Reality is made by two ontological dimensions
Reality is made of two ontological perspectives: one is attributive and the other relational.
The former looks at the attributes of things, like weights, length, color, beauty, taste, etc., while the latter at the relationships connecting things, like the number of relationships, the closeness, the density, the similarity of patterns, etc.
Into the economic and business world, the former are, for instance, a company’s turnover, assets value, cash flow, size, export share, etc., while the latter are the number and types of links directly or indirectly connecting two or more companies, the length of the paths connecting them, the similarity of their
exchange patterns, etc.
To understand (and hopefully explain and predict) phenomena, we need both perspectives. We all have an intuitive perception of the relational dimension in which we are embedded, let say our group of friends or colleagues, the map representing the places where they are located, etc. We all know that, if we were
looking for a good expert about something, we would search into the network of our friends or colleagues and maybe ask them to search into their own network of relationships.
Knowledge is not exception: it is distributed into a network of topics, concepts and methods that follow vertical lines from a mother (or larger) topic to its derivation (specialization) and horizontal lines, which connect them in terms of some sort of similarity.
The knowledge that I developed during my life is not exception: the vertical relationships flow from Areas of Activities to Scientific Research, Training and Business, and so on.
Horizontal (lateral) connections are evidenced too, so that the navigator can grasp immediately (and maybe follow) from a topic to another one that is similar to that or jump into another vertical scientific derivation that have in common that same topic. Of course, the best candidates for such cross-knowledge are methods, but, besides them, there are also a lot of other lateral connections, that you will discover yourself.
All my published and unpublished papers are available for download. As well, all the presentations I did in public conferences and workshops.
