Knowledge forms a structure over the elemental regime of information, and formalism over the elemental regime of expressed knowledge. We can now approach an understanding of how this organization encounters a new situation and is revised to preserve its adequacy.
In a familiar situation, available traces can be connected, reconstructed, and continued in a known way. But a new situation can disrupt this course: previous connections no longer retain the situation’s essential distinctions. The disruption leaves a trace of mismatch between what is happening and the existing expression of knowledge.
This trace does not yet reveal which distinction will allow the new situation to be expressed. It must be retained before being reduced to a familiar name or dismissed as an error: otherwise, the very basis for revision may be lost. While the previous mode of expression is insufficient and a new one has not yet been found, this situation can be called unclosedness.
Traces of the current situation may partially correspond to several known structures without fully coinciding with any of them. This gives rise to the task of recognition — determining which connections and modes of continuation these structures allow us to retain. Proximity and remoteness can be understood here as structural distance: it concerns the organization of distinctions and possible transformations, not merely a match of individual features.
Possible continuations are themselves structures of distinctions: each path may have its own connections, constraints, and stable forms. The fuzzy character of their recognition leads to a probabilistic interpretation. As the situation changes, so does this interpretation, forming a flow of probable structures.
Structural proximity does not in itself determine the adequacy of a continuation. A close move may reproduce an already exhausted mode of distinction and conceal what appeared as a mismatch. A distant move may help make a new distinction. Recognition must discover not only familiar structures, but also the limits of their applicability.
If a known structure allows the situation’s essential distinctions to be retained, movement can continue within it. If several irreducible continuations remain, a choice is required. If continuation requires losing or ignoring the retained trace of mismatch, the organization of the expression of knowledge itself becomes what must be worked on.
This is the transition to revision: the boundaries, connections, names, or recognition rules of the system of traces itself change. What is now distinguished is not only the situation, but also the way it was expressed. The retained mismatch becomes a basis for making a distinction that allows this organization to be restructured.
The result is a new relative stability: the organization once again allows traces to be connected and reconstructed, while retaining the distinction that required revision. What previously appeared only as a disruption finds expression in knowledge. Movement can continue, but the resulting organization remains open to further revision.