, so this was a useful reminder. I had studied this period before, when it was more recent, and had it on an old version of the web site. Events in a few countries have progressed in the last five years or so and I had been working in other areas, so I hadn't kept caught up.

For the late 1990s, I made connections to Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Russia. I suppose what struck me most in Pakistan and Bangladesh (as well as the Congo, more generally speaking) was that democratic or republican forms of government mean very little if there is no respect for the rule of law. It is just too easy for a "strong man" to ignore the law, or rewrite it according to whim. Then I keep seeing how frequently the leaders in these countries are charged with corruption of some form.

I also got a start on the early 21st century. This was fairly easy to do, since all I had to do was create the appropriate page, create links from it and back-links to it, and just move a couple of paragraphs wholesale from the late 20th. There's more to do, since a lot of countries that have some information from 2001 and later need to be properly linked, but I have a start. I'm getting closer to being able to work on current events; something I had started to do back in December and January. I had to set that aside and work on particular nations, because they pages were so badly underdeveloped, but I'm catching back up.

Mid and late-mid 20th century

The mid-20th century is dominated by events of World War II, although I keep getting reminded that I'm also describing events of the early Cold War, and not to overdo World War II. I've been looking at such things as the the beginning of the Cold war as it played out in Germany, liberation of Vietnam from France following the war, the effective independence and autonomy of Egypt, and modernization attempts in Ethiopia.
The late-mid 20th century is surprisingly obscure, although the nations I'm working on were not the most prominent. But I would expect to find more on Post-war French history, more on Turkey and pre-Revolutionary Iran, and Thailand. This may have something to do with the fact that these events are still in living memory and have not yet been thoroughly assimilated by historians, and the political struggles launched during this period are still going on to some extent. Also, these regions are not well covered by Western media.

While I was looking at Ethiopia, I was distracted by a reference to Prester John, a mythical personage who in medieval times was supposed to rule a Christian kingdom somewhere in central or east Asia. That led to a discussion of a personage in early Christian history called John the presbyter, who may or may not have been the same as the apostle John, and thence into questions of New Testament authorship. After reviewing some of this commentary, I was forcibly reminded me again of one of the pitfalls of scholarship, which is that some scholars tend to bring their own preconceptions and and preferences to a study, and reach conclusions which are then taken by others to be absolute fact, while others bring different preconceptions and prejudices and present their own conclusions as fact. The result is, of course, confusion and dispute.
Since Vietnam came up, in the period just preceding the Vietnam war, I took the chance to check some of my facts. I saw something about the Tonkin incident which prompted the US to authorize sending large number of troops to Vietnam, and noted the comment that one interpretation was that the government analysts who studied this incident did essentially the same thing: choose from a mass of conflicting details, those things that supported the picture they wish to present. And isn't this essentially what happened before the invasion of Iraq, with regard to the evidence of weapons of mass destruction? The tendency to see what we want or expect to see, while ignoring contrary evidence is all too common.
However, I also note that there is a difference in these cases. Ometimes, one has too little evidence to work with, in the other, one has too much.

Early and early mid 20th century

Due to other distractions, progress today was even slower than I had anticipated. For one, trying to expand on the history of nations while still keeping a fairly quick summary is a challenge, and involves more thought and writing than just creating links does.
There wasn't much new information about the early 20th century that I hadn't already known. Of the nations I looked at, the most detailed information available was on the history of Russia, which I was already roughly familiar with.
The early-mid 20th century mostly clarified the relationship between Japan and China before and at the beginning of World War II, and I got a little more information on social reform in Mexico.

Some other thoughts that have been surfacing from my other reading in the past few days. I have a persistent interest in the role of religion in history.
The author I mentioned the other day is Lois McMaster Bujold, and there are a number of interviews with her posted at her website at http://www.dendarii.com/. She mentions in one of them that in medieval times, the church ran a lot of facilities, such as schools, hospitals, shelters, and so forth, that government does today. The interplay between all these various things is part of what I want to explore on my site.
Yesterday when I was looking at United States history, I noticed a fair amount of conflict between labor movements and capitalists, and that socialism and the labor movement became allied. There are echoes of that same association in today's politics, which is something I would eventually like to explore. While I do have an interest in politics and government, I have repeatedly found myself disadvantaged by not having facts to back up my opinions, which is why I'm trying to make this blog more educational than overtly political.
I'm vaguely familiar with the state-sponsored atheist ideology of Communism that Lenin attempted to impose in Russia, which is part of why I never had any sympathy with Communism during the time of the Cold War (I was growing up in the 1960s, when it was still very much a live concern.) In the last chapter of a book I'm using for information about religious traditions. (The Great Religions, by Richard Cavendish) , the observation is made that Communism addressed similar concerns to those of religion, and functioned and was structured like one. I've been criticized for arguing that atheism should be treated along with other entirely varieties of religion, but I'm certainly not the first or only person to do so, and I'm not going to try to answer all this critic's claims and arguments right now. But I am interested in the subject, and hope to work back around to it.
I'm not even going to argue that religion is all or always good. While it's clear that the Japanese were highly militaristic up to their defeat in World War II, I haven't seen much discussion of a possible connection between Japanese militarism and state-sponsored Shinto. One of the concerns of the Mexican government during the early-mid 20th century was curbing the influence of the Roman Catholic church on it. This was nothing new to the Protestant world, which had done the same four centuries earlier, but the Reformation never took hold in Latin America.
Also during the time period I'm looking at were when some of the major corporations of today originated, but I'm going to have to save this interesting topic as well. Since the principal source I'm using now ( Isaac Asimov's "Chronology of the World") only goes up to the end of World War II, I'm going to go to other sources for history after that. I worry a little bit about depending so heavily on one source, but that's only a starting point: I am likely to revise to the point of unrecognizability as I add more detail. Eventually, I want to get to the point where I'm using more scholarly methods including documentation of sources for history, so I might as well at least name the source I'm using. If it's incomplete (which it is, no if about it), or wrong, I'll fix it later. But what I was going to say was that doing an internet search on, for instance, the mid-20th century of Germany is going to go even more slowly. I may not even get to the late 20th century before the weekend.
Soeaking of the late 20th century, one of the things I've been dissatisfied with is the placement of current events in the late 20th century. However, I had my reasons for that placement, which included plans to start making a changeover in early May. That time has come, starting Monday. Details will follow.

