Anthropology and Personal studies

I got through the section on human geography. Some of the lower level pages hadn't been touched in two years. I didn't add much, a link or two to each, but this slow growth in the detail pages is part of the process. I got through human ecology, physical anthropology, demography, and social foundations sections as well. Many of these are so far linking back to high level areas in the sociology section.

Since I'm creating two links, that is, when I link from one page to a second, I also create a link from the second page back to the first, this means that in some cases, I do more work on a subject through the links back than I did to its page in the first place. This is helpful in speeding up pages in the neglected middle sections.

I also started in on personal studies, and did a review of biography. I didn't go much deeper on most of the various subjects that still need to be linked to biographies. Once I got the sociology and peoples sections linked, the urgency of doing biographies started to fall off, and these are being handles more indirectly now. I also did a review of he psychology section. I didn't quite get through the human body, which will be the next subject up. I'm still on track for finishing this round by the weekend.

Institutions, Culture, and Anthropology

Skip a day, and thing just start piling up. I went through the government, making new connections, and developing a few more. In Economics, I had been having some trouble with how to organize the various companies. I had decided to handle them similarly to the way I've been handing nations: assigning them to industries as they come up, but I hadn't yet done much with that approach. I also added links to a couple more universities, but since these don't seem to break down into types like companies, do, I may have to rely on the geographic and regional organization. I have reached a little but further into families as well.

Going through the culture section took me a couple of days. In the Behavioral culture section, I created a number of links. The conceptual culture section was a little more pleasing: I finally have a page for philosophical schools and doctrines, and there was some satisfying progress on applied sciences. I didn't quite get to do much with math, and did less than I would have liked with literature, graphic arts, or language, but if I don't follow the program, I get really bogged down. Material culture is also an area I have been wanting to develop, so I'm pleased with what I did this time around. Some of these sections haven't been touched in almost a year, so it's really about time I did something more here.

I've begun working on Anthropology, and after an initial review, I started in on particular groups, which still lack specific detail. I'm hoping to identify significant ones from a study of history. I also started in on human geography, but only the main page so far, and not specific details.

I should be able to go through the remainder of Anthropology before too long, since this section isn't really detailed. By the end of the week, once I've finished reviews of Personal studies and Science, I should be ready to publish the updates that I've been reporting.

Religion

In another split, I created a new history of religion page. I did minimal addition of new nations, since this is already so well advanced over other topics, but I did a little connection of social structure and change and education. I also advanced the number of biographies connected to history, about 1/4 of the way through the list.

In particular religions, I managed to create links from each division of Abrahamic religion, the major divisions of Asiatic religion, several of pagan religion, and secularism. Some of these pages hadn't been touched in a year, so this was some progress. I still don't have proper subdivisions of religious organization, practice, or belief. These will have to wait until I can start examining the particular religions in more detail.

I also reviewed the main government page. The history section is updated, but like many other history sections it lacks enough detail to make it interesting. Sociology is extended a little bit better, and connections with economics are better developed. I also did some connection of individuals to government.

Next up are details of government, and possibly economics.

Social structure and change, and institutions

I took a pass through social change, social types, and social structure. About all I can say is that I made fairly minimal progress except for connections to particular nations and various high-level pages, although including them into the development cycle was an achievement in itself...some of the lower level pages hadn't been touched since last December.
I also took the main institutions page, went into history, and updated the discussion of the histories of religion, government, economics, and educations. This is still frightfully superficial, until I can get to those subjects and dig further in. I also separated out a page for the application of sociology to institutions, so that the main page for institutions looks a little more like the main pages for history and sociology itself. I did a little bit of filling in connections to culture. I thought about adding more connections to individuals, since those are on the general program, but the list of individuals is already getting lengthy, and I want to cut it down a bit by moving some of these individuals to particular institutions.
Next up, Religion, an area I've been anxious to get back to.

Non-Western History

I did the separation of Oriental history from the rest of the discussion of Oriental peoples that I had planned. I also took a quick glance through Central Asian and Southeast Asian peoples, but didn't do much with them. Southeast Asian peoples are nearly ripe for subdivision.
I also separated out African history from African peoples. Western Africa and Eastern Africa are also nearly ripe for subdivision, but I will need to add more nations, and I'm holding back a little on this until I have more history.
I also separated American Indian history from American Indian peoples, and added a link I've been meaning to add for some time, that gives an overview of the various American Indian cultures. I expect to be going into more detail on these in the future, but didn't do much with them on this time through.
I also reviewed the Social structure and change pages. I paid special attention to giving more content to the history section, but it's still much too superficial, and I will need to go into more detail of social change, social types, and social structure. This is better connected to religion and Government, though. I'm particularly interested in a connection with mathematics that may be coming up the next round through this subject.

