Threads
During the design of the program and throughout its evolution in the school, the need arose to identify and discuss topics which do not fit into domains: we came to call them threads. Eventually, we came to regard threads and domains as orthogonal coordinates, as warp and woof in weaving. Threads are themes which cut across many or all domains, suc as: sex, gender issues, social practices, etc. With every discussion, the list of threads became longer and longer. Some new threads were close to others already on the list, some more remote. In 1999, William Irwin Thompson replaced the evergrowing list of threads with a geometric model, thread-space, which can accomodate an infinite number of threads in a finite space. In a brief document, Memo on Cultural History Threads in the Spiral Curriculum dated April 21, 1999, he introduced his model thread-space. Together with a corresponding domain-space, a geometric state space for cultural history is provided. This is the formal basis for the application of metaphors of dynamical systems theory -- such as attractors, basins, bifurcations, and so on -- to world cultural history. Revised 08 November 2000 by Ralph Herman Abraham |