16th to 19th centuries

I went about roughly the pace that I expected to do, which is quite a bit slower than what I wanted. When I was browsing the Internet yesterday, I noticed that one of my favorite authors commented that while she was writing one of her books, it stayed about three chapters from the end for five chapters.
For the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, I was looking up and adding information for that period on four cities each, along with minimal extending of the aids, which just goes to show how far behind where I would like them to be some of them are.
That would have been about the extent of it for the 19th century as well, except that I was able to go a level deeper. The stubs of the 20-year periods (from the late 18th century) through the 19th century are now caught up to where they ought to be at this stage of development. The work I have been doing with developing the histories of nations finally reached into what I call the late 19th century, 1881 to 1900, and I was able to add a little more detail to the histories of the United States, China, India, and Indonesia for this period, although the obnoxious problem of Western bias which gives the Asian nations too little attention surfaced again, as it is likely to continue to do.
The problems I've noted of having too little information or having it in the wrong place aren't quite as easy to fix as I had thought, although I got it closer to correct when I was working on the late 18th century. I expect I should be able to fix things in the next development cycle, starting with what's left in this one. I'm now clear to work on the 20th century.

Classical, Medieval, and modern history

I went ahead with the classical and medieval section, and on the main page, added a bunch of links into social structure and change and social institutions. But when I look at specifics, this section is also mostly frozen.
I also did some work on the main modern history page, again mostly adding links into the social structure and change and institutions. I also did some writing in the various sections related to particular peoples that, as I think about it, needs to go in different sections from where I put it. I didn't get to tackling the individual centuries of the modern period yet, but those are coming up.

Prehistory and antiquity

I started going through history in general again, and made quite a few links to pages I created in the last round. It's a relief to be able to make better connections, especially to areas within religion, government, and economics.
I also made some progress at adding connections for prehistory. But when I got down into lower levels, early prehistory, middle prehistory, and late prehistory, I ran into a barrier. For one, I don't know nearly enough about how the field of prehistoric archeology has developed in the 20th century to give anything like an outline of the subject. For another, I haven't pursued particular countries or communities back this far in any detail. So, there's no real content to this section. That leads me to the conclusion that I'm going to be freezing progress in prehistory for a while, except as I'm able to make connections to the main prehistory page.
I ran into similar problems with antiquity. Although this has some highly interesting topics that I can connect at the main antiquity page, I'm going to have to freeze development of its detail for a time. However, I hope to be able to pick it back up before long.

When I was trying to look up material on the internet on 20th century archeology, I was unable to find a web site that gives a good summary. I did find references to a number of books that discuss the history of archaeology, which would be fine if I had convenient access to a good library, but right now I don't. This is an area where I'm going to have to wait.
Also, when I went to look at the sequence of events to give detail to early prehistory, I found such a difference of opinion among different prehistorians about exactly what took place when, that I didn't even try to put together what looked like a consensus. I've found this kind of situation time and again when I'm exploring a topic. I'd like to investigate such puzzles, but lack the expertise.

Culture and stuff

The thorough revision of culture didn't happen. All I managed was to get links to particular nations updated, without going into many more specifics. I also didn't do much with anthropology or personal studies except complete their sets of links to earlier history, and I didn't touch science at all. I also did a few technical changes, revising the file structure, and published the whole update to the web.
So, I'll be starting the cycle back over, mostly with history, although I may look at other areas just for the sake of variety.

Institutions again

I thought that I was going to be able to go through the rest of the social institutions rather quickly, but it turned out not to be so. I wound up adding new stuff to sections that I hadn't updated in over four months. This was quite a more substantial treatment that the last one a few days ago.
In government, I pushed a little bit farther in particular governments, starting with international government. I now have a page for what I call modern compacts, which will eventually include sections on the UN, for instance. I also did a substantial revision of national governments. I had been uncertain how I was going to classify them, but finally settled on grouping them as monarchies, dictatorships, and democratic governments. I also took a look at local governments, which are going to be far more numerous than the national ones. Some time ago, I had done a revision of government structure, which stood up to re-examination, so I created a new page in connection with it, for types of government. This section will be a little broader and more generic than the classification for national governments, since it needs to include local governments as well. I have also been rather stuck on how to classify government activities, but I've been reading enough history that I decided to go with a simple three-part division: Administration, succession, and state relations (which will include warfare). I also have law, but I still didn't get to that part this time.
In Economics, as well as adding links to a few more nations and cities, I also made significant progress. I decided to accelerate the program for dealing with companies to four at a time instead of one at a time, to follow the same pattern I have been doing for long lists in nations, cities, and biographies. I also began a new page for economic system behavior. I didn't get to every section, but most of them have more links.
In education, besides adding interconnections. I started tracking down lists of major world-class universities, since a country-by-country listing is far too massive for a start. I haven't made that start yet, but it will be coming.
I didn't get very far with families, but made several connections, especially to my most populous four nations, which completes the set of institutions for those four.
Some of the additions and extensions are so substantial that I am likely to publish an update to the knowledge base when I finish this round of development. Similar revisions are likely to be coming from the culture area, as I take a good close look at a couple of sections that have been more or less interfering with my progress.

More religion

The last post on this particular subject was about a month ago. I did a thorough review of this section. Most of what I accoplished was in particular religions. Within Abrahamic religion, I added a page under Crhistianity on Orthodoxy, and within Asiatic religion, created the first of pages on specific tradition, on Buddhism. In comparison, the religious organization, practice, and belief pages are just getting started, but on my next pass through the History and Sociology sections I will have something to stand as well as a clearer picture of where I am in the investigation of religion.

