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Weave the Theme: When Themes of Practice Meet Project Engagement (Part B)

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A six-year exploration of the theme of theme

by Oliver Ding

October 29, 2026

This article is part of a possible book: Developmental Theme: The Weave-the-Theme Framework and Thematic Engagement (Book, 2026).

This article is part of the Revisiting-and-Rebuilding Thematic Engagement series. Part B presents Part 3 and Part 4 of the article.

Read Part A here: https://www.activityanalysis.net/theme-of-theme-a/

In Part A, we traced the fifteen creative journeys across the container, network, and platform stages, showing how a theme moved from one project to the next. Now, in Part B, we step back from this chronological narrative to interpret the full landscape. We will first apply five synchronic lenses to re-examine the fifteen stories, and then conclude with the theoretical dialogue between Themes of Practice and Project Engagement.

Contents


Introduction


Part 1: Background

1.1 The Revisiting-and-Rebuilding Thematic Engagement Project
1.2 The Landscape of Thematic Engagement
1.3 Exploring the "Theme" Weave-point

Part 2: The Landscape of Fifteen Creative Journeys

2.1 Overview of the 15 Creative Journeys

2.2 Early Stage: The "Container" Stage

  • The "Themes of Practice" Journey (2017-2021)
  • The "Theme-Activity Creative Dialogue" Journey (2019-2022)

2.3 Middle Stage: The "Network" Stage

2.4 The "Ecological Practice" Thread

  • The "Thematic Space" Journey (2022-)
  • The "Thematic Matrix Canvas" Journey (2022-2023)
  • The "Thematic Supportance" Journey (2020-2026) 

2.5 The "Life as Activity" Thread

  • The "Shared Themes" Journey (2021-2023)
  • The "Thematic Enterprise" Journey (2020/21-2026)
  • The "Thematic Identity Curation" Journey (2021-2025) 

2.6 The "Creative Life Theory" Thread

  • The "Career Themes" Journey (2021)
  • The "Creative Life Curation" Journey (2022-2023) 

2.7 TALE: Theme-Concept-Framework Transformation

  • The "Thematic Exploration" Journey (2023)
  • The "Thematic Attachance" Journey (2023)

2.8 Latest Stage: The GO Theory Platform

  • The "Strategic Themes" Journey (2024-2026)
  • The "Thematic Focus" Journey (2025)
  • The "Thematic Creation" Journey (2025-2026) 

Part 3: Five Lenses for Interpreting the Creative Journey

3.1 The Developmental Functionalism Lens
3.2 The Master Theme Lens
3.3 The Evolving Concept System Lens
3.4 The Platform Ecology Lens
3.5 The Self-referential Activity Lens

Part 4: The Dialogue Between Themes of Practice and Project Engagement

4.1 The "Theme" Weave-point and Creative Journeys
4.2 The "Practice" Side of Themes of Practice
4.3 Theme, Identity, and Project Engagement

Postscript

From Cognitive Hydrology to Developmental Theme

Part 3: Five Lenses for Interpreting the Creative Journey


In Part 2, we traced the fifteen creative journeys across the container, network, and platform stages. But a chronological narrative alone does not explain how these fifteen episodes form a coherent whole. To understand the underlying logic of this six-year exploration, we need to step back and apply five synchronic lenses to the same set of stories.

Each lens offers a distinct perspective on the evolution of a theme:

  • The Developmental Functionalism Lens explains why these explorations are functionally driven rather than essentialist.
  • The Master Theme Lens identifies the underlying gravitational center of the entire enterprise.
  • The Evolving Concept System Lens traces the diachronic development of the concepts themselves.
  • The Platform Ecology Lens examines the micro-level contributions of these stories within a synchronic configuration.
  • The Self-referential Activity Lens reveals the recursive loop between the theory and the creator's own development.

3.1 The Developmental Functionalism Lens


Readers familiar with the study of “theme” might find it curious that my 15 creative journeys seem vastly different from conventional understandings. Why is that?In traditional fields—whether it is the “motif” in literature, “life themes” in psychology, “cultural themes” in anthropology, or thematic analysis in qualitative research—themes are typically approached as descriptive categories or analytical units. Despite their differences, they share a common inquiry: What is a theme in essence?

