If we had lived in Shakespeare's time, early in the 17th century, when the Aristotelian hold on the sciences was being discredited, we might well have believed that comprehensive theories of science were equally impossible or at best muddy and hard to fathom. Yet before the end of that century, belief in science's ability to explain the universe became virtually unquestioned. This work first describes a new pattern that organizes the history of knowledge. We then build a theory explaining this pattern and the construction of all knowledge. And finally, as with any good theory, we look at fascinating connections with other disciplines and predictions of the future of knowledge.
Theories can seem to come out of nowhere.
Unprecedented inventions do have a way of suddenly appearing, changing beliefs about what is possible in a discipline. Great theories and startlingly new works in nearly every discipline seem to pounce without warning. If it is tools that actually account for many of these unprecedented breakthroughs, and if we have anew tool at hand, then it is possible for a new theory of knowledge to be developed that would, like a great theory in science, bring pattern and clarity to the invention of human knowledge. A new fundamental tool for constructing knowledge makes this theory possible. I believe that such a new tool is just now available, and that breakthroughs in knowledge, while often the result of individual genius, are enabled by such tools.