Contiguity – Book Review
- Dr. Moria Levy
- Jun 15
- 8 min read
The book "Contiguity: Entangled Threads of Living and Learning," written by Alex Bennett, is part of a series of books on concepts related to knowledge and learning, providing a comprehensive and organized perspective on that concept.
What is Contiguity? A collection of elements that exist in the same space or on the same timeline, between which a meaningful connection can be defined. These are elements that are not inherently connected, but rather adjacent, and we are the ones who weave the threads between them - in our minds, our perceptions, and our emotions.
Main topics covered in the book:
Introduction - Contiguity
People:
Humanity
The Individual
Processes:
Learning
Critical and Creative Thinking
Technologies:
Artificial Intelligence
At the book's conclusion, directions for thinking are proposed to enrich the contiguity model while examining additional disciplines from neuroscience and beyond (energy dynamics, quantum entanglements, and more). This summary does not include this concluding chapter, whose understanding requires deeper familiarity with these fields.
Introduction
The term contiguity is similar to, but distinct from, the term continuity. Contiguity deals with connections between adjacent or proximate items, whether in space (place) or as a series of events and processes over time.
Examining these series or collections of items can help in understanding cause-and-effect relationships, integrated systemic thinking based on the included and connected details, and serves as a conceptual framework for advancing ideas based on the intersection between them, among other benefits.
Key characteristics:
Two main axes: place and time.
Different configurations: physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual.
Human - at the level of the individual, group, society, or global.
Conceptual - at the level of practice, phenomenon, and up to professional discipline or comprehensive culture.
People
Humanity
The human chain is an expression of continuity both at the temporal level (historical development) and at the spatial level (human societies).
Connections in the human chain exist across every possible dimension:
Migration patterns of people
Anthropological analysis of cultures
Cross-sectional analysis of philosophies across cultures and traditions
Genetic analysis of diseases characterizing population groups
Analysis of connections within business organizations. In this context, it's worth mentioning Senge's "The Fifth Discipline," which discusses the relationship between each employee's vision and the overall organizational vision.
The Individual
Consciousness
Bennett refrains from defining what consciousness is, as it has many definitions and little consensus among the various proposals. She attributes consciousness to our alertness and the connection between the intellectual mind and the physical brain.
Characteristics of consciousness
Consciousness is a process, not a thing (object).
Our consciousness is a unified and coherent unit, where, for example, it assigns a single meaning to each image in the brain.
The intellectual mind is information-based: it constantly filters information received from physical sensors.
The richness of the intellectual mind lies in its ability to create connections (some of which become physical connections in the brain) that reduce the uncertainty in which we find ourselves.
Consciousness has a vital role in learning and memory processes.
Consciousness connects laterally (along the spatial axis of contiguity) between different domains of knowledge and information, thereby fostering creative thinking and critical thinking.
Episodic memory retrieves personal experiences from the past - longitudinal connection (the temporal axis of contiguity), including temporal and spatial contexts, allowing us to generate a sense of personal progress.
Emotions are a fundamental component of our consciousness that influence how we perceive and interact with the world. And again, here too, contiguity (on the temporal axis) plays a significant role in how we perceive present experiences and create expectations for the future. Emotions, on the lateral axis, create connections between different aspects of our lives, including professional, social, familial relationships, and self-regard, generating a coherent narrative that enriches our holistic emotional picture of the world.
Our perception of time in consciousness is dynamic. It enables the repeated integration of past experiences and future plans, allowing not only a coherent picture but also learning from the past and making better decisions based on these.
At the neurological level, physical connections demonstrate how the brain can function in a unified manner and how contiguity enables the phenomenon of integration between different neural networks, while creating bridges between distinct neural systems.
The relationship between alertness and sleep can also be seen as a lateral and longitudinal system of contiguity, where issues we grapple with during the day while in a state of consciousness connect with ideas that arise in our minds during sleep, creating a delicate and complex fabric simultaneously.
The Mind
Contiguity of the mind refers to how our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions are connected together coherently into experience.
Perceptions are the foundation. Gestalt principles help us understand how we group and interpret visual information and transform it into information:
similarity
proximity
mental completion of gaps that enables connecting items into a form
continuity
background
symmetry
Items moving together
past experience.
Our brain creates an illusion of continuity; continuity is the result - the idea of contiguity is what enables it, both on the temporal axis and on the spatial axis.
Qualia is a philosophical concept that deals with properties as perceived in our subjective consciousness. Perception is the structured whole made from a collection of items that the brain connects together from consciousness, while linking them to a phenomenon. Each time we encounter something from the external world, we compare it to existing phenomena in our brain that are connected through networks by their contiguity. This repeated action builds within us the ability to connect, as well as to distinguish.
Identity
One of the significant goals of consciousness is to connect our lives to a coherent narrative of ourselves. Building the narrative of our life story is a dynamic process that is constantly updated according to personal experiences, emotions, culture, social influences, relationships, upbringing, growth and development, challenges, life changes, feedback, media, information, and more.
