Hand Learning
(prehaps a more precise term would be tacit knowledge)
related terms
- consciousness
- whole learning
- heart learning
- humour learning
- head learning
- Consciousness
- Senseness
- Proprioception
- (see also other key terms)
"all knowledge is tacit if it rests on our subsidiary awareness of particulars in terms of a comprehensive unity."
(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....
Embodied imagination
- 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