However, my focus over the years has never been on what a theme is in itself, but rather on the relationship between a person and a theme.

The starting point of this entire story actually begins with the concept of “Themes of Practice” in 2019. It is not a static category, but a process-oriented concept that describes the transformation between individual life themes and collective cultural themes. It focuses on what a person does with a theme—how a person uses it as a dynamic bridge between individual experience and collective culture—rather than what it is.

When I established TALE in early 2023, I adopted “Thematic Engagement” as the primary theme for this independent knowledge center. At that time, I explicitly defined it as the “Person–Theme” relationship. Just as I used “Knowledge Engagement” to define the person–knowledge relationship, and “Project Engagement” to define the person–project relationship, Thematic Engagement addressed how a person engages with a theme.

In my 2026 reflection The Notion of Developmental Functionalism, I named this underlying preference and approach to conceptualization Developmental Functionalism. I have always been more concerned with how knowledge and mind actually function in people’s lived activities—how they operate and support action—rather than providing essentialist definitions. I use this lens to define developmental concepts by their functional role across different domains. Developmental Functionalism is not a theory about what development essentially is. Rather, it is a methodological preference and a functional lens for constructing and selecting theoretical concepts. It asks not “What is the essence of this concept?” but “What does this concept do in the human development?”This preference did not emerge overnight.

Last month, when reviewing my years of exploration into the “strategy” theme, I used Developmental Functionalism to reflect on the journey, which naturally led to the naming of Developmental Strategy. My concern was not the static definition of strategy, but how strategy functions to support the development of an enterprise.

Now, after reviewing these 15 creative journeys, I realize I also need to introduce a new term—Developmental Theme—to frame my explorations over the years. This term not only anchors the boundary of this future knowledge ecology but also distinguishes my work from current academic research on “theme.”

3.2 The Master Theme Lens


While the previous lens (Developmental Theme) established the boundary of this new knowledge ecology and distinguished it from other academic traditions, it does not yet answer a crucial question: Does this ecology have a central gravitational pull, or is it merely a collection of fragmented, scattered explorations?

If we look at the titles of my 15 creative journeys over the past seven years, one might wonder: Are these all about the same thing? They span across cognitive canvases, interpersonal communication, identity curation, and cultural ontology. A conventional researcher usually picks one bounded topic and digs deep for years. Why did my exploration keep shifting its surface focus?

The answer is that while the surface focus kept shifting, the underlying question never changed. This brings us to the second lens: The Master Theme.

I use the term “Master Theme” to represent the founding concern, the foundational question, or the governing theme of a thematic enterprise.In everyday or academic English, “Master Theme” is not the most common term. People typically use words like “central theme,” “overarching theme,” “motif,” or “leitmotif” to express similar ideas. However, by deliberately emphasizing “Master Theme” here, I intend to establish it as a formal concept within my theoretical system. I want to give this specific meaning a dedicated name—a term that not only denotes an overarching question but also implies the organizing, masterly power it holds over an entire intellectual enterprise.

For my journey, this Master Theme can be stated in one simple sentence: How does individual life experience transform into collective cultural meaning?

We can trace the evidence for this Master Theme throughout the 15 stories.

It was present at the very beginning. In Story #1 (Themes of Practice)—specifically in my 2019 book manuscript Curativity: The Ecological Approach to General Curation Practice—why did I introduce the concept of Themes of Practice? Because the book contains a crucial chapter discussing “Cultural Curation.” According to Curativity Theory, any curation requires a container and a theme; fragments of experience are placed into a container and understood as a meaningful whole through a theme. The task of cultural curation is precisely to answer: How does individual life experience transform into collective cultural meaning?

As my exploration expanded, this question remained the core. In Story #9 (Creative Life Curation), my 2022 article Three Paths of Creative Life reviewed the multiple theoretical directions I had explored from 2020 to 2022. The article demonstrated that whether through Activity Theory, Curativity Theory, or the Project Engagement approach, it was still the same Master Theme—but now, I had curated more answers and formed a more systematic framework.

Looking at all 15 creative journeys together, they are all intimately connected to this Master Theme. Some stories contribute to a specific local mechanism, while others contribute to a particular developmental stage.