Peoples

I did a little bit of work on connecting Hispanic peoples to history: I think it looks a little better now. I also separated out a page for Sociology of the 19th century from the 19th century page.

In Sociology, I finished a rewrite of the history applied to sociology page, but it still looks a bit barren of real content, and I'm going to have to go through it again. I made a little more progress with history applied to peoples, through the 17th century. I also finished the connections of individuals on the Hart 100 list to peoples in general. and now can concentrate on locating them with particular civilizations. Within Western Civilization, I'm about halfway through the list. I took the history of Anglic peoples and separated that onto a new page, I did a few more pages for divisions of Hispanic American peoples. Within Asiatic peoples, I got about a third of the way through the biography list. I rearranged Middle Eastern peoples (not for the first time), and among South Asian peoples, separated out a history page. I also began creation of a series of pages for the states of India. Next up are Oriental peoples.

Time gets away

I had intentions of doing a summary of daily progress, but once I skip a day, it just sort of piles up. I've pushed connections with the early 20th century back and widened those of the early mid 20th century. Useful information doesn't really begin until the mid 20th century, and I have some widening access to the Cold War. The late-mid 20th century is also connected. In the late 20th century, the pages for a year by year record are extending to earlier times. I've also picked up the quarter-by quarter summaries beginning in 2005, and month-by-month for 2008, and I've also done some work on the future.

For sociology, I've done a little bit of updating on the history of sociology, although it's still a bit sparse on detail. I've also revised the history of peoples of the world, to include quite a bit more detail than I had before, with a little more rewriting yet to go. I'm nearly done connecting my list of biographies to peoples of the world. Western Civilization is being handled indirectly through history and other subjects, and I'm about a third of the way through lining biographies of people prominent in Western Civilization to that area. For Anglic peoples I linked a couple of biographies. I did get a number of pages for states added to the USA, and I expect to be working in those a little more.

Latin peoples are where I made a little bit more detailed progress. I decided (again) to rearrange the order I was presenting them in. I had a list of countries that hadn't yet been assigned to particular groups. French peoples no longer include just a single country. Most of the countries went to Hispanic peoples and I finally decided that a semi-historical division was in order:
Spain itself, and then Hispanic Mexican, Hispanic Colombian, Hispanic Peruvian, and Hispanic Argentine. These four groups plus Brazil make up Latin American, and part of the reason for dividing them this way is that they roughly correspond to the viceroyalties of the Spanish American Empire. There wasn't much to add to other groups of Western Civilization this time around.

New Forum

I've just converted the Independent Learning Forum to new software, and will be reorganizing it. The link on the sidebar should work correctly.

19th and early 20th century

For the 19th century in general, I made a few connections within social structure and change, institutions, culture, and anthropology. I also did a substantial amount of work with biographies, and now have all of them distributed to particular periods of the 19th century. In the divisions, I did some work with Germany. For now, I'm looking mostly at Asiatic peoples. I did some with Egypt, Turkey, and Iran that gives something of a better foundation for their importance in the 20th Century. I did some connections in Southest Asia including the Philippines and Vietnam. Yes, I decided that its history before the French occupation was looking into after all. For Thailand, I took note of when its current boundaries were settled. In Africa, Ethiopia required a little bit of study. Connections with religion, culture, and Anthropology were made.

The 20th century didn't advance connections with particular nations at the general level much, since these are all well advanced, but connections within social structure and to applied science and demography were made. Some of the particular divisions dealt with France, Turkey, Iran and Congo, and I have reached the point where I can resume working with the United Kingdom. In the early 20th century I created a stub page for the early 1910. For the early mid 20th century I have started a more solid connection to the United States.

The mid 20th century is more of a challenge, and required a little more of a careful look into the United States, Brazil, China, India, and Indonesia. I still don't have much on the World War II period, but more of the Cold War is starting to show up.

I didn't make any progress on linking individuals to other areas, except for the 19th century to particular periods, but that counts. I intend to do the same for the 18th century next time I go through it, and in the meantime do more connecting to other areas as I get to them..

For anyone looking at the Independent Learning Forum, access is temporarily shut down while I work on getting the new version up. I should have it back in another day or two.

