Canon formation

Summary

Canon formation is the production of a recognised centre and periphery in a field through selection, teaching, citation, institutional power and repetition.

Implications for practice

The atlas cannot criticise other maps for false neutrality while leaving its own visibility choices implicit.

Key distinctions

• canon versus exhaustive field
• visibility versus intellectual value
• citation versus influence
• recovery versus decorative inclusion

Historical development

• historiography
• disciplinary boundary making
• curriculum and anthology construction

Ideas it depends on

• selection
• institutional authority
• publication and teaching

Further developments

• epistemic exclusion
• lineage recovery
• rival genealogies

Connections to practice

• coverage audits
• source comparison
• teaching-history research
• public challenge

Common confusions

• A canon is not simply a list of the objectively best people.
• Replacing one closed list with another does not remove boundary choices.

Further checks

• Add explicit cases of exclusion, appropriation, canonisation and recovery only where public evidence supports the precise relation.

Recorded connections

Check the wording, direction, scope, sources, and status of a connection before relying on it.

• Canon formation can produce Epistemic exclusion

  Status: provisional · Relation: can exclude

  Provisional bridge between disciplinary selection and social epistemology; particular cases require their own evidence.

  Locator: Boundary-selection article, epistemic-injustice account and public editorial reflection

  • On boundaries and disciplines: constructing a set of key systems thinkers (checked)
  • Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (checked)
  • The Necessary Tangle running feedback: canon, closure and patriarchy (checked)

• Systems Thinkers makes a documented selection of key systems thinkers and therefore participates in forming a canon through Canon formation

  Status: accepted · Relation: participates in canon formation

  This does not dismiss the book as arbitrary. It states that a useful selection remains a selection with boundaries.

  Locator: 2006 article title and abstract; second-edition scope and contents

  • On boundaries and disciplines: constructing a set of key systems thinkers (checked)
  • Systems Thinkers, second edition (checked)

Sources and passage locators

• On boundaries and disciplines: constructing a set of key systems thinkers (checked)
• The Necessary Tangle running feedback: canon, closure and patriarchy (checked)
• Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (checked)
• Systems Thinkers, second edition (checked)

Cite this entry

Taylor, B. P. (2026). Canon formation. The Necessary Tangle, release 0.35. https://transduction.systems/entries/concept_canon_formation/

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