Nodism Overview

In the winter of 2005, Dan Zen was "crazy-person writing" in his sketchbook. Looking for a name for the writing, he called it node notes and then in an "improvement" box, decided it should be a philosophy. He wrote nodology, nodelgy, nodogy, and then nodism. Nodism sounded good and somewhat goofingly familiar. Nine years later, he now has hundreds of pages of crazy person writing and a simpler understanding of our world.

A goal of Nodism is to connect the laws of physics with what we sentient beings sense and understand. Nodism is the study of nesting - both in composition and classification. Composition is physical - spatial and temporal. Classification is mental - the recognition of similar properties. Both can be described by hierarchy diagrams so a large part of Nodism is the study of hierarchy and how it is used in all disciplines.

Nodism also recognizes thought as being physical, so even as we classify, there is composition occurring within the dendrites, neurons and axons of the brain. Nodism is a meta philosophy where we think about thinking - and often about meta.

Nodism is supported by a group of several million - the Nodist Colony. These are the programmers of the world - logical people modeling life using object oriented programming principles of composition and classification. Those who model life are called philosophers. It is another goal of Nodism to encourage programmers to see themselves as philosophers. Please explore the CODING TOUR for an idea of what it is like to code.

The symbol of Nodism is a circle within a circle. It represents Node Zero - the first nest - everything, the universe. Dan Zen embedded the symbol in a hose-bead wall hanging as well as used the symbol as the eye of the eel in his piece, the World's Longest Eel.

We consider practical uses of Nodism next in the tour...

MAPPING OF HIERARCHY

As outlined in the Dan Zen Creativity Framework, hierarchies are found in all disciplines as they represent organization. Understanding organization will help us in life. The diagram shown here is a conclusion slide. In the Framework, the steps of the mappings are described one at a time.

The above diagram show the mapping of hierarchy across boxes, Web pages, indexes, trees, language, information, cells, DNA and the brain. Indeed, when you draw circles instead of boxes, you see cells and collections of cells - organs, hence organization. The creativity framework goes on to explain terms like "outside the box", "lateral thinking", "paradigm shift", etc. all with respect to mappings of hierarchy. Having a clear understanding of this improves your creativity and can be very valuable in your career and lifestyle.

Nodism describes context as anything above a node and content as anyt- FIRST -hing inside a node. The node is a medium - it sits in the middle. This simple definition helps understand media and also relates to the past and future, potential and kinetic energy, perspect and aspect, synthesis and analysis, parent and children, joining and splitting, super and sub, general and specific - all terms clearly laid out and demonstrated in the Creativity Framework.

Hierarchies are used to describe claims and subclaims in patents - how we represent inventions. They are taxonomy in teaching. They set up species in classification schemes, they are used in libraries, government, business, computing, etc. By recognizing properties of hierarchy and seeing isomorphisms, you can get a deeper understanding of life. Hierarchies have also been used as the basis of many philosophies - from the Hierarchical Cosmos to Set Theory and the Theory of Holons.

NODISM RELATIONS

Nodism draws from the computing world where we improve at modeling real life - look at advancements in gaming and artificial intelligence. Collectively, the programming languages used to represent life are converging to the object oriented paradigm. The latest languages like C++, C#, Java, ActionScript are all pretty well the same - classes from which objects are made that have properties and methods and an event system for communication. What can we learn from this? Will it be the equivalent to the Newtonian system where it is a good model - but it takes an Einstein to see it is not quite right.

Speaking of Einstein, the theory of relativity comes into play in Nodism. Relevance is one of the most important topics being explored through Nodism. Relations are certainly shown in hierarchy with siblings, a parent, children, etc. But hierarchy, despite its rigid reputation, is extremely flexible. An object can be classified under any of its properties or combinations of properties. Out of everything, Dan Zen can be classified under inventors and inventors named Dan and people named Dan and people named Dan who are inventors and just under people and indeed classified directly under everything - at one with the universe. Also, everything can be represented under Dan - as in the distance from Dan, etc. In Nodism, the theory of relativity is applied not only to people but to anything including an idea. An idea can be the center of the universe and all else relative to it.

In many cases Godel's Theorem shows up - of course it would in a philosophy of meta. Dan Zen created a story that relays concepts of Nodism - the Meta Mystery. The story is continued through several media and its final presentation is still to come. So, what is the status of Nodism?

STATUS OF NODISM

Dan Zen developed Nodism during the 2000's and thoughts can be found in several sketchbooks before an official sketchbook was used. The idea was to refine the thinking and set out a doctrine. Well... then came some ideas and they were put on a free-thinking side. The doctrine side has nothing and the free thinking side has about one hundred pages.

Ideas also can be found in several hundred videos and voice recordings taken in the woods, the bath, the car, etc. A Nodism Site was created with a dozen or so posts. There was a Nodism Wiki but unfortunately, the database chosen for the Wiki was discontinued and not supported when servers were changed. To this day, all the initial Wiki work which was to be the doctrine, is almost lost. Dan Zen still has a compiled file with no way to read it. The Nodist Colony was to be a forum but it got overrun by spam. A series of chill-out-lounge moog supported chants featuring tenets of Nodism was underway when a harddrive crash lost all progress (here is a Recreated Sample). These three digital disasters pretty well halted Nodism advancement online. No need for conspiracy theory ;-).

The Dan Zen Creativity Framework represents the most official articulation of Nodism principles. It alludes to the Single Hierarchy - shows the ands (combinations) of composition and the ors (permutations) of hierarchy and even details the possibility of quantitative analysis of relevance in the hunt for inventive synergy. The NODISM TOUR is also a summary of some of the findings. Dan Zen plans to turn more towards philosophy with the creation of the Museum, marking a potential shift in focus away from interactive works. Dan Zen has no official philosophical training aside from his computer training, but even there, he learned Object Oriented coding on his own. He has talked with a dozen philosophy students and it seems they do not have their own philosophy - it is a shame. He has attempted over 10 years to get others involved in Nodism but to no avail. The Creativity Framework is being launched along with the Museum and will hopefully provide a tangible and useful way to interact with Nodism principles.

Conclusion

As an inventor, Dan Zen has created many things from original thought. It is not surprising that he would start thinking about thinking. Nodism is a result of these thinkings. He was trained as an Engineer and then a Patent Agent and it is surprising that the basic principles of Nodism as described in the Dan Zen Creativity Framework were not mentioned in a comprehensive and concise way.

Dan Zen encourages you to find out more about Nodism and certainly take a good look at the Creativity Framework to boost your creativity and see things in perhaps a more meaningful way.