To understand a link is to recognise how two or more things are connected.
Some links are obvious:
- London is connected to England because London is its capital.
- John Lennon is connected to The Beatles because he was a member of the group.
- Christmas is connected to 25 December because that is the date on which it is conventionally celebrated.
Linkology becomes more interesting when connections are less visible. Liverpool can connect to New York through music, migration, shipping, architecture, sport, people or history. A single place may therefore have thousands of possible links, depending on how it is examined.
Understanding a link means identifying what kind of relationship exists. This is where frameworks such as COGS become useful.
Understanding through COGS
COGS provides four fundamental reference points:
- Characters — Who?
- Objects — What?
- Geography — Where?
- Seconds — When?
Seconds represents time broadly: not merely individual seconds, but the timeline on which events occur.
Suppose we encounter the statement:
Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon in 1969.
COGS gives us four coordinates.
Neil Armstrong is the Character.
The spacecraft, spacesuit, flag and Moon itself may function as Objects, depending on what we are examining.
The Moon is the Geography.
1969 is the Seconds coordinate.
COGS helps us break information into elements that can be inspected separately, then ask what else shares one of those coordinates:
Who else connects to Armstrong?
What else happened on the Moon?
What else happened in 1969?
What objects connect Armstrong to other people, places or moments?
Understanding a subject therefore becomes partly an exercise in locating it within a network.
Understanding is not merely knowing
There is a difference between knowing a fact and understanding its connections.
Knowing that Sweden changed from driving on the left to driving on the right in 1967 is one piece of information.
Understanding it means placing the event within wider systems: European road networks, vehicle design, traffic engineering, Swedish history, dates, neighbouring countries and other examples of countries changing the side of the road on which they drive.
Knowledge provides points.
Understanding reveals the lines between them.
Linkology is particularly interested in those lines.