Building Good Maps

The Essential Role of High-Quality Observation

As we enter a new territory, we would like to build new maps to be able to easily and reliably navigate through it. How do we do that?

Whether we’re learning our way around a new network of hiking trails or leading new scientific research into fungal mycorrhizal networks deep in forest soil, our goal is to identify entities and relationships stable enough in our experience to establish a reliable map. (Make sure to read the previous post, Maps Within Maps.)

To do this, we must start with sufficiently disciplined observation. What can we observe in this new territory, and how can our observations support the discernment of persistent patterns of perceptual experience which enable us to build our map?

Starting with a Hike

As we set off from the trailhead, how might we begin to construct our inner map to support future hikes in this area? Right from the beginning, we use our senses to build an internal model of our experience of the trail. Our eyes collect visual information, darting in slight saccades several times a second to build reliable visual images, composing those images in greater depth through the comparison between our two eyes, assembling greater complexity and spatial relations through moving our body along the trail to gain continuous updates in perspective.

This organic, fine-grained map-building is a natural function of our entire nervous system, supported by the structure of our brain. We are map-builders from the inside out. It happens without any explicit effort or attention, spontaneously, the circuitry built in and automatically functioning from the very beginning of our lives. (Two good books describing this are The Experience Machine by Andy Clark and Part 1 of A Thousand Brains by Jeff Hawkins.)

In building our inner trail map, our eyes gather information from the ground and our horizontal surroundings. We may also occasionally take in the sky above, particularly the position of the sun which may help us orient to the cardinal directions. But we don’t spend a lot of time gazing upward at the sky in service to learning our way around. The weather above is in constant flux and provides less relevant information about the trail structure, and the model we build based on the ground information will serve us no matter what is happening above.

Along the way, we support our visual model construction with our other senses. We listen to the sound of a stream to the left and join that with the visual and proprioceptive perception of the downward slope in that direction. We feel our body stepping among the tree roots and rocks as we climb gently upward. We take in the vibrant freshness of the air and sense the presence of the trees all around us. Next week, when we return to this trail, we will recognize the congruence of our new experience of the trailhead with this remembered model and use it as a contextual marker to bring up the entirety of today’s experience as a map to serve our hike at that time.

Triangles, Triangles, Everywhere Triangles

If we are fortunate enough to have fully functioning eyes and ears, every moment of sight and hearing involves triangulation between the symmetrically complementary organs. Triangulation in hearing helps us locate the direction and distance of a sound, while triangulation in sight gives us the perception of depth in our visual surroundings.

We enhance the quality of our visual and auditory perception through movement of our head and body in ways that enable us to build a more complete and detailed inner model (map) of our world, building our perceptual map through triangulation through space and time. The sense of touch goes even further with countless triangulation frames available, for example through the complementary sensations from multiple fingers as we pick up an interesting rock.

This wealth of perceptual information gets assembled, piece by piece, into inner maps. There are the things, the entities, this tree, that fork in the trail, those rocks and logs, this overlook. Countless elements get composed within us to match the experience of the trail and forest around us. Each of these is linked into relevant spatial and other kinds of relationships to form more comprehensive summary entities — this trail as a whole, that mountain range across the way. And all together, these larger assemblages are compiled into the full experiential map of this network of trails as we hike through it over a series of outings.

Along the way, we also triangulate with our fellow hikers. “Look there, is that an eagle’s nest? What is that peak visible just over the ridge?” And we might pull out some two-dimensional stock maps on paper or our phones to bring in some more technically defined parameters like altitude and compass orientation. Over and over, in many ways, we assemble many bits of experience into more and more comprehensive and interconnected maps within maps.

Holding Our Maps in Larger Contexts

Our more complete maps tend to be situated within multiple different contextual maps as well. Some examples might include the following:

• There is the context of the unfolding of my life over time, where these hikes are positioned relative to other significant events.

• Another is the larger geographical context, especially the relationship of this trail location relative to my home and other places I have visited or want to visit.

• The context of my relationship with my hiking partner is key. What hikes have we shared, and what is our ongoing, developing experience of these adventures in the context of our non-hiking activities?

• Still another is the larger social context of my circles of friends and family, many of whom also enjoy hiking and may be interested in what I learn about these trails, many of whom will have their own stories to tell, each of whom has their opinions about my hiking obsession or my avoidance of other life responsibilities, for example.

• This sharing holds a community context that may transcend in importance the actual details of the trails themselves. My hikes, my own relationship to my hiking, and my relationships to friends and family that may be enhanced or compromised through my hiking, all weave threads into the fabric of my belonging.

• And perhaps there is yet another context in which my trail maps and experiences are held as part of a deeper sense of meaning in my life, in which I highly value spending time in nature and getting to know a place intimately as a way of feeling a connection to something larger than myself.

• All of the above may contribute to my overall sense of identity. Who am I, to myself and to others around me?

Again, we link the entity of our inner trail map to larger entities of interrelated contextual maps. This kind of contextual networking creates yet another form of triangulation for the stability of our experience of observing and building maps we can rely upon over time. We are always navigating the broadest scope of our life terrain at the same time as we attend to every detail.

