Publish at January 20 2021 Updated March 20 2025
A network is made up of connections. The value of connections is zero at the outset. What passes through it, and above all where it leaves and where it goes, will determine most of its value - what we call the "terminals", transmitter or receiver. The channel, the wire, on its own has practically no value, apart from its physical cost. If it's not connected to anything, it's worth nothing.
Take simple public networks: water, sewage, electricity. What passes through these networks has no value other than what we do with it, its utility. It's the terminal that determines its value. On the scale of a network, a power station, a reservoir or a sewer collector have more importance and value than a light bulb on the ceiling, a fountain or a urinal. A large producer or consumer has more importance than a small one, but the number of small ones is linked to the number of large ones. The number of links leading to or from a terminal establishes the hierarchy. The logic is not very different for the Internet.
From the moment you assign a value to a terminal, be it a person, a company or a site, a hierarchy can be established.
The number of links leading to or from a terminal can be counted, and who it connects to can also be characterized according to various parameters such as gender, education, nationality, wealth, etc., and also by what is searched for or transmitted by the terminal. This is what has made the fortunes of Google, social networks and CRMs such as SalesForce. The value of a communication from a head of state or a major corporation is greater than the comment of an average person on a shopping site. The value of Google and Facebook exceeds that of almost all other terminals.
Knowledge is also modeled as a network, a tree. On a mind map, each term is connected to others, and their meaning depends on context, as does their value. A mathematical formula is powerful knowledge for an engineer, but of little use to a gardener. A company's share price is of little interest to someone who has nothing to invest, but vital to the manager.
A dictionary has a generic value for everyone, and only a few companies produce them. These companies are important, but the dictionary is affordable. A complete course in an in-demand field has much more punctual value than a dictionary, but thousands of institutions provide them, and most of them are modest in size. The number of terminals connected and their value are reflected in the concrete reality of individuals and companies.
In terms of knowledge, fundamental formulas in physics like "F = m * a" or in electronics like "U = R * I" are more important than knowledge of metal conduction rates or material elasticity, simply because they are at the base of the hierarchy of knowledge in these fields, in the trunk, and more concepts and other knowledge are related to them. F=m*a is Newton's second law. U=RI is Ohm's first law.
One of the basic pedagogical principles is to present the foundations and principles and then build on them. This should also be among the first things to be taught, both to future teachers and to first-graders. The value of basic knowledge, and that of a complete knowledge network, can be very high.
Sometimes, as in many of the humanities and specialized fields, it's not easy to determine what the foundations are. At such times, starting with definitions is an objective process that helps determine relative importance. Starting with the most common words in the field and the definitions of the words in the definitions. A few dozen definitions later, certain words will appear in several definitions; these words have more links in that field, they are more important in the nomenclature and in the concepts; they need to be mastered.
Each field has its own priority vocabulary, but globally, a certain number of terms are known and used by everyone. This interesting list presents 600 of them with 4 or more letters. The most widely used in the French language.
Do you know them all precisely? I probably do. Are they the most important? Undoubtedly for communication, yes, but for the rest, it's doubtful. We wouldn't be able to act in agronomy, medicine, carpentry or any other technical or scientific field with these terms alone. Their importance necessarily depends on context.
If we master less than 3,500 words, our knowledge is minimal. Knowing that you'll find between 50,000 and 70,000 words in a standard dictionary, and that if you count the specialized and ancient terms you'll have more than half a million, then there's nothing wrong with not knowing exactly what "hermeneutics" means, or what a vernier is for. There's always a dictionary or Google nearby. But if you want to claim mastery of a subject, you'd better know the vocabulary in detail and understand the ramifications right down to their application.
The question of the hierarchy of knowledge has plagued intellectuals for ages(1). Instead of a single, utopian hierarchy, we now propose multiple hierarchies, linked to context. Thus, the same body of knowledge can be found in several hierarchies at different levels. It may be possible to establish a hierarchy of hierarchies, but what is certain is that as soon as we consider an evolution of knowledge and contexts, new realities will appear and create new contexts and necessarily new hierarchies, depending on the priorities of the moment.
The hierarchy chosen depends on the breadth of the point of view (general or specialized) and the consideration: if we're materialistic, the speed of light, Plank's constant, the fundamental laws and this kind of knowledge will be at the base of the hierarchy; these are the elements that come into play in all physical fields; if we lean more towards the humanistic side, we'll put life, love, creativity, communication and perhaps mathematics at the foundations; we take them into consideration in all human and natural phenomena.
Why mathematics in the humanities? Because it is infinite in its possibilities, and because it is human minds that conceive it. This story helps me to illustrate this: a 6-year-old child who was beginning to learn the numbers, tens, hundreds, thousands, millions, billions, and who kept adding classes of numbers, tens of billions, hundreds of billions, thousands of billions, suddenly said to me spontaneously, of his own accord: "Numbers, they never end do they?" I don't believe that a machine will ever conceive such a thought, nor experience any emotion from it. But it will be able to determine a cosmogonic constant of some kind, certainly, share it with us, and we'll be the ones to appreciate it and make use of it. So, yes, mathematics is a space of limitless creativity.
Those who create a nomenclature and a knowledge network reflect a reality and contribute to its maintenance. For example, in the Dewey classification, an entire section ( 200 ) is devoted to religions, with 5 subsections devoted to Christianity and only one to "other religions". In the new nomenclatures, the place of religions corresponds more to their observed importance in libraries and research. The world is changing, and so are the importance of knowledge networks, but for a long time the Deway system contributed to a certain conception of the world. Today, a materialistic, commercial, individualistic and no doubt other worldview is shaping minds and ambitions. The value of some knowledge is amplified and the value of others devalued or ignored.
The fact that we have virtually only one search engine leads us to ask an existential question. Obscure algorithms based essentially on quantity reflect and distort us in directions determined by considerations that have nothing to do with our own desires, which can be insidiously and systematically steered by companies whose interests are not shared.
The network is a result; the idea behind the process, its "programming", is simple: it's the terminals that determine its power and persistence.
Finally, the value of connections could also be the value of disconnections. Not connecting to anything is a gesture of will and personality. Strangely enough, by being offered things we don't really want, and by being stripped of our attention, we come to lose our individuality and power, whereas commercial pretension is exactly the opposite!
We're back to the original idea: it's the terminal that gives value to the network and to connections. Our power to choose whether or not to connect to this or that, to use this or that, determines what we build. If we connect to what respects us, we contribute to a respectful world. If we connect to what demeans us, we get a world to match.
We have value. We can determine with whom we share it. Schools give students a good education; students support good schools. The student determines what interests him and what he wants to connect with. Our job is to show them why this or that might be interesting, connect them to it and help them build their knowledge network. For the rest, it's a good idea to leave the choice up to the student: it's a matter of happiness and value.
References
The 600 Most-Used French Words
http://www.encyclopedie-incomplete.com/?Les-600-Mots-Francais-Les-Plus
Is the hierarchy of knowledge really outdated? Rémi Sussan - Internet Actu
http://www.internetactu.net/2015/02/23/la-hierarchie-des-connaissances-est-elle-vraiment-depassee/
Dewey Decimal Classification - Université de Montréal
https://www.ebsi.umontreal.ca/jetrouve/biblio/dewey.htm
Number of words - https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+words+in+english
Traité de documentation : le livre sur le livre, théorie et pratique - Paul Otlet, 1934
https://archive.org/details/OtletTraitDocumentationUgent
https://www.decitre.fr/livres/le-livre-sur-le-livre-9782874492990.html#ae85
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