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Hand Learning

(prehaps a more precise term would be tacit knowledge)

One White Bit
One White Bit Noun Octopus 304832
One White Bit "all knowledge is tacit if it rests on our subsidiary awareness of particulars in terms of a comprehensive unity."
One White Bit (Michael Polanyi)

Our focus on individual minds

  • Perhaps we should challenge the assumption that being cleverer or 'smarter' means 'being brainy'.
  • Evolutionary theory may persuade us that a large single big brain shows a high investment in reasoning.
  • Therefore, if we examine the brain-size of an octopus we might wrongly assume that it lacks intelligence.
  • But the octopus can recognise individual human faces and to use tools in surprisingly inventive ways.
  • Although an octopus may have as many neurons as a dog, only a third are located in its head.
  • The other two thirds are distributed around its eight arms, each of which can 'think' independently.
  • From a human perspective the octopus may appear to have nine brains - but would the octopus agree?
  • Our concept of 'knowledge' may differ from how an octopus (or a dog, bat, etc.) might understand it....

One White Bit Noun Vitruvian Man 66805

Embodied imagination

One White Bit Noun Man Falling Down 2863984

  • Einstein's free-fall thought experiment (1920) was what he called "the happiest thought of my life".
    • "In an example worth considering, the gravitational field has a relative existence only in a manner similar to the electric field generated by magneto-electric induction. Because for an observer in free-fall from the roof of a house there is during the fall — at least in his immediate vicinity — no gravitational field. Namely, if the observer lets go of any bodies, they remain relative to him, in a state of rest or uniform motion, independent of their special chemical or physical nature. The observer, therefore, is justified in interpreting his state as being “at rest.””

Process reality

  • Whitehead: "occasions of experience"

Quantum reality

  • Bohm refuted:
    • "...that human knowledge us reducible to fundamental particles and laws describing their behaviour."
    • ..he saw no distinction between thought and action
  • Schön - reflection-in-action
  • Leonardo - to see and to know are the same
  • Heart -> Hand = the Repair Shop
  • thinking via acts of making and doing choirs/cooperation (Sennett, 2008)
  • Tacit knowledge
  • fast and slow thinking
  • Feng shui
  • living systems
  • permaculture

Some sources

  • Nagel, T. (1974). What is it like to be a bat? Philosophical Review, 83, 435–450
  • Norman, D. A. (1988). The Psychology of Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books
  • Polanyi, M., "Tacit Knowing", in "Knowing and Being", Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1969
  • Reynolds, A., & Lewis, D., (2017), "Teams Solve Problems Faster When They’re More Cognitively Diverse", Harvard Business Review, March, 2017
  • Sennett, R., 2008, The Craftsman, Yale University Press, ISBN 9780300119091
  • McGilchrist, I., (2009). “The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World”. USA: Yale University Press. ISBN 030014878X