Harold, you are, of course, correct that knowledge is not transferred in the strictest sense of that word, yet if knowledge isn’t transferred, then how does the knowledge that Cormier put into his post now appear in my mind?

Your answer is that it doesn’t. Rather, the meaning in my mind was constructed through my own interactions with Cormier’s post as I created an internal abstraction of that artifact, but somehow this doesn’t quite satisfy. For instance, in this post Dave talks about points and lines in Deleuze and Guattari, and I suspect I get what he means, so how did I do that? How does the knowledge in his mind now appear in my mind if there is no transfer as most people seem to think?

Deleuze and Guattari have some other concepts that may help. Their concept of decalcomania suggests that patterns echo through nature as impressions made by pressing some media between two surfaces—think of children pressing hand prints on paper. The process is never exact, and it is susceptible to smudges, smears, and mistakes as we vary the impression, the media, and the surfaces, but usually, the impression that appears on the paper is more or less recognizable by all parties as, say, a hand print.

And it could still be interpreted as a transfer. Another, better example might be chameleons whose skin echoes the colors and patterns of nearby foliage. No color is transferred from the leaf to the chameleon; rather, the chameleon echoes the color. Human minds are most sensitive structures, amazing canvasses, that respond to and echo the environment in incredible detail—never precisely, but usually well enough.

So my reading of this post was a pressing of mind against mind through the medium of a blog post. The impression, or knowledge, that bloomed in my mind likely is similar enough to the knowledge in Cormier’s mind that we could sit down over a couple of pints and discuss Deleuze and Guattari. Of course, my knowledge depends as much upon the qualities (tone, texture, malleability, etc) of my mind, so that the knowledge I now have is certainly different from yours, Cormier’s, or Tracy’s, all of which have different, perhaps radically different, qualities. Still, the knowledge we all formed of points and lines may be similar enough that we can still say that Cormier communicated knowledge to us.

D&G also use the concept of cartography to talk about the reiterative process by which we humans map reality in our brains. Like all metaphors, both cartography and decalcomania have limitations, but they go a long way towards helping us understand how more or less similar structures can blossom in different minds often enough for us to communicate—and fail often enough to provide all the humor and angst that we humans seem to value so much.

Good conversation, and Dave, I look forward to reading more of your thoughts about Deleuze and Guattari.