A field of inquiry
Somiology is an interdisciplinary field of study focused on understanding as a biologically enacted, event-structured, and contextually situated phenomenon.
It integrates insights from:
- phenomenology (lived experience),
- biology and neuroscience (enactment and stabilization),
- education (learning environments),
- and design (conditions for meaning-making),
while remaining reducible to none of them.
Core orientation
Somiology begins from several foundational commitments:
- Understanding is not a thing stored in the mind, but an ability to enact meaningful patterns of activity.
- Meaning does not reside in symbols or representations; symbols become meaningful only when they evoke lived event-structures.
- Understanding develops through biological stabilization across repeated and varied experiences.
- Context is not a background influence but a constitutive element of meaning itself.
In this view, what are often called “concepts” or “knowledge” are better understood as names for patterns of activity that must first be lived.
Events, not objects
Somiology treats events—not objects or abstract entities—as the basic unit of understanding.
An event is a coordinated unfolding of perception, action, intention, material engagement, affect, and context. Understanding consists in the nervous system’s ability to stabilize and flexibly re-enact such event-structures across situations.
This shift—from objects to events—has significant implications for learning, teaching, research, and assessment.