Tacit Land: 3D Concept Mapping and the Paper Incubator
An interpretive research prototype for mapping tacit connections among concepts, arguments and papers.
Tacit Land (暗默地) is a research prototype developed by Lee Jung-hoon. It explores how concepts and arguments in a paper can be represented as a navigable three-dimensional relationship map. The focus is interpretation, conceptual relationships and understanding, rather than document storage alone.
The current case uses Park Jae-sung’s 2022 master’s thesis on the intersubjectivity of Michael Polanyi’s personal knowledge. The map distinguishes ideas introduced from the literature, the thesis author’s interpretation, and proposed connections. Related-paper maps draw on public abstracts and citations in the thesis.
The methodological starting point is Kang Youju and Lee Junghoon (2026), a study of historical concepts across school levels and two-dimensional concept-growth maps. This prototype extends that approach toward three-dimensional exploration of papers and their relationships.
The Paper Incubator visualizes a possible process in which new sources extend, challenge or reorganize an existing conceptual network. Its organic growth animation is an explanatory simulation. It is not evidence that an autonomous system already validates arguments, discovers new knowledge or performs verified automatic pruning. Concept selection and connections remain interpretive and open to review.