Another round

I had intended to move away from history, but wound up starting another round of it. I started in late medieval times, mostly just checking to see which of the centuries could be advanced a bit. Only one of them, but the next round I will should be able to do more.

For the 16th century, I don't have much on the United States at all; This is the period of mostly exploration of the coast, to which I paid less attention than I might have, and has gone rather hazy in my memory. I'm doing a bit better in China, the period of the Ming dynasty, and in India, when the Mughal empire was growing. I really can't do much in Indonesia without the Dutch and the Portuguese, and it looks to be a while before I get to either of them in much detail.

For the 17th century, in the United States I'm dealing with the early colonial period. I have Brazil as a Portuguese colony, and I'm not yet much interested in it. Russia was starting to expand. In South Asia, including India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, the Mughal empire was at its height, but the British were starting to exert influence. China is concerned with the transition between the Ming, and the Qin (Manchu) dynasty which followed. Examination of Africa would be beginning, but there's really not much content to it yet. Basic connections to Anthropology and personal studies have been made.

For the 18th century, The history of Mexico is somewhat interesting. Germany, before the 19th century, is somewhat chaotic. Japan starts to be of some interest, but this was mostly the feudal period of isolation. The Philippines have to be better connected to Spain for me to extract much of this period, and I'm not terribly interested in Vietnam before the French period. Nigeria is mostly set aside. I am starting to link details of social structure and change to these periods, and Connections to most of the institutions have been extended.

I started to work on the history of sociology and the history of peoples, but I realized that the history of sociology is rather thin without a little more reference to peoples, and the history of peoples is a little thin without reference to particular peoples. When I got as far as Western civilization, I decided to back off and try this again later.

The program of connection of individuals to peoples is progressing; This is now about 2/3 done, and the next level of detail involves things such as Western Civilization and Asiatic peoples. Connections of individuals to African peoples or American Indian peoples is practically nonexistent. One of the things I want the knowledge base to do is to point to where the gaps are so I can fill them. I'm not quite there yet. Connection of individuals to Western civilization is about 1/3 third done, and that's involved mostly a review of what I have already accomplished. I've caught up to that part of the program so I can start extending and adding to those connections.

Earky 21st century

That takes care of the latest round of history. There's not a whole lot to report except a few more connections to anthropology and personal studies, and a slight broadening of year-by-year events since 2002.
The links to of particular individuals to peoples of the world are about halfway done now. That's still only scaffolding for the more specific links to particular peoples, but that's progress.

Recent 20th century

Within the late-mid 20th century, (1961-1980) I have more developments of the larger nations (India, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Russia). Within the late 20th century, (1981-2000) I have developments for Bangladesh, Russia, Nigeria, Japan, and Mexico. I've also extended year by year developments back to 1996 and have the US connected to 2000. There have been various connections to science, personal studies, and anthropology, and some to education and economics.

I also have all the individuals on my top 110 list connected to Sociology, so that's one step toward the connections to "where". There is a batch of connections to periods of the 18th century, a batch of connections to peoples of the world, and a batch of connections to institutions in general I want to examine, so there's still plenty to do there.

20th century

I went back to working on in modern history. The 18th century didn't yield much; I did some connections with Northeast Europe, Africa in general and Nigeria in particular, Mexico which resulted in extending the Americas, particularly North America and South America, the Philippines, and Vietnam, as better connections to science, personal studies, and social structure and change.

The 19th century was a little bit more productive; I had connections to Germany, Egypt, Ethiopia, Turkey, and Iran, which mostly gave better connections to the Middle East. I did some connecting to families and social change and types.

I continued to the 20th century, and got to the mid 20th century, which includes the ability to focus more directly on 5 year periods. I like the finer level of detail, which lets me "see" such things as the Korean war.

I haven't neglected the other connections I mentioned in my last post. Each 20 year period of the 20th century now has links to all the individuals in the Hart 100 list who lived during that period; and I should soon be able to do the same for the 19th century (working backwards until I run out of pages that are linked to biography). I've also made connections for most of the people on the list to the sociology page although these connections are less directly useful, and meant mostly as scaffolding so I can connect them to particular peoples and nations later.

It is not a great surprise that this lists primarily those who were active during the early 20th century and the early mid 20th century (up to about 1940). There is only one person on the Hart 100 list who is still living.

Live question #1. Who do you consider to have been the most prominent or influential individuals of the past 8 years, that is, from 2001 to the present? Why?

