Books as Branches of Mind

A book is usually pictured as a line — a beginning, a middle, an end. But a body of thought is not a line; it is a branch. Each idea grows from an earlier one and sends shoots toward later ones, and the whole only becomes visible when you step back far enough to see the shape.

This essay is the trunk of the present collection. The pieces it links to are its nearest limbs.

The shape matters

When ideas are stored as a list, the connections between them are lost. When they are stored as a graph, the connections are the knowledge.