Ultimately, in the final journey—Story #15 (Thematic Supportance)—I returned to this Master Theme once again, but this time, I dug deeper into its ecological and embodied foundation. Through the cases of Yan Fu’s chair, Aria’s detention cell, and Viktor Frankl’s concentration camp, I revealed that the potential to symbolize lived experience into culture is an unalienable human capacity. The Master Theme that started as a theoretical framework in 2019 found its ultimate ontological ground in 2026.

3.3 The Evolving Concept System Lens


If the first two lenses define the boundary and the core of my knowledge ecology, the third lens examines its diachronic development. One might ask: Why did my focus shift from isolated cognitive tools to complex enterprises? Why did the concept of “theme” eventually need to expand beyond the purely mental realm?To answer these questions, we need the third lens: The Evolving Concept System.

To understand my own multi-year development—a reflection I documented in my 2025 article [Wander and Wander] The “Evolving Knowledge Enterprise” Journey (2020–2025)—I borrowed developmental psychologist Robert Kegan’s Five Orders of Consciousness model (1994) as an analytical tool. I detached it from its original Subject-Object context and applied its “Part-Whole” underlying structure to my own creative journey from 2020 to 2025. The analysis revealed five distinct stages:

  1. Single Point: “HERO U” (2020)
  2. Durable Category: “Knowledge Curation” (2020-2022)
  3. Cross-categorical: “Knowledge Engagement” (2022-2023)
  4. System/Complex: “Knowledge Enterprise” (2023-2024)
  5. Trans-system: “Creative Enterprise” (2024-2025)

It is within the fourth stage—System/Complex—that I formalized the model of the Evolving Concept System. Crucially, this model is not just about cognitive complexity. It explicitly proposed three interconnected dimensions: the Mental Platform (how you think), the Behavioral Network (how you do), and the Material Container (what you make). It quickly evolved into the model of the Evolving Knowledge Enterprise. This shift was not accidental; it marked the inevitable emergence of the Thematic Enterprise.

In the Landscape of Thematic Engagement, the Evolving Concept System was selected as the governing principle for the fourth layer, directly corresponding to the concept of Thematic Enterprise.

When we use the Evolving Concept System as a lens to review the 15 creative journeys, a clear watershed emerges.

Before the watershed, my exploration of themes was heavily confined to the mental and cognitive dimensions. Stories like #7 (Thematic Space) and #10 (Thematic Exploration) focused on the internal architecture of tacit knowledge, cognitive containers, and early discovery. The theme was largely treated as a mental object to be mapped and developed within an individual’s mind.

After the watershed, the focus shifted toward Thematic Enterprise. Stories like #11 (Thematic Attachance), #4 (Thematic Enterprise), and #5 (Thematic Identity Curation) show a clear expansion. In #11, the theme is no longer just a mental object; it becomes an element that moves across different knowledge centers and frameworks, involving Social Moves and material representations. In #4 and #5, the dimension of the theme extends fully into the social (Behavioral Network) and material (Material Container) realms. The theme is no longer just something to think about; it becomes something to build, embody, and sustain in the real world.

Ultimately, in the recent GO Theory platform, the Concept System became the core concern. Story #14 (Thematic Creation) is a direct continuation of this trajectory, exploring how thematic creations exist as Mindentities, Folkentities, and Worldentities. Looking back, all the prior accumulations in the 15 stories appear as necessary preparations for constructing the comprehensive Concept System that now anchors the GO Theory platform.

3.4 The Platform Ecology Lens


Having established this seven-year journey as a Thematic Enterprise, the recent Revisiting-and-Rebuilding Thematic Engagement project brings its full picture into view. The Weave-the-Theme framework and the v2.0 Toolkit showcase the ultimate creative outcomes of this journey.

Now, we turn to the fourth lens, which focuses on the micro-level of this enterprise’s growth. If we place the outcomes of the 15 creative journeys together in a synchronic configuration, are they all equal in weight? Which specific outcomes made critical contributions to the overall enterprise?

To answer this, we need to introduce an ecological perspective. Within my framework of Platform Ecology, we can distinguish four interrelated concepts: Project, Program, Episode, and Platform.

