My Multiple Encounters with Prägnanz
A Principle for Knowledge Organization and Idea Generation
First encounter
No, I didn’t learn the concept of “Prägnanz” from the Gestalt psychologists (Max Wertheimer et. al.) who had first coined the term.
It was from Michael Polanyi that I learned the concept in connection with his work “Personal Knowledge”.
Literally, Prägnanz means concise and full of meaning.
The concept of Prägnanz is a fundamental principle of Gestalt psychology, which is a school of psychology that focuses on how the human mind perceives and organizes sensory information. The idea of Prägnanz is closely related to the Gestalt principles of perceptual organization, which describe how the human mind organizes sensory information into simple and meaningful patterns.
According to Gestalt psychologists, the human mind has a natural tendency to organize sensory information into simple and meaningful patterns, rather than perceiving it as a random collection of individual elements. This tendency is reflected in the characteristics of Prägnanz, which include simplicity, coherence, stability, good continuation, closure, similarity, and proximity.
For Polanyi, Prägnanz is a key aspect of Personal Knowledge, as it reflects the way in which our subjective experiences shape the way we perceive and understand the world around us.
In essence, Prägnanz is the process by which we actively construct our own understanding of the world, based on our own subjective experiences and tacit knowledge.
If you accept this, then how we organize our Personal Knowledge Management Structure has everything to do with Prägnanz. Not only atomic notes but Folgezettel, Knowledge Maps, and other Structure Patterns are the applications of Prägnanz.
Second encounter
My second encounter with Prägnanz was when I saw “Compelling Diagrams” of C.H. Waddington, a biologist known for his work on epigenetic landscapes. These landscapes were visualized using Compelling Diagrams (the term Compelling is not Waddington’s, it was used by Matthew Allen in his article “Compelled by the Diagram: Thinking through C. H. Waddington’s Epigenetic Landscape”)
It was like a revelation. I realized that these diagrams are the visual representation of Prägnanz. The diagrams have all the characteristics of Prägnanz (see here).
In addition, the diagrams are compelling and engaging, they focus attention on the essentials and channel thought into the right paths. Remember that attention is a very scarce mental resource these days, and Compelling Diagrams are very effective in using the resource.
The attribute compelling or engaging was not in the above list of attributes of Prägnanz, but I firmly believe that it should be considered a natural addition to the list.
Third encounter
My third encounter with Prägnanz was also related to Creativity, but the angle of approach was different.
The famous French mathematician Henri Poincaré (1854–1912), reported how several of his important mathematical discoveries came about. He described the process of discovery as consisting of four stages,
the first is the preparation which involves an intense focus on a problem,
the second stage is the incubation period, where a break from the problem is made (going for a walk, sleeping or other distractions),
the third is the illumination stage where a sudden "Aha!" occurs, and
the final stage is the verification stage.
The following shows one of the passages of his book “Science and Method”:
“Ideas rose in crowds; I felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable combination. By the next morning I had established the existence of a class of fuchsian functions. ... I had only to write out the results, which took but a few hours.” (Poincaré, 1913)
This passage is about the second stage.
The first and fourth are usually considered as “conscious” work, and the second and third as “subconscious”. I will refrain from using the terms conscious and subconscious here because they are overloaded with different meanings, and it is not clear if the “subconscious” work is not simply a continuation of the previous “conscious” work.
Besides, there is another interesting and more relevant tension involved here.
This is the tension between thinking outside the box and thinking inside the box.
Conventional wisdom looks at thinking outside the box as a sign of creativity, Thinking outside the box is often seen as a sign of creativity.
It refers to thinking of unconventional ideas, taking risks, and breaking free from traditional ways of thinking. It is often associated with the notion of ‘blue-sky thinking’. This approach encourages people to brainstorm as many ideas as possible without any limitations. This approach can yield disruptive and innovative ideas that can change the game in any field.
Thinking inside the box, on the other hand, is often regarded as rigid, and limiting.
This view, however, is wrong, it is almost paradoxical, that thinking inside the box, in many cases actually promotes creativity. The key is to see the limitations of the box as constraints. Constraints provide boundaries and limits that channel behaviors and processes in particular directions. These constraints create possibilities for the emergence of new forms and patterns. Constraints essentially create possibilities for creativity by ruling out certain behaviors and channeling activities in other directions. The constraints provide the scaffolding on which creativity can operate by limiting the possibilities and enabling the emergence of new forms within those constraints. Creativity requires constraints to operate.
G. K. Chesterton once said, “Art consists in limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.”
Paul Valéry wrote: “A person is a poet if his imagination is stimulated by the difficulties inherent in his art and not if his imagination is dulled by them.”
Igor Stravinsky said: “The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution.”
Sometimes, when there are no apparent constraints, artificial constraints are introduced, so-called creative constraints.
I think, both thinking outside the box and inside the box have their uses, they can complement each other, similar to convergent and divergent thinking.
And exactly in the case of Poincaré’s stages, we ascertain that the first stage of preparation through hard work is thinking inside the box, and the second stage of incubation is where the constraints are somewhat relaxed.
But why do we need constraints for the first stage? It is like setting the stage for a Compelling Diagram, it needs all the properties of Prägnanz! Full of meaning, concise and compelling. Only then can “ideas rise, collide and form new ideas” in the incubation stage until it produces an "Aha!"
Here Prägnanz is the precondition for the emergence of new ideas.
In conclusion, Prägnanz has been a principle for Knowledge Organization and Idea Emergence for me. I hope you will experience that too.