Sociology

I decided to start going deeper in the late 20th century a little earlier than I had planned, and immediately ran into a tough slog of trying to pick out the major events between 1996 and 2000 for the four countries I mentioned last. I finally got this done, but I'm not really thrilled by the prospect of doing more in another few days.
After, this, I started digging into sociology. History hasn't really advanced far enough to add much to sociology, and with the minuscule amount of work I did on the institutions last time around, i didn't get very far. I more or less declared a temporary freeze on adding more nations a few weeks back until I caught up with history and other connections, but given how many areas are depending on peoples, which are now frozen, and given that I've made substantial progress in getting the histories caught up to my plan, I'm seriously considering removing the freeze for a round. I thought my work on particular peoples was going well, but when I was looking through Oriental peoples and doing notes on the mid 19th century, I found that I didn't have a note on the opening of Japan, either in the history section for that period, or for the United States. I had it in Japanese history, but I can tell that I need to do more on adding landmark events in particular countries to the general summaries in the history.
I also did more work on connecting cities with other areas of sociology. I have been concentrating on nations and still need to do some catching up with communities.
Most significantly, I did substantial digging into social structure and change, and added a page each to social change, social types, and social structure. This section, which has more to do with what is usually called sociology, is starting to take shape. I've had an interest in analyzing societies and communities for some time, and this section will be where I keep the tools. So far, there isn't enough content, but at least I have a place to add it, and the various links that will be sprouting between this section and other areas will start to provide that content.

More history

I've been continuing a cycle of development in history. There isn't a whole lot I can do with early, middle, or late prehistory, since I keep running into barriers. The appropriate low-level divisions of social structure and change, institutions, and culture just aren't quite well enough developed. Much the same can be said for antiquity, though I did manage to link to some of the newer areas of social structure and change. The same for classical and medieval history. In modern history, I managed to extend the history of several cities backwards a century. In modern history, I was able to get several countries extended back. The US, China, India, and Indonesia now have sketches noting at least some of the highlights for the entire century, although Indonesia in particular still lacks events.

Institutions plus

For all the interest I have in expanding my knowledge of institutions, when I got to that section I didn't do much beyond creating a few links, although several of them were to particular nations. The development program just hasn't quite progressed that far. For culture, I managed to add a page for customs, but not much more. I did nothing in the other major sections.
When I got this far, I went back around to considering the main history page. I took a look a the World History Association, read over the copy of their first newsletter, and it appears that my approach fits well with that of this association. I linked the general history page to the various new pages of social structure and change. The comment in the WHA Bulletin that international patterns and changes in society are part of what distinguishes world history from a more traditional approach echoes the reason I think these are important links. In my development plan, I hihglingted more of the specific sections I want to develop as aids to history.
I also got down to the prehistory page. Although my knowledge of the development of prehistoric archaeology in the 20th century is pretty vague, I got in a couple of references. The areas of social structure and change I would like to link to for this period, such as hunting-gathering peoples and the agricultural revolution, are undeveloped, so I had to leave these mostly undeveloped. Evidence for the various social institutions is also lacking, although there is room for a connection to pagan religion (also an undeveloped subect.) Material culture, which is the only really relevant area of culture for prehistory, is also badly underdeveloped.

Skimming

I've been doing a fairly quick skim through various sections of the knowledge base. I ran almost all the way through my history section, and principally noted where I need to do more work. I've developed social structure and change enough that various areas can connect to it. I noted that in history, a lot of what I call the heavy lifting involving history of particular nations is now down to the 20th century, so I'll be concentrating there before long. I also took a run through the sociology section. I didn't do any substantial work with peoples and nations, but for communities, I had done some work on the modern history, and I did more in connecting cities within the sociology section. Most of the new work came in social structure and change.
As a first try, I have particular changes divided into three major periods. The first is what I call the agricultural or Neolithic revolution, when people began settling down and farming. The next is the Agrarian revolution, or the process of civilization, when literature and metal working came into used. The final and most recent is what I call the Industrial revolution. Each of these have various movements and stages in it, which I hope to cover in more detail, but for now, I'm just getting the basics. I've also done some work on identifying the corresponding peoples' a more static view of where a society is in its cultural development, and I've been looking at social structure. Nowadays, quite a few of these aspects of society can be quantified and measured, but I'm stuck on doing that until I get deeper in to the social institutions and culture. I've been wanting to concentrate more on social institutions for some time, but keep getting held back by other developments. However, the inadequate development I now have is starting to hold up everything else, so I will be concentrating more on it soon.

Update published

After an exhausting afternoon of loking up and adding snippets of city histories, the latest major update of the Sapience Knowledge Base has now been published to the web. I'm ready to break for a break for a day or few.

19th century and an apology

I finally got cought up on my program for outlining the history of nations up through the 20th century., though I still don't have the last few months work posted to the web yet.
I've also been taking a peak at the history of a few cities, but that's been lagging far behind nations and I have a bunch of catching up to do.
The e-mail addresses for this blog and for the web site are regularly bombarded with spam and nothing else for two and three months at a time, and I haven't noticed any legitimate replies, so I've let the e-mil boxes fill up instead of checking them. I'm in the middle of cleaning them out again to make room for any legitimate contact, so in the off chance that someone has visited either and has tried to leave a comment that I've missed, my apologies.

18th Century

I've been continuing with history of particular nations lately, inching forward through history. I got to 18th century history of France, which includes the "Age of Reason" in France leading up through the French Revolution, and for some reason couldn't bring myself to go on to the 19th century, which in my peculiar scheme of development involves different countries. I don't particularly care a great deal for Modern European history. Since I'm not a European, the various wars between Country X and its neighbor Country Y just don't interest me that much, although at some future time, I may want to know more about some particular war.
Instead, I found myself going back to the beginning with prehistory and filling in a few more of the connections between that and other subjects. That gives me more reason, when I start looking at these other subjects, to begin at the beginning with their history. I'm getting anxious to look at some of these other areas, but I hate leaving things unfinished until I get to a proper break point, which is going to keep pulling me back to history for a while.

Back again

I've been offline for about a month due to problems with my internet connection, which are now being resolved. In the meantime, I've added a substantial amount of content to the histories of particular nations, and I hope to be able to post the added material by the weekend.

Religion

Some days I'm able to get a fair amount accomplished, other days I'm not. I got references to religion in about a half dozen cities, and then in the next phase, references to specific religions traditions in a few nations, and then again ran out of steam. I did some talking about my biblical chronology theory to a friend, and writing more about it to others. ( a couple of people mentioned Velikovsy, whom I don't consider reliable, although apparently some of his work is less wildly speculative than other parts.