Almost ready

Over the past week, I've been attempting to regularize my order of development of subjects on the Knowledge Base. A couple of major developments are now pending. For one, I have pretty much connected a continuous line of history pages at 20 year intervals from 1500 to the present, and I have organized methods for updating them. There are enough nations to put a little meat on the bones of a bare skeleton of time. It's becoming necessary and important to examine major social changes, religion and government, and major elements of culture. Also, I now have historical connections for all the individuals on the Hart 100 list.
I've been hesitant to announce plans, because they have been likely to change, but the thing is close enough to being what I consider live and fully functional, that I can see how it's going to work. For one, although modern individuals are connected to centuries, about half of them l of them have been connected to individual 20 year periods. Finishing the other half will be important. That will give me connections to who and when. That's between a couple of days and a week to finish in a satisfactor manner.
Another phase is to connect these to sociology, peoples, and countries. That should take a weak or two. Another is to connect them to particular areas of effort, which will take another week or two or three. All this will gives me a connected who, what, when, and where for discussing major topics, a picture I can fill in with adding more individuals and details. From here on, I'll be reporting on the progress of this project, and actively inviting commentary on things I have left out. I'm enthused.

Latest additions

I have a new batch of updates for my web site. In science, I've gone back to do a little updating on the scciological connections within astronomy, earth science, and biology. I've also done a little on the human body and psychology. I mentioned that I had pages for the Hart 100 list done, but now I also have the 10 runners up. I've been working on their connections with history and have about 2/3 of them down to the century level so that when they lived can be found. I'm working on connecting where they lived and what they did, but that's coming along a bit more slowly. I've also done some work in the anthropology section. Human geography is starting to make progress; in some of them, the last time I worked on them was about 9 months ago. Culture is starting to develop well, and I made some useful connections in all its subdivisions. The institutions are going a little bit slower, but I have some important interconnections. I didn't do much with sociology or history this time around. I've been working on these so heavily that other connections have suffered.

Recent progress

I have been working more or less consistently on the knowledge base for the past couple of weeks. As usual, it is mostly a slow, incremental process: This time I have been concentrating more on connecting nations to topics within science, personal studies, culture, and the like.
A significant milestone, though, is that I now have individual pages for all the people mentioned in the Hart 100 list. As I may have mentioned on the biography page, this is by no means an exhaustive linking of important individuals and I would certainly dispute some of the rankings. (for instance, I don't see how John F. Kennedy ranks above Lincoln, or why Stalin, Hitler, and FDR made the list but Churchill didn't.) But it is a start.
One of the more obvious and serious deficiences of the knowledge base is that I don't have links to particular works...Many of these people are noted for what they did or invented, but many are noted for what they wrote. I've been wanting to get to a list of important litarary works, but since it's be buried in the middle of the knowledge base and hard to get to from either end, I wind up running out of steam before I get to it. There is also the fact that I want to construct it in some kind of historical order, which is hard to do. At least linking it to the important authors, which is something I can put in historical order, gives me a way to do this, so I hope to get to it soon.

Where was I?

Oh yes. It seems I've done a full cycle of additions since I last posted, and published the lastest version to the web. I haven't done much with science, since I'm just starting to work down into its major subdivisions. I haven't done much in personal studies, either, except add several more pages that mention historical figures. I hope to do some linking of these with history in this round. The connections with anthropology don't seem especially fascinating at this point.

Since culture is such an important and neglected area, I'm going to start going into more detail on in, linking it to nations. I was going to wait until I had gone all the way through institutions, but that seems much to long to wait, and cultural subjects are more important. I'm pleased to be making more progress with economics, but several of these subjects need more detail, and while I will get to them in a couple of rounds anyway following my work with social structure and change, getting down into the nitty-gritty detail is more important. Social structure and change is shaping up fairly nicely. I'm also thinking about cautiously picking up connections with cities again.

Prehistory was a bit mechanical, although I finally have the middle east connected all the way to earliest prehistory. The nations I connected to areas of antiquity didn't produce much excitment. either. The most interesting thing going on there is that I have reopened inquiries into particular centuries of late medieval times. I had set these aside until I had 20 year divisions all the way through modern history, so getting to this point is something of a milestone of accomplishment

Modern history is approaching a level of connection that's starting to get more interesting. For various reasons, I'm personally interested in the development of economic and trading networks and religious and political philosophy and ideologies in modern times, and I need a substantial background of historical detail before I can discuss these intelligently. Nearly every period is filling in an important gap somewhere.

