From time to time, an invention emerged to change the course of evolution once again.
Globally, these opportunities follow a pattern of evolution labeled as Possible Adjacent by scientist Stuart Kauffman, to exemplify the limitations and potentialities of human creativity.
To illustrate this concept, imagine that everything we know is within a circle, and all possible combinations with the materials available within it are in a second circle around it. As we discover these combinations and incorporate the second circle into the first, we have new materials to be used and combined, the combinations of which enable us to wonder what comes next, in a third circle. This process repeats itself consecutively ad infinitum.
No matter how hard we try, we can’t skip any stages of the Possible Adjacent. According to Kauffman, we can’t get to the third circle without passing through the second one. But this does not mean that human inventiveness has not skipped a few steps before -at least in the field of imagination. Some bold ideas, such as those of Jules Verne and Da Vinci, were not possible at the time precisely because they skipped a few steps.
So here comes the question: how would the Adjacent Possible work for each one of us individually?
To understand it, let’s take a look at the Knowledge Movement.
We have the yellow dot as the starting point at the Center of Interest. It is where everything that we want to learn is manifested and all its possible paths. The blue dots are the Current Knowledge, which represents everything we already know, regardless of whether we are interested or not (breadth of knowledge). And lastly, just as in the Possible Adjacent, we have the Possible Knowledge, in which the gray dots symbolize what can be learned, taking into account that we already possess the minimum wisdom necessary to take the next step in that direction.
For example, to understand aerodynamics we need to understand physics, and to understand physics we need to understand mathematics, and so on. One knowledge enables the next, and so we climb into the Possible Knowledge.
Since we can’t learn -and are not interested in- everything, we choose a path where we will develop towards a specific area (depth of knowledge). We can deepen in Medicine, Design, History, Philosophy, Sports, etc., getting more information on one subject than another.
But as we begin our path through Possible Knowledge, it is difficult to predict the next step. As we can see in case studies of creative people at work, a particular combination of different knowledge can lead a person to a completely unexpected path. You start by studying math expecting to become an engineer, but life happens and you end up going into Accounting because a friend offered you a job in his startup.
As you travel a specific path (or multiple ones), your Center of Interest moves in that direction, which will determine the growth of your Current Knowledge and, consequently, your Possible Knowledge.
The shift of the Center of Interest is the exploration of Possible Knowledge, whose connections are only perceptible by looking back. Therefore, just as our knowledge expands and flows according to our interests, experiences, and contexts, our creativity behaves in the same way because it’s related to the way we interpret the world around us.
The Knowledge Movement of each one, however similar they seem, is what Gruber called uniqueness. It’s the sum of everything we know, learn, and see -or in his words, our point of view. No one has exactly the same pieces of knowledge, even if they have followed the same path.
Where is your Center of Interest taking you lately?
How your it connect with your previous knowledge and where can you go from there?