Biblical chronology

The other day when I was working in ancient history, specifically the 2nd Millennium BC, trying to identify some key events, was a bit unhappy with all the approximate dates I was finding in the reference I was using, and went hunting online for a few others. I ran across the Wikipedia article on ancient chronology, and found that it claims ancient history is pretty solid and well known back to about 750 BC, but before that, the fuzziness gets worse and worse, due to multiple uncertainties in the primary sources that are used for dating. This led down a side track of biblical history. I'm already aware that archaeologists have had difficulty identifying the time and place of key events in biblical history, even those that ought to have left some traces. The Bible itself isn't much help, because there are too many uncertainties in the various time periods such as reigns of kings that it gives, and there are few clear synchronizations to non-Israelite history, especially in the pre-exile period. I'm not a strict biblical literalist...although I do believe that God spoke to prophets, I don't believe that makes the record free of error, and as something of an amateur scholar, I like to have as much independent verification as possible before I trust in something as a fact.
I see that many non-believing and atheistic scholars seem to want to seize on any apparent contradiction between the biblical account and archaeological finds as positive proof that the whole Bible is a piece of fiction, while Christian apologetics is full of amateurs who grasp at straws and spin elaborate theories to supplement missing facts and cannot agree among themselves. This has been a minor irritant for some time, but when I saw again how thin the evidence is for some of the "accepted wisdom", and how it leads otherwise competent people to draw absurd conclusions (for instance that Joshua arrived several hundred years after the destruction of Jericho), or on the other hand, that that 300 years of Egyptian history is missing, it fired up my determination to do something to clarify the situation.
First, with my scientific education, I'm reasonably content with radio-carbon dating as a valid method of getting the approximate date of remains, although I believe that this should be combined with other evidence.
So, I went hunting late last night for more information. I'd encountered a couple of sources before that broadened my mind to other hypotheses for the dating of the Israelite Exodus than the one given. I'm not sure what reasons people give for the dating of it between the 12th and 14th Century BC, or the association of Ramses II with the Pharaoh of the Exodus, (besides the names of the treasure cities the Israelites were supposed to have built) but I was generally aware that evidence for the exodus hadn't been located, at least in that period.
Recently I read a comment that the line in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" "They're digging in the wrong place!" drew chuckles among a group of archaeologists, because it's something of an occupational hazard. Likewise, looking at the wrong time has to be similarly hazardous, when one is dealing with uncertainties of chronology as great as 300 years. But that's a side note. What drew my attention were the various web pages constructed by those who have added up the dates in the Bible and concluded that the Exodus took place around 1400 BC. That's about 200 years back from a traditional date equating the Pharaoh of the Exodus with Ramses. Also, I was having a problem with the conclusions drawn from the excavation of Jericho by Kathleen Kenyon. Some were citing her research claiming that there was no evidence for Joshua's conquest of Canaan, others were saying it dovetailed nicely with other evidence. What I finally decided was that her date for the destruction of a strongly-fortified Canaanite City had been verified at in 1995 at about 1562 BC +/- 38 years, and to take that as evidence that best fits the biblical account. That's a a century and a half earlier or so than traditionally described, but I don't think the Israelites wandering in the wilderness or living in tents were all that meticulous about chronology, and some attempts to reconstruct biblical chronology push the exodus back to about this far.
Next I decided to look for an appropriate Pharaoh for the Exodus. I'd seen a work that claims the "Pharaoh's daughter" who rescued Moses was Hatshepsut, and in various places I'd seen suggestions that the "Pharaoh who knew not Joseph" came from one of the dynasties that succeeded the Hyksos. I didn't find one that seemed to satisfy what I remember, so I decided to review Egyptian chronology, and look up some of the unsolved problems in Egyptology, and found a clue. One of the various speculations on the nature of the Exodus and the plagues associates it with with the major eruption of Thera, at some date that I hadn't been able to find exactly. Apparently this has been pinned at 1613 BC +/- 13 years. Reconciling this date with traditional chronology for Egypt has produced about a 100 year discrepancy, but this is within the approximate range of error for Egyptian chronology at this period. What grabbed my attention, though, was that this is about 50 years before the date given for the destruction of Jericho, which fits reasonably well with an approximate 40 year wandering in the wilderness described in the Pentateuch.
I had long ago set the possible correlation of Thera and the biblical plagues as an interesting possibility to be re-examined if and when other evidence came along, and this fits the category of additional evidence I was looking for. So now I have this as a working hypothesis for the correlation of events in ancient history. Since I'm hardly even an amateur in the field, there could be a lot wrong with this theory. But it seems there are worse ones in print. The debate about Biblical chronology lies somewhere near the heart of the conflict between scientific atheist and devout believer, between Christian or Jew and Muslim, and at the intersection of the Greek World, Assyriology, Egyptology, and other specialized disciplines. I would like to see a better resolution than anything I have seen yet.
PS. The reason I have added this was because it ocurred to me, before I put myself down for the night, I did a Wiki search on "Independent Scholar", which led me quickly to an on-line copy of the Independent Scholar's handbook, a work which helped put me on the path to Independent Learning, and was rereading it. This blog is probably the closest I'm going to come to an intellectual journal, and so I decided to start recording intellectual diversions as well as the work I'm doing on my web site. This counts as a diversion...not something that's part of my main effort, but something to set aside for now and come back to some day.

Institutions

I mentioned that I wanted to strengthen my ties between nations and communities and the subject of institutions of society, and I got as much of that done as I had planned. Then I realize that wasn't nearly going deep enough, and I started making connections specifically with religion. I got through linking the two dozen nations I had planned, and half of the two dozen cities, and ran out of steam for the day. There's more I want to do with religion before I move on to the next subject, but I need to get more specific.

