We do not use this word as standardly understood, but consider the possibility of adopting it for our own purposes to refer to an uncertain, and continually evolving unity of knowledge - as such it is close to the idea of a meme though it differs in the sense that we do not try to describe what is, but rather what could be a future epistemic primitive.
We refer here to the work done adding plasticity to append only data stores so as to facilitate the representation of evolving knowledge stores suitable for the exploration of scientific knowledge and the more recent field of Performative Knowledge.
> See early and unfinished writing on EV, EP and Evolving Entity.
We understand at this stage, that our task is to define the bounds of this concept for the purpose of use it as a formal basis for computers (humans and machines) to evolve. We look to relating this concept to aspects of wiki, and pattern in the spirit of family resemblance.
# Etymology
> Kōan (公案) (/ˈkoʊæn, -ɑːn/;[1] Chinese: 公案; pinyin: gōng'àn, [kʊ́ŋ ân]; Korean: 공안 gong-an; Vietnamese: công án) is a story, dialogue, question, or statement which is used in Zen practice to provoke the "great doubt" and to practice or test a student's progress in Zen.
According to the Yuan dynasty Zen master Zhongfeng Mingben ( ''Kōan/gong'an'' thus serves as a metaphor for principles of reality beyond the private opinion of one person, and a teacher may test the student's ability to recognize and understand that principle - wikipedia 
Commentaries in kōan collections bear some similarity to judicial decisions that cite and sometimes modify precedents. > "Gong'an" was itself originally a metonym — an article of furniture involved in setting legal precedents came to stand for such precedents. > T. Griffith Foulk
# See also