  • A Project is the basic unit of creative work—a purposeful organization of actions.
  • A Program is a series of Projects that gives a Center a distinctive orientation and a capacity to support others.
  • A Platform is the mature stage when a Center has grown strong enough to support others in running their own Projects.
  • A Developmental Episode is a special type of Project that makes a distinctive contribution to the Center-Platform development process. It restructures the foundational logic and leaves a lasting mark on what the enterprise ultimately is.

Through this ecological lens, we can understand that a Thematic Enterprise can ultimately be understood as a Platform. The 15 creative journeys are not a flat list of equal tasks. Some are merely sustaining Projects, some formed Programs, but a few key Developmental Episodes served as the load-bearing pillars that made this Platform possible.

Take Story #9 (Creative Life Curation) as a prime example. Originally, it began as a single book manuscript project in 2022. However, the methodology it introduced generated a series of ongoing case studies. Some of these manuscripts eventually formed the "Cognitive Hydrology" series. By 2026, this methodology had developed into a highly mature framework and became a core component of Cognitive Hydrology. In the structure of Platform Ecology, while the entire Developmental Theme enterprise functions as the overarching Platform, Cognitive Hydrology represents a thriving Program that organically grew out of the initial Creative Life Curation Project.

The enterprise starts with the concept of Themes of Practice in 2019. But quickly, I found another reason for the exploration on theme. In Story #3 (Hierarchy of Theme and Activity) (2020), while working on the Activity U project, I reviewed the hierarchy in Activity Theory and discovered that a Theme is at a higher abstract level than an Activity. This insight gave me the confidence to commit fully to the exploration of the theme direction, knowing that the concept had its own distinct ontological weight.Building upon this commitment, several other episodes offered foundational principles and ontological grounding:

  • Story #1 (Themes of Practice) provided the foundational principle for the situational layer;
  • Story #4 (Thematic Enterprise) and anchored the enterprise layer;
  • Story #9 (Creative Life Curation) offered the S-T-O principle;
  • Story #7 (Thematic Space) contributed to the principle of T as Theme;
  • Story #11 (Thematic Attachance) defined the operational principle of moving themes across boundaries.
  • Story #14 (Thematic Creation) and Story #15 (Thematic Supportance) provided the ultimate ontological grounding, ensuring the principles were rooted in cultural and ecological reality.

Following these foundational principles, other episodes built the cognitive scaffolding. Story #8 (Thematic Matrix Canvas) (2022) provided the spatial grammar for tacit knowledge, and Story #10 (Thematic Exploration) (2023) formalized the early discovery methodology.

Once the principles and scaffolding were in place, the enterprise could extend into specific domain applications. For example, Story #6 (Career Themes) (2021) applied the idea of pair of opposite themes to adult career development, while Story #12 (Strategic Themes) (2025) applied the foundational logic of Thematic Space to strategic cognition and action. These applications demonstrated that the Platform was not just an abstract architecture, but a generative system capable of supporting diverse creative projects.

Through the Platform Ecology Lens, the 15 stories are no longer just a chronological sequence of attempts. They are a set of differentiated interventions—foundational principles, cognitive scaffolding, and domain applications—that collectively constructed the Thematic Enterprise as a Platform in a synchronic configuration.

3.5 The Self-referential Activity Lens


A highly unique aspect of this thematic enterprise is that it is not merely about developing a theory of "theme." Rather, the creative outcomes from different stages have, in turn, constituted my own personal knowledge and have been utilized in subsequent creative processes. They not only contribute to the development of my other theoretical enterprises but also to its own development. I first proposed the knowledge framework of Self-referential Activity (SRA) in 2021, and now I can use it as the final lens to understand the uniqueness of this journey.

Self-referential Activity refers to a special type of activity that supports self-referential development. Unlike traditional Activity Theory, which only considers Subject, Mediating, and Object, SRA introduces a fourth component: Transforming. This transforming connection means the outcome of an activity feeds back into the subject. In this journey, the mechanism of knowledge transformation involves four types of personal knowledge: O-knowledge (understanding an external concept system), M-knowledge (tools and methods), T-knowledge (transforming O-knowledge into self-awareness), and S-knowledge (self-knowledge for future action). The key is the "Means-End switch," where the knowledge I produce becomes the tool for my next creation. These creative outcomes themselves constitute my personal knowledge and continue to support my creative activities, and thus, they can also be understood through the term Mental Platform.