National connections

I skimmed past studies of the future and started digging into the areas I call sociology. Just adding a few nations to the list inspired a cascade of other events. For one, it;s painfully clear that I need to take quite a few of these nations and look into their history before modern times in order to give substance to earlier periods of history. I've been listing nations in order of population size, which has very little direct correlation with international significance. Some of the connections I was making illustrate this. After all, a nation such s Tanzania doesn't greatly affect the United States, but the United Kingdom and India have had a great deal to do with one another. I did a little more sorting these into major groups. I still don't have enough nations to quite divide up Western Civilization into its subdivisions, but Asiatic peoples are well represented even if incomplete. I added more cities, and made preliminary connections to rather more areas of peoples and social structure and change. I need to do a little more digging into the history of various cities, especially earlier history if they have it. With better connections to nations, I can also manage links of cities to each other, which may be useful when I go to do things like trade routes. I've never been too pleased with how my sections on social structure and change are coming, but that may be because I need to get down to brass tacks of particular examples. Then, too, the whole area of Institutions, which I will be looking at next, is not as well connected to the areas of sociology as I would like, so I will be looking at those connections. In the meantime, though, I'm reasonably pleased with today's progress.

Here again

I've never actually quit working on the Sapience Knowledge Base, but it has been a while since I've reported on on it here. I hope to have a new round of updates posted online in a day or two.
I've added substantially to the section on prehistory and a fair amount of new content to antiquity. I note that there are still considerable discrepancies in various ancient chronologies, so there is even now not a single chronology of the ancient world that is accepted as having a sound basis by scholars. Since biblical archaeology falls within this period, there are still major problems reconciling the Biblical account with accounts from other nations. I find this frustrating.
More recently, I'm starting to work backward through the classical and medieval periods for some of the currently most populous nations, and into the 19th century for those same ones. I;ve beenun using a mental analogy of the aids to a subject as tools for investigating it, and I keep finding that my tools aren't quite sharp enough. The list of nations is, for now, about the sharpest and most useful of them.

Current events

I've expanded my notes on events of the past three years, and improving the connections to the particular peoples I've been considering. I've created a couple of new pages to break up events of the last year into quarters.
Rather than work extensively with whole groups of peoples as I've been doing before, I decided to go back to an earlier approach and add one nation at a time. The three most populous nations of the world are China, India, and the United States, so I've been working on getting current events connected. These were most of the way there already, so it wasn't too hard, but getting the new quarter year pages all the way down to these specific nations will take a few more rounds of development.
The USA page is getting big enough that it's going to have to be broken up. I want to start including individual state pages, as well as regional pages, covering more than one state. I will eventually be doing the same with China and India, but this isn't an immediate goal.
I've also made some progress on the social structure and change pages, and on connecting these to history and peoples of the world. There will be a couple of new and expanded connections in the next set of updates.
I had planned to do more work with institutions and culture, but I'm going to have to put these off until tomorrow, at least.

Latest

Enough already. My approaches to building the knowledge base have a tendency to become overly rote, structured, and mechanical. There is enough of a base now, that I can start with a more lively approach. I got a number of pages started in history, but had a hard time getting out of that subject into other areas. So, I tried something new. I was told by one reviewer that my knowledge base had more outline than content, and that's still the case. So, it's time to start adding live content.
A listing of historical events in the US for the year 2006 is almost an insignificant fragment, but it's enough to prompt attention to a whole array of connected subjects. Going back a year to 2005 may give a little perspective to these events. I might also separate out those events that deal specifically with the United States from the general mass of events of the year. I might consider local regions within the US. I might work on another nation...China is next on my list of targets. I might work on government, which has been sadly neglected. I might also do more work on culture, and connect it to the year 2006, or the United States. In any case, I have some live information to work with, and a variety of possible directions to go. More later.

History and peoples.

Besides connecting to the present, I was looking at updating the connections of historical periods to other areas, which led right back into the whole subject of history.
The main history page is about as well developed as I can get until other areas are themselves better developed.
I probably won't be doing much work with Prehistory until I've finished the Antiquity section. I have a new page for Antiquity, the 4th Millennium BC, which is not much more than a stub at present. For the most part, Classical and Medieval history is being set aside, except that in the Late Medieval period, I have added a page for the 13th century. The main Modern history page is also about as well developed as I can get it for now. In the 18th century, I have added a mid-18th century page. The 19th century has been mostly set aside for now, and the main 20th century page is mostly abaout as well developed as I can get it for now. In the late-mid 20th century, I have added a late 1970s page. The Late 20th century is also about as well developed as is prudent for now. I did some work in the early 2000s, mostly by going through with basic events for 2006. I have done little work in the Future this round.
For the most part, before I can make real progress in history, I need to do work in Sociology, and in order to do this, it involves first connecting it back to history.
I haven't yet added pages in this area, so far, I've just been adding a few cross-links. Peoples of the world are first and easiest to work with, and the main page is alread linked to history as far as is prudent for now. The primary focus has been in Western Civilization, and mostly I've been reviewing where I am. I see that a a few important areas are rather undeveloped and I could expand the discussion of their history some, in future development rounds. I've also been reviewing Asiatic peoples and in this area, there are a lot of unused developments in the Middle East. However, I already know from previous attempts that other areas of Asiatic peoples will need to be come before this.

History

In the past couple of days, I've been working on history. In accordance with my development program, I got as far as adding a new page on antiquity, the 3rd millennium BC, then decided that I was really not that much interested in antiquity, or late medieval times, or the 18th century. I switched to another approach I have been using, one of starting from the present and working backward.

Wikipedia is doing well at keeping an ongoing, up-to-date chronicle of events, which is something I have difficulty with. This allows me to keep almost up-to-date, something I have difficulty with when the only source of current events is daily news. The last 20 years is now split into 5-year pages, and I have a page for the current year and each of the last two.

I would like to narrow the gap between when events occur and interpretation of them, by being able to fit major current events into historical context as soon as possible. These new pages bring me a step closer to that goal.

Resume notes

It's been three months since I last posted to this blog. Development of the Sapience Knowledge Base has continued, but I haven't been commenting on it. I've recently switched back to a top=down approach to development of the knowledge base, since work at higher levels tends to promote the development of lower level details more than the other way around.

The site map has been updated, with most active non-science pages now linked. The "About" page has been rearranged. There is also a page describing 3VL I mentioned earlier this year. In the past couple of months, there has been a burst of activity, with new pages in almost every section, and the past several month's worth of revisions and updated have now been published to the web. I expect to do more updates as I go along.

European geography

This subject has been recently added to the knowledge base.