Details of the 16th century are still not yet far advanced. In the 17th century, having Spain connected is a big help. At the 20 year level of detail, I'm working with the giants of Asia. For the 18th century, I'm mostly working with the larger nations of Asia, but I'm also starting to make progress with Russia. The 19th century is working with some of the larger but not giant nations of Asia and America. This is still a few rounds away from having reference to the British Empire.
The 20th century is more promising than useful yet, but I'm finding the 5-year interval is giving me a much clearer and sharper view of history and international developments. The early mid 20th century still has stubs, and the mid 20th century is also just getting started. The US at 5-year intervals back to the Korean war and China at that level of detail is extending my knowledge. The late-mid 20th century is starting to include India, Indonesia, Brazil and Pakistan at 5 year intervals, which is providing a much clearer and sharper view of these nations. For the late 20th century, Bangladesh, post-Soviet Russia, and Nigeria in the late 1990s gives a much clearer, sharper view of what was going on. I'm also extending one year intervals so that they will include events since Sept 11 01.

20th century

In the early 20th century, I have a connection to Germany, but that isn't much use without more of Europe. The early-mid 20th century has a better connection to Egypt, but that isn't really central to the period. By the mid 20th century, I'm mostly catching up to stuff I've already done.
The finer detail at 5-year periods doesn't start to be useful until about the 1960s-1970s. Reviewing this jogs memories of events I knew about, but didn't pay close attention to. So does working with the 1980s-2000s, where I've been mostly reviewing events in South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh). Starting in 1998, I've picked up going on a year-by year basis, but this doesn't have real material until about 2005, and the next few years have been connected to nations at a superficial level well ahead of where I'm working.
At this point, I stopped to review whether any of my files had grown big enough to be worth splitting. A few had. Asiatic history and the History of Western Civilization are both big enough to split, but I need to divide sociology using history and history of peoples first, and they aren't big enough. I did split China history and India history into separate pages. US history is big enough, but not well enough connected to other areas. In the process of working on history, I added another state or two to the US, and another province or so to China, and created a page for names of the states of India.
I also started around to work on connecting other areas to peoples of the world. I added more pages for individuals, but didn't do much connecting, except to India. Areas of anthropology have been connected to Asiatic peoples in general, Oriental, South, and Southeast Asian as well as Anglic peoples. Areas of culture are connected to Latin, South Asian, and African peoples. as a very general level.

General work and history.

I did a little more inquiry into religion, but mostly went on to social structure and change. Social structure, social types, and social changes all got some attention and better connections to nations, although it's fairly plain that I'm going to need culture and institutions to do these properly.
Another round of history has the extension of Ethiopia, Turkey and Iran back into prehistory. North Africa is now extended back to earliest prehistory. Within antiquity, I extended mostly Europe into this period. This is mostly part of European prehistory, and is still obscure and controversial, in spite of all the archaeology that's been done in Europe. Classical and medieval times prompted connection to Asian pagan and African pagan religions., and some extension of Ssutheast Asia, Latin peoples, and Central Africa.
Modern history now has at least a stub for every twenty-year division since 1500, which will allow quite a bit better precision in examining classical and medieval history. The 16th century isn't much advanced yet, but in the 17th century, I've reached another milestone and US history is now pushed all the way back to the first permanent settlement; Jamestown. There are the beginnings of connections to Western Civilization, Asiatic peoples, and in particular, Oriental peoples. For the 18th century, there has been some work in extending South Asia, Southeast Asia, Anglic, and Latin peoples. For the 19th century I have connections to Northeast Europe, South Asia, the Orient, and Southeast Asia, and the beginnings of connections to Africa.
This usually tends to throw off side branches. I've begun doing a little more work on adding particular states to the United States and provinces to China. India is another country that needs more attention to its states. The 18th century repeatedly suggested connections to economics and trade.

After finishing a round of history, I started in on various other subjects. In most areas besides history, the links to specific nations and peoples of the world are far less advanced.
The connections of my personal studies group were fairly uselessly abstract, but I took the opportunity to add a few more pages for individuals in the biography list. The added connections of various parts of anthropology to various nations also weren't very useful. The highly abstract principal areas of culture also weren't much help.
Since I was skimming the surface and not getting much in useful connections, I decided to go to a deeper level. Although I mention that I want to get into economics, I didn't get much beyond reviewing what I have already done. Government did better. I wound up connecting some of the larger nations to different areas of government, which gives some advance in content. Religion still isn't as well developed as I would want, but I got several nations to have a little more about religion in general.