Case ID
CI-MET-ASTOR
Status
Documented Failure (Institutional / Educational)
Domains
Linguistic; Institutional; Educational Systems
Source System
Integrated epistemology of Chinese literati gardens, in which meaning emerges from relational synthesis, embodied experience, and processual engagement (e.g., jingjie as an achieved state arising from the interaction of external environment and internal cultivation).
Target System
Western museum educational framework emphasizing discrete concept identification, symbol labeling, and modular lesson components designed for rapid comprehension and instructional standardization.
Conversion Interface
Museum pedagogy and interpretive infrastructure, including lesson plans, visitor guides, and explanatory signage used to translate the garden’s philosophical and cultural system into an educational format legible to a broad public audience.
Conversion Operation
Reinterpretation of an integrated cultural–philosophical system into a checklist-based educational model that isolates individual symbols (e.g., yin–yang, rocks, plants, architectural forms) as independently teachable units.
Failure Mode
Lossy Abstraction; Semantic Drift
Relational and process-dependent meaning is discarded during conversion, while surviving elements are recontextualized as static symbols. The target system preserves surface accuracy but fails to reconstruct the original epistemic structure.
Observable Impact
Visitors and students successfully identify individual symbols and design elements but fail to reconstruct the garden’s integrated worldview. Educational outcomes emphasize recognition over synthesis, resulting in epistemic distortion: the garden is understood as a collection of meanings rather than a coherent system designed to cultivate an embodied, processual mode of knowing.
Comparative evaluation of revised pedagogical frameworks shows that holistic, journey-based interpretation substantially improves integrated understanding within the same instructional timeframe, indicating that the failure arises from the conversion interface rather than from audience capacity.
Impact Category
Epistemic Distortion
Generalizable Insight
When educational systems optimize for modular identification rather than relational synthesis, they systematically misrepresent knowledge systems whose meaning emerges from process, embodiment, and integration. This failure mode generalizes beyond museums to curricula, translations, and institutional interfaces handling non-modular epistemologies.
Supporting Documentation
Extended analysis, comparative pedagogical models, and primary materials are available in internal project documentation (Copyright Ricci Scholars Foundation, 2024–2025). Supplementary materials are not required to interpret this case. Click here for the presentation.
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