This will depend rather heavily on physical and natural science, once I catch up in this development plan to where I reached in the previous one.
Most of Personal studies, as already mentioned, is too undeveloped to be useful, and I don't have many European geographers to mention. I have been using geographical information from biographies to help guide development in this section, and expect to continue this approach.
So far it is not well subdivided, but I have connected it somewhat to Asian geogrpahy, which it neighbors.
Culture, including conceptual culture, such as maps, is also not yet developed enough to be useful, nor are the social institutions well connected. Most of socology is not yet very useful, although I have been using locations of cities in connection with biographies to help guide development of geography. So far, there isn't quite enough material to prompt division of the subject. This is closely connected with Western Civilization, and most of my information comes from and through the efforts of anglic peoples. The contributions of Asiatic civilization to European geography would appear to be rather minimal.
European geography has a long history, but so far I am only considering modern contributions, including those of the 20th century. Specific divisions of the late middle and late 20th centuries are so far and unfortunately mostly empty of content.

Human Geography

In previous versions of this knowledge base, I have more or less neglected this subject, which has seriously weakened the entire program. Human geography deals with such things as the population, natural resources, and land use of a particular area. I have chosen to divide this up by area or region.
One of the various difficulties of geographers is the problem of boundaries. There are few natural dividing lines on the surface of the earth; political boundaries are quite arbitrary. In general, I have chosen to follow traditional lines, except where there seems good reason to ignore them.

This subject naturally depends heavily on nature and natural science, particularly earth science and biology. Until these are better developed themselves, I have difficulty making this connection more explicit.
It is difficult to say geography is influenced by the human body and psychology, except to note that some regions are difficult to explore and travel through due to the hardships involved. Since everyone lives somewhere, and many people live or travel in more than one place, analysis of multiple biographies is one indicator of the relative importance of various places, although it is only one such indicator. Another way biography is of use is in making note of prominent explorers and geographers.
The connections to other areas of anthropology will be highly important here, although just how much so will not be clearly evident until these areas are better developed. The areas I am currently working with are European geography, Asian geography, North American geography, and African geography.
Human geography will make use of a variety of culture-related tools. Conceptual culture will include the highly important, even essential area of maps, once it is better developed.
The institutions of family, education, economics, government, and religion will also be important, although these are not sufficiently well developed.
Sociology is useful for various reasons. The location of particular cities is a useful aid to human geography, for instance in helping to estimate population density. This overlaps somewhat with the description of peoples; although many peoples occupy only part of an area, and others occupy many areas. Much geographic knowledge has come from and through Western Civilization, with Anglic geographers especially prominent, although, especially in earlier times, Asiatic and specifically Middle Eastern geographers were also noteworthy. I don't yet have specific detail on which of these came from North Africa.
The history of human geography is also interesting. Much of it was developed in classical and medieval times, and in later medieval times, the modern exploration of the world began. It developed greatly in modern times, and by the 19th century, most of the world and its peoples had been at least roughly mapped and identified. In the 20th century, the various tools available for study of human geography have become more powerful and sophisticated, including for instance the use of airplanes and color printing in the middle part of the century, spacecraft in the late-mid 20th century, and the widespread use of computers in the late 20th century. I am unfortunately not quite up to date on developments in the last few years or current events.

Anthropology

I've been doing a daily series on various subjects, describing what I have accomplished in my current development program and what I hope to accomplish in the near future. This lags a little bit behind the actual state of development, but various areas need to be brought up to date in an organized fashion.

As I have discussed elsewhere, what I call Anthropology differs from what is usually meant by the term. This subject deals more with what is fundamental and universal, and includes parts of both Anthropology as it is more commonly understood and sociology as well. I have recently rewritten this page to better reflect a more detailed understanding of the subject, as well as to make connections to the Middle east and the 20th century.


Since I have set aside most detail in science until I can properly catch up to it, I have little to add, except that earth science and biology will be necessary foundations.
This whole area depends heavily on the various areas of Personal studies, including the human body and psychology, but since these are undeveloped, the details of this connection will have to wait. Biographies will be useful in providing source material, since everyone is socially connected, but rather than duplicate the whole list, I will focus on those who have developed anthropology.
Most of Anthropology is still undeveloped. Social foundations, demography, physical anthropology, human ecology, and particular groups are being set aside for now. The best developed division is human geography.
This area will make some use of culture, especially conceptual culture such as language, literature, and mathematics, but on other areas also. The various institutions will also be significant and provide source material, but need their own development first.
Anthropology will also make use of sociology. Although social structure and change is undeveloped, there will be a considerable amount of raw material associated with various cities once these are better developed. This subject is closely connected to particular peoples. Much of Anthropology has come from western Civilization, especially the primarily English-speaking nations and peoples. Asiatic peoples have also made contributions. I lack detailed information on those of Middle eastern peoples, such as North Africans (to name one example); this is an area yet to be explored.
The development of Anthropology in classical and medieval times can only be sketched. In late medieval times, the works of Islamic geographers and Marco Polo contributed to this knowledge, and early European explorers also contributed. In Modern history, this also developed, although it was not recognized as a science and did not use methods comparable to those of the physical and natural sciences until the 19th century. Developments in the 20th century, including the middle (just after WW II), the late-mid 20th, (the Cold War period), and the late 20th century, including those of the last six or seven years, are only roughly sketched, though more detail should emerge later.

Biographies

Back when I first started this site, I was doing some work with biographies as sources of historical information and other information. I eventually moved away from that approach, although signs of it still remain on the site. However, biographical information in the latest version still drives a lot of the development.

With the current approach, science and nature are only mentioned for most individuals.
Areas of the human body and psychology are perhaps more applicable, but not sufficiently well developed themselves. I have about two dozen individuals I am working with, and the number will continue to increase. I'd like to work with contemporaries and associates of these individuals, but I need information from history and peoples in order to do this, as well as more than just a few individuals.
Anthropology is not very useful yet, but I have been working in human geography and have major areas of Europe, Asia including Southwest Asia, and North America connected to biography, so that I can at least place individuals in the right general area.
Culture will be very important, especially conceptual culture which will include literature and source material about people's lives. Other areas of culture can also be used once they are better developed.
Institutions are not yet developed enough to be very useful.
Social changes and movements aren't yet developed enough to be able to connect them to biography, and the direct connections between a list of individuals and a list of major cities are rather sparse. I can categorize individuals by the major peoples they belonged to, which is somewhat useful.
The easiest grouping is to identify individuals by when they lived. Many of the most significant ones lived in classical and medieval times, which is not where mt principal focus in history is. Instead, I have been looking at the 19th and 20th centuries. These will be more useful in examining biographies when I have more individuals from later times.

