On Creating a Tree of Knowledge
The Goal
Find a way to categorize, organize, and visualize all fields of knowledge.
The Reason
To easily relate information, and better “know what don’t I know”
The Source
The Wikipedia List of Academic Disciplines
The benefits:
- Wikipedia is collaborative, so multiple experts and viewpoints went into creating the list
- The list is updated regularly
- The list is organized and hierarchical
- Content for learning is connected to each discipline
The Drawbacks
- Lack of interdisciplinary connections, so valuable connections across branches aren’t inherent in the structure
- Academic disciplines are a narrow framework when working to encapsulate all knowledge. For example, jazz is on the list, but hip hop isn’t
- The list focuses almost exclusively on domain or general knowledge
The Results
Obsidian.MD — A Knowledge Management Tool
I converted the Wikipedia Outline of Academic Disciplines into .md files ready to be moved to Obsidian.
Each file contains the following, which specifies the level of the discipline (type) and it’s parent discipline.
The levels are specified by Domain → Field → Category → Subcategory → Subject → Discipline
The visual created through Obsidian.MD’s Graph View gave this result:
A Sunburst Diagram in Excel
Your Access
Go here for a GitHub folder containing:
- a folder with the Obsidian.md files
- an Excel sheet containing a few sheets breaking down the academic disciplines and a sunburst diagram
- 2 JSON files with the academic disciplines, one that contains the full path, and another that only contains the parent-child relationship
P.S.
I found this site during my research for this project. It’s pretty cool:
