602 Change of knowledge

 You can add to your knowledge in two ways: adopt it from an outside source, or invent it yourself. In the ‘circle of discovery’ (COD) that I derived from the work of Jean Piaget The first is called ‘assimilation’, and the second ‘accommodation’ In the first, you try to fit the new knowledge into your current mindframe. The first can lead on to the second. in several stages: in generalising assimilation you try to apply existing knowledge in a new environment If that does not suffice, you can tap into your memory for other variants that you tried before. If that still not suffices, you can try to adopt elements from your new environment that succeed where you fail. That is likely to cause obstacles or duplications that you need to go around or delete to make a coherent system, in a new whole. That is accommodation. This reflects the dictum of Hegel that failure is needed for invention.

 I elaborated the COD with the notion of a ‘script’, a network of nodes, each with a repertoire of subscripts. If the script does not work well, you can first try a different subscript from on or more nodes. If that does not suffice, you can adopt a subscript from one  or more nodes from a local script, and next, if that does not suffice, one or more entire nodes. I call that ‘reciprocation’. This introduction of a foreign node is likely not to give a perfect fit, and you try to craft an entire new script, with old and new nodes, in a new structure. That may still contain remnants from the old script that need to be weeded out. I call that ‘consolidation’. Then, later, you may engage again in differentiation, in the struggle of competition.

 The example I used was that of a restaurant. The nodes are entry, seating, ordering, paying, and leaving. The script is embedded in a ‘superscript’ of buildings and streets, zoning, parking, with a distribution system of materials. The repertoire of subscripts of the paying node are cash, card, or telephone. Checks are no longer used. An example of reciprocation, is to replace cutlery by chopsticks, in Asia. The transformation, or accommodation, is the shift to a self-service restaurant, with more or less the same nodes, in a different structure, with a different succession of nodes: entry, selecting food, paying, seating and leaving. The subscripts of nodes are not exactly the same: seating now includes carrying a tray with selected food.

 The script notion has a wide area of application, applying to all systems, forming a system of systems.

 The COD  also applies to communication. To communicate, you must assimilate what your interlocutor says and does, and you must accommodate your thinking to it. In this way, communication yields invention.