Monday, January 30, 2012

Of Layered Method

The good thing about practicing the Planner's Eye is that I don't need papers and pencils with me. All I need is to watch things everywhere and try to feel the Prime Vertices for my Triangulation. So sometimes I find something that looks really hard to find any vertices, like clouds in the sky, or a chain of mountains, or a forest. They're too asymmetrical and broken and there's to much little details to be captured.

The best approach I got to it was to understand the most basic shapes, the most protuberant ones, and slowly filling in minor details. For instance, when I'm analyzing a chain of mountains, I always try defining an outline, and then adding the most relevant changes in said outline. As a braudelian concept, the Layered Method means going from the the third, structural level towards the first, more factual level.

This is something that I've been finding to work really well for learning. I've been noticing it since I started studying History a little more seriously. Any empire I'm interested in, I like studying it starting from the a really vague overview (such as it's timespan), and then filling the gaps in the timeline. 

Usually some major periods are some building blocks inside the timeline, then followed by dynasties and emperors and as minor details as are desired. Experts are, of course, those who know minor details about the civilization. It works for every timeline, indeed. A war usually has a timeline with periods within, decisive battles and things like that. And each battle also has minor descriptions, if available.

The reason I like this method isn't only because I can measure the level of knowledge I have and need to have towards something, but also it makes the learning process much easier for me. It happens so because I know where every detail goes, where it belongs to. It makes my knowledge solid, unlike when I start devouring all this minor information at once, and then it feels really loose, worringly prone to be forgotten.

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