Let us first look at how this enterprise supports my overall creative development. The Master Theme of this enterprise is "How does individual life experience transform into collective cultural meaning?" The earliest key concept was Themes of Practice. Then, in 2022, I proposed the S-T-O principle within Creative Life Curation, which later became the most basic principle of Creative Life Theory (v2.0). Since my creative activities are concept-centered knowledge activities, this principle has guided my own creation for years. As documented in my article Project Engagement: Activity, Curativity, and Creativity, my creative process relies on the interplay of Activity (generating raw materials), Curativity (organizing them into Possible Books and frameworks), and Creativity (opening new possibilities). The S-T-O principle and the Themes of Practice concept function as the meta-methodology for this process, ensuring that my scattered projects are continuously crystallized into meaningful theoretical systems.

Furthermore, the creative outcomes of this enterprise directly propel its own development. For instance, my creative journey evolved through five distinct stages: "HERO U" (Single Point), "Knowledge Curation" (Durable Category), "Knowledge Engagement" (Cross-categorical), "Knowledge Enterprise" (System/Complex), and "Creative Enterprise" (Trans-system). These names are, in fact, the Themes of Practice behind the activities of each stage. The changes in these names reflect my perception that the nature of the activity itself has shifted. In 2022, I proposed the theme of Thematic Engagement, which led to the establishment of the TALE knowledge center. The Thematic Exploration project within TALE gave rise to the Theme-Concept-Framework transformation mechanism, producing a series of book manuscripts and even leading to the creation of the Frame for Work knowledge center in early 2025. Later, at the end of 2025, the Weave-the-Theory knowledge framework was developed, using Themes, Models, Concepts, and Principles as its four weave-points. This model was frequently used in 2026, generating numerous case studies and culminating in the Weave the Theory book manuscript. The very project of Revisiting-and-Rebuilding Thematic Engagement relies on the Weave-the-Theory framework as its primary meta-framework.

In this sense, the enterprise is not only the object of study but also the subject of its own becoming—a continuous self-referential loop where the theory builds the tool, and the tool builds the theory.

Part 4: The Dialogue Between Themes of Practice and Project Engagement


Before we turn to the four sections that follow, one piece of background must be made explicit. The concept of Thematic Engagement itself was born from a creative dialogue in 2022. It emerged from the meeting of two approaches: Themes of Practice and Project Engagement. This dialogue was not merely a conceptual discussion. In the Weave-the-Theory model, this dialogue took place directly on the creativity line—the space where models and themes are generated, tested, and woven together. Thematic Engagement is therefore not a synthesis imposed from above. It is a natural by-product of two theoretical enterprises meeting on the creativity line.

4.1 The "Theme" Weave-point and Creative Journeys


As explained earlier in this article, the 15 creative journeys are placed in the thematic space corresponding to the "theme" weave-point in the Weave-the-Theory framework. This thematic space did not exist from the very beginning. It was brought out by using Weave-the-Theory as an analytical tool now, during this reflection.

In the actual historical process, as Part 2 described in detail, these journeys were constituted by a series of projects. Each project had its own main theme and side themes. In this retrospective case analysis, some side themes were not the key focus of the original project at the time, but in the creative journeys as they now appear, these side themes turn out to be important processes in the long-term development of a specific theme. The thematic space is therefore not a static container waiting to be filled; it is a dynamic map that reveals connections which were not visible when the projects were originally undertaken.

4.2 The "Practice" Side of Themes of Practice


In my article Project Engagement: Activity, Curativity, and Creativity, I proposed a principle that captures the practice side of Themes of Practice: Activity provides materials; Curativity organizes them; Creativity opens up new possibilities.

This principle operates in a continuous loop with the S-T-O principle. The S-T-O principle corresponds to Thematic Activity. Every S-T-O work cycle ends with O (Objectification), and the outcome of O naturally becomes material—whether that is an article, a diagram, a book draft, or a framework. At the same time, once the Activity occurs, it turns into Experience. In the framework of Creative Life, this Experience naturally becomes the raw material for the next S (Subjectification).