What’s Different About Doing Science

This kind of everyday observation process works just fine to help us learn our way around a new network of hiking trails. We can be satisfied with “good enough” to offer some familiarity when we return to this forest, and in the absence of a major weather or fire disaster, we can be confident that the trails will remain the same from one hike to the next. But when we seek to build a science, our goal is different. If we were building a science of trails, for example, we would want to create a map that would serve us on any trail network, not just this one.

Our goal is to construct maps that are valuable for many individuals across varied (but related) contexts. Reliability is a very high priority, and triangulation becomes absolutely essential to establishing the stability of experiential entities and relationships that can generate this reliability. Most of the activity of established science centers on such triangulation through the following strategies and more:

• The design and application of sophisticated forms of observation.

• Experiments using large sample sizes.

• Comparisons against carefully-gathered control data sets.

• Replication of results across researchers and labs.

• Reference to publications documenting others’ theories (maps) and experiments.

So if we wish to contribute to a science of mycorrhizal networks, our eyes, ears and feet will not be enough to satisfy our observational needs. We need to learn what’s going on under the soil among the intertwined roots and decaying organic matter. Let’s take a look at how we might do that.

Observing Mycorrhizal Networks

In the early 20th century, our maps of the relationships between sub-soil fungus and trees in a forest were limited. Starting in the 1950s, though, as new tools for observation became available, researchers became curious about how they might be interacting. The science of of these mycorrhizal networks slowly grew over many decades as scientists employed one after another of ever-more sophisticated forms of investigation.¹

The biggest challenge in studying something like this is sprawling extent of its aliveness. Because the fungi, the trees, other plants, all the animals and other living organisms, the microbiome, and the entire ecosystem are alive and interconnected, and because that aliveness involves many layers of complex interaction, our attempts to observe something about the system inevitably entail an intervention that interrupts the natural complexity. In order to study mycorrhizal networks that extend throughout an ecosystem and link many thousands of individual life forms into highly complex networks of exchange, we must refine and employ many forms of engagement. Among these have been the following:

• Various forms of microscopy — Visually examining micro-structures in fine detail, including methods to observe structures in three dimensions, and using fluorescent dies and natural fluorescence to view particular substances more vividly.

  • Challenge: Unable to view such detail except in samples removed from their environment.

  • New map feature: Some mycelial structures attach to the outside of the root structure, while others insert themselves into the spaces between the cells of a root.

• DNA sequencing — Identifying species distribution through sampling across a forest system.

  • Challenge: Requires the destruction of the sample to process the DNA.

  • New map feature: Fungal mycorrhizal networks represent the largest organisms on the planet, some of which occupy hundreds or thousands of acres and weigh thousands of tons.

• Isotopic labeling and tracking — Tracking how specific types of molecules travel through the network.

  • Challenge: Isotopes tend to decay over time, and high-resolution tracking requires many distributed samples.

  • New map feature: Sugars produced by photosynthesis by mature trees are often distributed to younger trees unable to receive direct sun, to sustain them through their youth until they are able to pierce the canopy.

Each of these methods gains strength through various forms of triangulation of the observation data:

• Across time, by collecting data at various moments in order to identify the movement, for example, of molecules signaling a parasite invasion outward to neighboring trees, to trigger them into producing chemicals defending against the parasite.

• Across space, by collecting data at various locations throughout the biome to identify species distribution, for example.

• Across contexts, by collecting data in related ecosystems to compare and contrast with current findings.

• Across methods, by comparing what is revealed by one method to what another method suggests about the same phenomenon.

• Across sciences, by incorporating the science of DNA analysis into methods of observation in mycorrhizal science.

All of this looks very complicated. And yes, for example, these more sophisticated methods of observation use highly technical instrumentation, rigorous methodology, and mathematical analysis to bring into salience certain patterns otherwise invisible to us. When we establish the stability of these patterns over time or across contexts, they take on the status of entities and relationships, and our map for navigating this mycorrhizal territory grows in accuracy and reliability.

Back to Ordinary Observation

We tend to think of this kind of science as its own category of high-demand activity, very different from walking a forest trail. But is it really that different? Maybe not. If we return to what is going on as we step onto the trail, we find very quickly a comparable level of sophistication in what we’re doing.

Visually, we have the capture of photonic retinal activation across hundreds or thousands of sub-regions of the retina, the transmission of these micro sets of data to different grain-of-rice-sized columns in the neocortex, the assembly of each of these lines of data into coherent models, each connected to the others also gathering visual input from across the retina, the building of these into coherent reference frameworks representing distinct entities — things plus shapes plus locations — and the connection of these frameworks to other frameworks through comparison and contextualization.

All of this represents extremely sophisticated processing and modeling. And this is just looking at the visual channel. Similar activity from all the senses is woven through this process. (See Part 1 of Hawkins’ A Thousand Brains for more detail.)

All of this happens outside of our explicit awareness. But we are doing it constantly, every waking moment.

Observation as an Omni-Directional Interaction

When we think about what science is, most of us bring to mind the classic observation, theory, hypothesis and experiment framing of “the scientific method.” Here, what we have called maps corresponds to theory in this model, and what we have called prediction corresponds to hypothesis. But what about classic observation and experiment? It seems that in this discussion I have collapsed these two into observation alone, yes? This raises an important point.