These components are in constant interaction with each other (contiguity) and constitute the input to our perception of ourselves, as this connects with our characteristics and experiences (Qualia). All of these build our personal identity in the world.
Living in the World
Life can be defined in continuity through our approach to life as a combinations of two dimensions:
Domains:
experience
connections and relationships with others and
Personal growth integrates with our perception of ourselves about time
Time:
past - what we learned that brought us to today
present - where and what we are doing today, and
future - the vision of where we want to be.
Examining each of the 9 combinations of domain and time will enable the identification of patterns that connect the different items, known as patterns of contiguity. This integrative approach promotes continuous personal growth, where new experiences contribute to the ongoing development of connections with others, enriching personal growth in the process. Such a routine process, which integrates experience, relationships, and growth, strengthens personal and professional momentum, ensuring harmony and alignment with our values and aspirations while creating flow.
Living in contiguity encompasses both existential and experiential aspects: while the experiential aspects focus on the flow and coherence of daily activities, the existential dimensions delve into fundamental questions of purpose, identity, and meaning.
Together, they enable a satisfying and balanced life, allowing for a comprehensive approach to personal and professional development.
Processes [Knowledge-Based]
Learning
In the new and evolving world, there is much logic in the idea of contiguity in the context of learning. This approach involves new information connecting with and influencing the understanding of additional topics.
Lifelong learning is continuous learning where we make learning a way of life through (1) constant pursuit of knowledge and skills in life, (2) feedback loops, and (3) learning through diverse and different channels and media (see book review of Infinite Learning).
Contiguous learning, on the other hand, deals with the logical construction of educational experiences so that each topic learned builds upon previously learned topics. This approach emphasizes (1) connectivity - between learning domains so that they indeed support each other, (2) integration - interdisciplinary learning and reduction of boundaries between adjacent domains, (3) relevance - building the curriculum to create relevance between the different ideas learned and the possibility for practical, applicable connection, and (4) focus - deepening in the related domains being studied, instead of breadth and dispersion.
Contiguous learning relates to the search for associative patterns in the brain; both emphasize the natural connections between different pieces of information, but they are not parallel to each other - associative patterns in the brain create the elements for contiguous learning, and this strategically structures the content to leverage cognitive and natural processes to improve knowledge retention and enhance understanding.
Characteristics of contiguous learning
Structured connectivity - between learning domains in a way that ensures logic and relevance.
Reinforced associations - strengthening natural associations as a result of structured planning.
Holistic understanding - encouraging learners to view information in an integrative, holistic manner.
Application-oriented - ensuring proximity and contiguity between domains in a way that enables practical application.
Contiguous learning, when consciously implemented in educational contexts, serves as a bridge between a planned and structured curriculum and the brain's natural ability to make associations and practically implement learning contiguity.
Contiguous learning affects not only what we learn but also how we perceive and integrate learning processes.
To promote contiguous learning abilities for personal development, one must train and advance the skills of:
Developing curiosity
Cultivating awareness
Leveraging constraints into opportunities
Self-reflection
Balancing abilities and challenges
Adopting a growth mindset
Smart leveraging of technologies.
Critical Thinking and Creative Thinking
Contiguous learning, as described above, serves as a powerful methodology for cultivating both creative thinking and critical thinking. This is achieved by ensuring, in the learning process, that learners create a rich tapestry of knowledge connected in diverse and innovative ways.
Contiguous learning develops critical thinking skills, including information-based decision-making, context-dependent analysis, identifying patterns and connections, challenging basic assumptions, and problem-solving.
Contiguous learning develops creative thinking skills - creating patterns and implications from different content worlds, analysis, and more.
Technologies
Artificial Intelligence
Preliminary notes in the discussion regarding intelligence capabilities:
The approach to this topic is extremely cautious.
What is stated refers to what is known today, but it should be examined with the advancement and breakthrough of new intelligence capabilities.
Definitions of different concepts are known in advance to humans, and therefore, according to the definitions, intelligence is limited. However, it is worthwhile to examine the issues more broadly and not dismiss the capability on a technical basis.
Consciousness: There is a debate about whether artificial intelligence has consciousness. It is clear that, according to current definitions, there is no consciousness. Still, if we summarize everything in one sentence, there is a very good simulation of artificial intelligence of human intelligence.
Artificial intelligence knows at different levels how to imitate and offer parallel application as of today to the various components of consciousness.
Here are examples:
Personal consciousness - personal assistants.
Subjective experience - context-dependent image recognition.
Intention and will - autonomous cars.
Morality and ethics - identifying immoral queries and not providing responses.
Range of emotions - offering empathetic responses.
Understanding and interpretation - context-dependent translation of content when transitioning between languages.
Contiguity in artificial intelligence systems:
Contiguity is vital in developing artificial intelligence systems. It enables:
Improving context-dependent understanding
Sequential data processing
Improving pattern recognition
Improving learning
Creating coherence in the temporal dimension
Applicability to real-world problems.
Summary
The implementation of contiguity principles enables artificial intelligence networks, as well as the disciplines of consciousness and learning, to offer a richer, deeper response —a response that is greater than the sum of its parts.
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