Personal studies

I published the latest batch of updates on my knowledge base to the web. Rather than summarize them here, I'm going to continue with a more extensive review of what I;m trying to accomplish.

Personal studies is a highly important area, but one I am not particularly expert on. In principle, it depends heavily on parts of science, but I have not yet made these connections very well.
There are three principal divisions: the Human Body, Psychology, and Biographies. In my latest development program, the first two are set aside for now, while I concentrate on biographies.
Anthropology also hase limited usefulness. I have been working extensively on linking this to human geography, principally European, Asian, and North American geography, with a deeper link to Southwest Asia, with some newer pages.
Culture will be applicable also, and conceptual culture will include language, literature, mathematics, and philosophy of personal studies, while other areas of culture will also be applicable once they are better developed.
Institutions of families, education, economics, government, and religion will also help once they are better developed.
Sociology is not quite as useful as I would like just yet. Analysis of cities isn't yet showing much that's useful to personal studies. Western Civilization remains prominent, and I have managed to extend Asiatic civilization to middle eastern peoples, with a connection to North African peoples that has been prompted by development within biography but doesn't seem to be the most useful just yet.
I have made connections to later periods within the 20th century, and to current events within the early 2000s, but so far only the barest hints of a historical sketch are beginning to emerge. This whole section is developing fairly slowly.

Replanning and science

In my last set of updates, I found myself in a trap very similar to one I have fallen into before; spending too much time in some sections and not enough in others. I decided to, once again, modify my approach. This time, it is working in a much better and more satisfying way.

Although I would like to base everything else on physical and natural science, this doesn't work well because it depends too heavily on other areas. Physics, for example, depends too heavily on mathematics. Chemistry is not nearly as well organized as I would like. There is too little information in Astronomy, compared to the other sciences, and it is not generally as useful as I would like. The areas where significant progress is possible are Earth Science and Biology. I haven't quite caught up to where I was recently in putting these sections in place, so I've been considering the connections to the science aids.
Personal studies will be valuable to science, but so far, the human body and psychology aren't well enough developed to be useful. I've been making rather more progress in biography. Many of the individuals listed in Hart's list of the 100 most influential are scientists, and analysis of these biographies is bound to reveal something.
Anthropology has been badly under-considered in my previous attempts. Most areas of this subject are again too undeveloped to be useful, but I have been working with human geography, and placing individual scientists in a geographic context has some benefit. European geography is particularly useful.
Culture has also been under-considered. Areas of conceptual culture such as scientific language, literature, graphics, mathematics, and philosophy should have a fairly prominent place in studies of science. Material culture, or tools and artifacts, and behavioral culture, such as customs and occupations, aren't quite well enough developed in this version to be very useful in science.
Institutions have also been under-considered. Areas of families, education, economics, government, and religion will all be useful to science when they are better developed.
Sociology has been considered fairly prominently. I don't have enough detail on particular cities to consider their respective influences on science, but peoples are far more significant. By far the greatest majority of work has been performed in Western civilization.
I have little to add at present to the history of science, except a connection to the late 20th century, which includes the last 25 years or so. There isn't much real detail in this period yet, but it should develop in time.

And more

After not quite two weeks, I have just posted another round of updates to the Sapience Knowledge Base.

The main science page hasn't changed much, except that I have reorganized Biology and matched the comment to the reorganization, and I have direct links to several influential scientists. I also have a few more links to the pages where I am actively working in history, and the 19th century is a little clearer.

In Earth science, I have done some miscellaneous addition of links to other pages in the knowledge base. Physical geography also has about a dozen new links, and Terrestrial geography also has a number of new links. There is a new page, Eurasia, which is in the early stages of development with only very general links.

Biology has been reorganized somewhat: I have pushed the systematics (types of organization) down a level by incorporating it into organism biology, although on further thought, I may bring it back up. Biological classification of living things doesn't classify organisms so much as it does populations of closely related organisms.

Personal studies hasn't changed much, although I do have links to physical geography and Eurasia, and to areas within history. I have more links of biography to areas of earth science and history. All the individuals added at the last update have had more attention given to them, and I have added new pages for Euclid, Moses, Shih Huang-Ti, Caesar, Copernicus, Lavoisier, Constantine, Watt, and Faraday.

In Anthropology, I have begun to revise and rearrange the component disciplines, but there is still some rewriting to do. Human Geography has a narrower focus, as I am transferring demography and human ecology into separate sections. The list of particular groups remains empty, as I still have not found a satisfactory list of organizations.

In Culture, I have a few more links to other areas. I am beginning active work in Material culture, and the conceptual culture page and literature page have a few more links. The Literary Works page is not so recognizably new, and has a forest of connections. In the next set of updates, I intend to begin working on a list of major important works, similar to the biography list.

The Institutions page and the Religion page both have a few new links to earth science and to areas in history, but the Religious traditions page has the most new links.

There has been comparatively little work in Sociology, though the main page, Communities page, Peoples of the World page, and Western Civilization and Asiatic Civilization each have a few new links added to them.

There has also been comparatively little work done in History, although within Modern History, I have completed the division of the 19th century by adding a new early 19th century page and creating basic links to other general areas.

Also, in the next set of updates, since I have more individuals to work with, I will be linking areas of within institutions, sociology, and history more directly to the biography pages for prominent contributors to those areas.

More updates

I have new updates to the Sapience Knowledge Base. Science has better connections to biographical entries, including Einstein, Pasteur, and Galileo. It is also better connected in principle to literature and literary works. There is also a connection to religious traditions. I have also rewritten the presentation of science history a little, and added links to some specific periods of history.

