Abstract:
My thesis problematises both the processes involved in understanding information, and the ways in which informational structures are used to construct knowledge. In addressing this duel theme, I set up a dichotomy between information structured according to a linear, one-dimensional, interpretively-driven organising principle on the one hand, and a multi-perspectival, non-explicit, correlatively-driven organising principle on the other: here discussed in terms of writing and diagrams. By formulating my analysis in these terms I endeavour to explore the mechanics of informational structures through a comparison of how writing and diagram both make knowledge, and make knowledge possible. Through an examination of how the textual and diagrammatic encounter differs, I aim to tease out the embedded dynamics that come into play in their respective construal of meaning. This exploration is presented in the form of a thesis-diagram, which is modelled on and inspired by the dominant format of the encyclopaedia genre since the seminal Enlightenment text Encyclopaedia. The thesis-diagram is a writing-diagram hybrid offered as an alternative frame to the conventional essay/report format, intended to be both academically accountable and diagrammatically accessible.
