5 More Gunkel Charts That Show the Vast Scope of "Charts for the Mind"

When I shared Gunkel’s “Charts for the Mind” chart three weeks ago to discuss his failed commercial venture, I didn’t include five other sheets stapled to the proposal.

These are sheets from an unfinished chart that illustrate the massive, explosive scope of Gunkel’s intellect, interests, memory, and imagination as reflected in his plan for “Charts for the Mind.”

I will include those sheets below, along with the original cover sheet.

Once again, I apologize for the not-great quality of the images and the fact that some wording is cut off. I took these pictures in sub-par research circumstances to say the least.

First, though, a bit more context.

The “Charts for the Mind” series was intended as the flagship product of a commercial venture Gunkel called Mentech—short for “Mental Technology.”

According to documents I’ve reviewed, Mentech was dreamed up prior to Gunkel’s failed MacArthur Renaissance Program proposal, putting it somewhere in the late 1970s time-frame.

In the Mentech schematic below—which is available on the MIT ideonomy website—we can see that the “global renaissance” theme is notably absent.

Instead, Gunkel imagines over thirty different product offerings growing out of his “Charts for the Mind” series, including his own Institute and, ultimately, his own University.

My first reaction to the Mentech chart was incredulity.

It seemed like an overly grandiose plan; not only does it seem to exaggerate the popular appeal of Gunkel’s intellectually niche charts, but a number of the deliverables were mystifying to me.

What’s “Second Universe” mean?

What about the acronym “CAME”?

What’s in the “Atlas of Thought”?

It’s probable these and other references will forever remain obscure.

Nevertheless, it’s clear that Gunkel was placing many of his hopes, and much of his intellectual emphasis, on being able to launch a successful chart-focused venture.

But unlike many other start-up ventures, which may be driven primarily on hype or vibes, Gunkel really did have something substantial to share with the world.

There truly was a “there” there.

And it was BIG, as the following chart fragments—which were stapled together and photographed in the order in which I found them—clearly demonstrate.

Personally I have barely looked at this document; I just don’t have the time.

There may be something really interesting hidden here, so please look carefully and let me know if you find anything notable.

What I can predict is that you will notice many of the Gunkel Method’s divisions hidden within these chart cells, either named outright or implied—from a quick look, I can see EFFECTS, TAXONS, ANOMALIES, FORMS, COMPLEXITIES, HIERARCHIES, CRITERONS, and many more.

Some of the ideas represented in these hundreds of cells are well-known and generally acknowledged ideas, but some seem highly original.

Charts like “The Hellish Past,” “Moods of the Sky,” “A New I Ching,” “Existential Plexure,” “Words to Which Science Is Indebted,” and “100 Different Answers to a Single Question” all seem like intriguing chart themes—not to mention the possible backbone for larger works.

As the cover note states, Gunkel even imagined that professional writers could turn each of his cells into books using the chart as an outline.

I don’t know if this is realistic for some of the ideas, but many of them do seem expansive enough to warrant a book-length treatment.

What’s clear from these charts is that Gunkel had a unique and expansive way of conceptualizing the world.

Inside Gunkel’s head there was an entire universe of ideas that he could access at will.

He carried this universe with him and was always adding to it.

What struck me especially as I looked over these documents was the sudden realization that each one of these chart titles was likely far more than just a mnemonic trigger; in the process of imagining the title for each one of these charts, Gunkel must have been able to also visualize a number of potential cells that would appear on the chart.

These were not just ideas to be filled in later, in other words.

There was real, substantive meaning for Gunkel behind each one of these titles; he simply didn’t have time to write it all down.

To double check my instincts about these charts, I emailed Professor Betsey Dyer.

“If you pointed to one of the ideas and asked him: ‘What would this chart say?’ even if he’d never actually made the chart,” I asked her, “do you think he’d be able to rattle off let’s say 10 - 20 ideas that would have gone in the cells, had he had time to make the chart? Or were these titles more like placeholders?”

“He would rattle off 10 or so ideas,” Dyer replied.

This suggests the number of discrete ideas packed inside Gunkel’s head was far, far in excess of the simple titles provided for all of these charts.

He truly was a savant.

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