The only particular area of science I have done much work in is Earth Science. Here there are new connections to particular groups, literature and literary works, Religion and particular religions, Western Civilization and Asiatic peoples, and several periods of history. There is not yet much real new content.

Personal studies are also linked to literary works and religious traditions. I have also strengthened the connections to and within the 19th and 20th centuries.

Biography is connected to particular social groups, literary works, and religious traditions, and in general to a few periods of history. New pages for several major historical figures have been added, although these so far have fairly little actual content.

In Anthropology, I have added connections to literary works, religious tradition, and connections to classical and medieval history. I have rewritten part of the discussion of history also.

Particular groups are connected to science, to personal studies including biography, and to culture, institutions, sociology including cities and peoples, and history down to modern history and the 20th century. This would be more significant if I had pages corresponding to actual particular groups, but since I don't have a list of the few most important particular groups, this will have to be gleaned from review of those areas.

The culture page has had only had links to the late medieval period and the mid 19th century added to it. Conceptual culture is newly linked to late medieval history. Literature is linked to Earth science and to late medieval history. This page has been rewritten and much of its former content transferred to a literary works page.

Literary works has been connected to Science including Earth Science, Personal studies including biography, Anthropology, Institutions including religion, sociology including peoples and communities, and history, particularly modern history, with the 19th and 20th centuries. This would be more significant if I had pages corresponding to actual, specific literary works, but these will be added as the site develops.

On the main Institutions page, I have only added a connection to literary works. The religion page has been almost entirely rewritten, and most of its content transferred to the new Religious Traditions page. This is connected to literature, and to parts of the 19th and 20th century.
Religious traditions is so far connected to science, personal studies, Anthropology, culture, and sociology.

On the main sociology page, I have only added a link to the late-mid 19th century. The communities page is also not much expanded, with links to literature and to the late-mid 19th century and late 19th century. Peoples also only have new links to the lage-mid 19th century and the late 19th century. There has been no real change to western civilization, and Asiatic peoples only have new connections to Earth science and the late 19th century.

History has no new content or links on the main page, and neither classical and medieval nor the late medieval page have any new information. In modern history, I have slighly revised the descrption of the 19th century and added a biographical reference to Isaac Newton. There has been more development in the 19th century: I have created a new early-mid 19th century page, rewritten the appropriate section, and transferred content to that page. Several of the 19th century pages are now linked to biography. I have added nothing to the 20th century page but the early 20th century has connections to earth science and biography.

The developments I am most pleased with include the revision of scientific history and addition of links to particular individuals, the starting of several new biographical pages, the new literary works page, the revision of religion, and the new early-mid 19th century page.

Updated Site

The Sapience Knowledge Base has had its first update in over two years, so it is now officially active again. Most of these are fairly minor changes involving links to new areas.

The Science page has a link to Isaac Newton, and to more detail in the 19th and 20th century. Earth Science has links to areas within sociology.

Personal studies has a slightly revised version of the human body, as well as to details of the late 19th century. in Biography, I have introduced several new individuals, including Jesus, Newton, Buddha, and Mohammed, as well as introducing links into the 19th century.

The Anthropology page has a significant and substantial revision of the 19th and 20th century, and also connections into areas of the 19th century.

Within culture, I have substantially rewritten the Literature page, and transferred much of the content to a new Literary works page.

Back now

I've been doing a lot of traveling this summer and have been involved with other people and have had limited access to the Internet. However, I now have access from home, and the summer activity is coming to a close, which is giving me the time and opportunity to resume my independent studies. Anybody miss me? I'd be surprised.
With the renewed computer access, I now have an opportunity to resume work on the Sapience Knowledge Base which has been dormant for two years.

I keep switching back and forth between a "top down" approach, involving history and working from those details, and a "bottom up" approach, which involves starting with science and working up from those details. I think this time I'm boing to switch back to the "bottom up". The difficulty with either approach is that knowledge doesn't fit in a neat, linear order into any classification scheme, and the most important topics are as likely to be in the middle as anywhere else.

At present, I am working on a few biographical pages, more than any other one topic.

Another break

Again due to the press of personal affairs, I have been unable to update this particular blog. Updates are likely to be sparse until fall, depending on events.

Critical areas

In my efforts to merge the two largest versions of my knowledge base, I've reached the point where I can begin to identify the most critical and important areas for major progress.
Within history, it's no great surprise that I need to work on modern history first, before going to classical and medieval history. It's also clear that the most important area to develop these is Sociology, and in particular, peoples of the world. For history in general, prehistory, and antiquity, the most influential of these is Asiatic civilization, but for classical and medieval history, modern history, and the future, western civilization is more of a critical area. Beyond this, I need to do more work in merging.
In sociology, it is also no great surprise that I am choosing to work on peoples of the world, with communities in second place. Although history is an important influence on sociology, and modern history in particular, institutions are likely to be nearly as important.
More work on merging remains to be done.

Minor work

Finally got back to merging the two major versions of my knowledge base, and went through the History section. There's still a bit to do before I can identify the most critical section, the area that needs most work, but I have at least reopened investigation of these areas.

Still alive

I've made a little more progress at reconciling the various versions of the knowledge base; I've made a start on sociology including peoples and communities, on Institutions including religion, and culture. Next, it's back around to history to begin identifying what areas are really most critical.

Back again

After a long hiatus, I am now at the point where I can resume work on the paper-and-pen version of the Knowledge Base.

Right now, I have two competing versions in a similar state of development, and I've decided to work on merging them.
The main page on history has connections at a fairly specific level of detail to most other subjects. Before I decide which of these subjects is most critical to the study of history, I need to look at the major divisions history to decide which of the areas is most important to each of them, and see if there is a consensus.
Prehistory still needs to have the two versions merged. Antiquity is being merged, but so far only as far as its connections with other areas of history. Classical and medieval history is merged as far as Western Civilization. Modern history is marged through peoples of the earth. Its greatest need will have to be determined following examination of its component centuries. Merging has begun on the 19th and 20th centuries. The Future still needs its two versions merged.
Sociology has its two versions being merged also. So far the merger has gone through history. Peoples are being connected, so far only as far as antiquity. Other areas have not yet begun. Institutions are also being merged, but so far only include a little history. It shouldn't be too much longer before I can report further progress.