This continuous loop is precisely why I did so many projects, wrote so many articles, edited so many book manuscripts, developed so many knowledge frameworks, and designed so many diagrams. Each Objectification (O) produced not only a visible material artifact but also an invisible layer of Experience. These materials and experiences then became the raw materials for the next cycle.

However, such abundance also brings a problem: how to gather these massive, scattered outputs into a coherent whole. This is precisely why I developed the Weave-the-Theory framework in 2025. In that framework, Themes and Models sit on the Creativity line, while Concepts and Principles sit on the Curativity line. The continuous oscillation between these two lines—proliferating new themes and models, then unifying them into concepts and principles, and then proliferating again—is what turns a vast accumulation of outputs into a living knowledge ecology rather than a mere pile of artifacts.

4.3 Theme, Identity, and Project Engagement


The core of this article is the theme. But from the perspective of Project Engagement theory, theme and identity are the two core elements of the Developmental Project Model. Identity has only been briefly mentioned so far in the context of Thematic Identity Curation. This section expands the discussion of identity.

A project is understood as a special type of social container—a social space. The creative journey is a temporal perspective, a way of seeing a chain of projects unfold over time. In the dimension of social space, the unit that holds a series of projects is what I called a knowledge center in my earlier practice, and what I now abstract as a center in the World of Activity theoretical system.

A center has two dimensions: theme and identity. Because it is constituted by the actual operation of a series of projects, a center does not appear from nothing. It is the result of project engagement. Moreover, the series of projects that constitute a center must maintain tightness in both the theme and identity dimensions. If they are too loose, they naturally cannot constitute a center.

The Creative Identity Engagement Framework discusses the specific situations of how to construct identity (Internalization, Alignment, and Externalization). If we look at the cases in this article, the creative journeys brought by multiple theoretical approaches in Part 2 are clear cases of identity. Each approach distinguishes itself from the others—that distinction is its identity.

This also explains why, from the perspective of theme, my exploration appears scattered. The theme of theme permeates multiple theoretical approaches, each with its own identity. Even TALE, in its own operation, could not explore many directions of thematic engagement in a short time because of the practical considerations of center development.

Postscript：From Cognitive Hydrology to Developmental Theme


When I started this Revisiting-and-Rebuilding (RR) project, my original plan was straightforward. I intended to gather these new insights on "theme" and integrate them into my existing theoretical enterprise, Cognitive Hydrology, upgrading it to v2.0. This is why the earliest articles in this series all carried the prefix Cognitive Hydrology: in their titles—starting with the Experience-Narrative-Framework-Ecology Schema in mid-October, followed by the Weave-the-Theme Framework and the Thematic Engagement Toolkit.

However, as the writing progressed, I realized that this project was far more complex than I had anticipated. Thematic Engagement was not merely a new chapter to be added to Cognitive Hydrology; it had evolved into a vast landscape of its own. I found it necessary to complete two parallel RR projects: one for Thematic Engagement, and one for Cognitive Hydrology v1.0. Only by rebuilding both could I successfully connect them and introduce the outcomes of the theme exploration into the Cognitive Hydrology system.

Consequently, the series tag shifted from Cognitive Hydrology to Weave the Theme, leading to the Typology of Theme and Beyond, the two-part article you are reading now, and the forthcoming works.

Today, looking back at this entire journey—and specifically reflecting on the ecological concepts of Episodes and Programs discussed in this article—the relationship between these two theoretical enterprises has become incredibly clear.

Developmental Theme is the name of this new knowledge ecology. It encompasses and reframes all my past explorations into Thematic Engagement.
Cognitive Hydrology, on the other hand, is no longer the overarching umbrella. It is a Program that has organically grown on this platform. Its specific mission is to directly facilitate and coach individuals' cognitive capacities regarding themes and concept creation.

The plan changed, but the ecology matured. What started as an attempt to upgrade one theory ended up creating a vibrant knowledge ecology and a specialized program to serve others. The journey continues.

v1.0 - October 29, 2026 - 4,613 words