Aneesh Sathe<p><strong>Thinking with places </strong></p><blockquote><p>“A farmer has to cut down trees to create space for his farmstead and fields. Yet once the farm is established it becomes an ordered world of meaning—a place—and beyond it is the forest and space.” — Yi-Fu Tuan</p></blockquote><p>Thinking itself is place-making: the act of converting undifferentiated possibility into navigable meaning.</p><p>A place comes into being the moment we interrupt undifferentiated space. Place-making is fundamentally an act of interruption. Space is thought of as possibility but is unavailable without the <a href="https://aneeshsathe.com/2025/06/24/life-compass-why-we-write-poetry/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">signposts of place</a>. When a place is created we impose a way of looking, being, and acting on the space of choice. The place you pick to navigate your space defines the identity you will inhabit during your quest. Every tool is a micro-place: it frames what can be thought and forecloses alternative moves. They enforce the kind of thoughts that can be had, the type of exploration that can be done, and configures space in an opinionated way. </p><a href="https://aneeshsathe.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-from-rawpixel-id-3052183-jpeg.jpg" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a>Two-masted Schooner with Dory (1894) by Winslow Homer. Original from The Smithsonian. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.<p>Picking a tool commits us to a world view. Consider the space of ‘good TV shows’. Family, friends and culture have made the choice of what good means. When Netflix suggests shows it uses your watching history as a probe to create place so that every individual is always watching ‘good’ shows. The pure possibility space of the search bar is disrupted by the suggestions provided.</p><p>Like algorithmic curation, Socratic dialogue also interrupts space, it is interrogation as cartography. Socratic thinking is also an act of interruption and making concrete what was nebulous. It’s asking us to specify which show, if we claim to love TV. Socratic thinking (henceforth referred to as just thinking) starts by probing that which does not need questioning, the answers that are obvious the ones that everyone knows. This may seem foreign at first glance but we do this all the time, say we make a list of our favorite TV shows, someone always says you are missing this or that show and that this list is completely wrong. This kind of disagreement leads to the shared quest of answering the question, ‘What is it to be entertained?’. </p><p>Thinking pursues knowledge through the act of stabilizing answers to such questions by creating places in those unexamined areas. Discussion allows us to map. There is usually no well defined answer for such questions, if there were, they would simply be problems that we could solve with a google search. The quest stops when the parties involved are satisfied that they have arrived at an answer. Thinking is the act of place-making by taking something that was ungraspable and tying it down with knowledge. Place is, after all, an “ordered world of meaning” and we can use these places to create home bases from which to explore. </p><p>Even without other people simply engaging with the reality of the universe is sufficient for thought. Places are stable systems which provide a surface on which your thoughts and hypothesis can be tested. Even if there is no other person around and you’re simply engaged with looking at the world can uncover a new truth tied down by knowledge. </p><p>Thinking is the process of updating beliefs based on the mini places that make up the space that you’re interrogating. Each place is a noisy pointer to the underlying truth, and each updating of belief allows you to get closer to the knowledge you seek.</p><p><a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/algorithmic-curation/" target="_blank">#algorithmicCuration</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/cognitive-science/" target="_blank">#cognitiveScience</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/critical-thinking/" target="_blank">#criticalThinking</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/epistemology/" target="_blank">#epistemology</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/mental-models/" target="_blank">#mentalModels</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/philosophy/" target="_blank">#philosophy</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/sense-making/" target="_blank">#senseMaking</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/socratic-method/" target="_blank">#socraticMethod</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/space-and-place/" target="_blank">#spaceAndPlace</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/tool-use/" target="_blank">#toolUse</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/worldview/" target="_blank">#worldview</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://aneeshsathe.com/tag/yi-fu-tuan/" target="_blank">#yiFuTuan</a></p>