Referring back to a few paragraphs ago, observation is a highly complex process even in its most simple form. In my description there, I focused on the intricate reshaping of the instrumentation of observation as it exists in the brain. But there is much more to consider.

In addition to the interwoven cascades of changes streaming through the observation instrument of our body as a result of the streams of ever-changing sensory input, there are equally complex reciprocal effects rippling out from ourselves as observers. Our mere existence in a particular environment changes that environment and everything in it.

The reality is even more juicy — consider where the boundary is between you, the observer, and the forest, the environment you observe. The obvious answer is that the boundary is the skin of your body. But wait a second.

The context for your maps of hiking include highly detailed representations of your body. As you take a step and see an interesting stone on the trail, as you reach down to pick that up, your brain is in constant engagement with those maps. At each moment, you are predicting what you expect to experience in the next moment. At the same time, you are noticing the sensory input of the current moment and comparing that to your previous predictions. Places where your experience matches your predictions fade into the background, while those incongruencies between the two capture your attention.

That rock, solid black, very smooth, unlike the normal rocks in this forest: As your hand approaches, your predictions construct very detailed expectations about the kinds of sensations you will experience — temperature, texture, weight — for all five of your fingers and for your hand and arm as a whole. As you grasp the rock, it feels smoother than you expected, and as you pick it up it is much heavier than you expected, captivating your attention as you instantly build a new map of this particular rock and reach beyond to suggest new maps of this type of rock as a possibility in your world.

This highly intricate interaction goes in both directions. The rock is changing its position, the ground beneath it changes, the insects hiding beneath it are suddenly exposed and running off in every direction, the moisture in the ground begins to evaporate more quickly. At the same time, those cascades of changes stream through your body, your brain, your conscious experience.

This is a seamless interweaving of observation, theory, hypothesis, and experiment. There is no separation between these four, and all of them in total comprise your conscious experience. There is no direct perception without the interface of our maps and the predictions that arise from them. There is no map without input from perception. Neither of these exist without constant movement and engagement that changes both the observer and the observed.

This, too, is the nature of science. We do our best to separate these components and to at least create the illusion of controlling them with systematic discipline. But science is always fluid, emerging, and balancing on the threshold of the unknown.

At the same time, our goal is to push against this fluidity, to build more universal, more reliable, more comprehensive maps that enable more rigorous and effective navigation through our world. How do we accomplish this goal?

The Three Core Compromises of Modern Science

In order to attempt to fulfill its aspiration, science has made three core compromises. The first compromise is to limit its territory to regions of experience which are more reliably consistent. We focus investigation in realms where what we observe stays steady within the context of what our observational tools are able to reveal to us. This began with a focus on the world of classical physics and crept gradually into other domains as we gained the ability to control conditions and achieve accurate predictions using our instruments, our laboratories, and our methodologies.

The second, complementary compromise is to define reality as fixed and objective as a way to force consistency. Patterns of entities and relationships are described using mathematical equations and defined as laws, for example, and observations which fall outside of prediction are first explained as errors of some kind. In the reverse direction, as long as observational measurements can be quantified and statistical analysis can reveal patterns, those patterns are considered indicators of some objective reality. This has enabled science to creep slowly into realms of psychology and sociology without fully opening to the territories it has intended to investigate.

The third compromise is to support our goal of objectivity by restricting our investigations to forms in which we as observers can remain effectively outside of the process, unchanged by the act of observing in any way relevant to the realm of study. The results of our C-13 isotope tracking might irritate us when it proves our hypothesis wrong, but our irritable mood should not influence the readings we get.

Taken to an extreme, these three compromises define out of existence all things that resist reliable mapping with existing tools. The most glaring example is conscious experience, which has variously been treated as irrelevant, dismissed as an epiphenomenon, or defined as equivalent to brain activity, to name just three common strategies.

It is important to me that we hold these compromises with great respect. They were made in service to the desire to learn more about our world, and they have done so very well. At the same time, by excluding entire realms from disciplined study — specifically the realm of conscious experience — we have crippled ourselves in devastating ways. It is no coincidence that simultaneously with the advance of our technological capacities we are experiencing unprecedented suffering and catastrophic impacts on the planet as a whole. These realities are intimately connected, and psychotopology commits to investigating this banished realm and helping to rebalance our world gone askew.

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Reflections

Here’s your chance to influence how I move forward by adding your reflections in the comments below.

• How does this post land for you?

• What in you feels like it is being spoken to in this post?

• What questions are you left with? What are you most curious about?

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Thank you.

Thank you for being here, thank you for reading, and thank you for sharing your thoughts in the comments below. I look forward to meeting you soon.

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1. The information here about the science of mycorrhizal networks was simplified and summarized from research with ChatGPT’s latest model (4o) and supported by SciSpace, an AI academic paper summarizing service at typeset.io. It may have errors, but I have attempted to avoid getting too specific and keep things relatively generalized to avoid glaring errors. The details are not that important to my argument.