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The Waldzell Canon

Last modified: Sat 3/22/97 1615 PST

The Waldzell Canon is intended to serve as a standardized knowledge repository for the training, certification and continuing education of comprehensive polymaths. A comprehensive polymath, in this context, is a person who has attained professional stature in broad areas of knowledge and expertise in a way that enables him or her to apply knowledge across any traditional discipline boundaries in order to reach a desired objective:

• Inventory, the pursuit of new knowledge or expertise;
• Innovation, the synthesis of new ways of understanding or of doing things; or
• Application, the deployment of knowledge and expertise for the solution of specific problems.

The representation of knowledge in the Canon is based on an ontology (an axiomatic set of concepts and assertions that forms the basis for the definition of more complex concepts and assertions) designed (or rather, evolving) specifically for the purpose, the Waldzell Canon Ontology.

To contribute to the Canon, play a Waldzell Glass Bead Game and submit it to the Game Archive (by emailing a transcript of the game to <waldzell@pair.com> until the Game Server is operational). To search, browse or comment on the current version of the Canon, you'll be able to visit the Canon Archive Server once it has been built. In the meantime, you can look at the Game Assertion Corpus, a tabular presentation of all assertions submitted in games to the Game Archive.

To find more information on the idea of comprehensivism, you might take a look at some of the references given in the Waldzell Forum essays (all of which are currently in preparation).

Finally, the Waldzell Library contains material, including links to off-site learning resources, that is closely related to the Canon. Contributions to the Library are solicited from all interested parties.