Artful Knowing, part I

What is Artful Knowing? Well. . .

Instead of accumulating information, or internalizing the learning of others, it is the work of learning for oneself. It is the end of the process of learning, and the beginning. As with language, we must get comfortable with the vocabulary and the grammatical structures before we can get to work making and interpreting meaning. Basic learning is that way. We must learn the fretboard on the bass, or the keyboard on the piano. We must come to know the nature of scales—the relationship of tones—before we can make music. We must learn the use of a brush, or a hammer and chisel, or other tools, before we can make visual art. We must learn the game of basketball, and its rules, and its practices, before we can join in a team effort to play well.

So everything has a grammar—a set of rules and expectations and coding norms—to learn. But the real learning begins once that grammar is internalized and operative. How can one use the tools at one’s disposal, the basic skills developed, to create something uniquely one’s own—and to interact well with others to create even greater beauties? Artful knowing makes knowledge OURS rather than a rote cataloguing of the knowledge of others we have studied. Artful knowing makes our work meaningful, to ourselves and to others. It pervades the mind of the maker and disrupts and stimulates the minds of the sharers in that making (whether audience, or teammate, or fellow thinker). Robert Pirsig’s description of the craftsman at work in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance remains the best short account of artful knowing I’ve come across:

The craftsman isn’t ever following a single line of instruction. He’s making decisions

as he goes along. For that reason he will be absorbed and attentive to what he’s doing

even though he doesn’t deliberately contrive this. His motions and the machine are

in a kind of harmony. He isn’t following any set of written instructions because the

nature of the material at hand determines his thoughts and motions, which simultaneously

change the nature of the material at hand. The material and his thoughts are changing

together until his mind’s at rest at the same time the material’s right. (148).

Deweese responds to Phaedrus here with “Sounds like art.” Of course it does. Even precision machinists and architects and engineers are artists when they are working at the edge of their understanding—when they are in a “flow” situation (both challenged and capable). And these situations are not as rare—or do not have to be as rare—as we think in a mundane, repetitive workplace.

Of course our workplaces, and schools, are built on assumptions about knowledge and the practice of knowledge that are restrictive and even counterproductive. Creativity is the exception, not the rule, and it is always threatening to the status quo. Artful knowing is, for the most part, discouraged. Those who ask “Why do we do things this way? Why don’t we try this other way?” are met with blockades and outright ugliness. Anything that threatens the system in place, and the stakeholders of that system, is tamped down or even destroyed. Even science has this problem—consider the work Kuhn did on paradigm change and scientific revolutions. New truth is always seen as heresy first.

The academic world is similar in its conservative approach to learning and knowing. “Back to basics” is the cry, and lecture and memorization remain central to the process. What about teaching the work of artful knowing? Making it conscious, and valuable, and an end worth aiming for?

How does one do so? By focusing on processes rather than simply products. A great free-throw shooter did not begin that way. She learned some fundamentals of shooting, and developed a constructive practice regimen, and found ways to focus her attention on the task at hand. Only with attention to the process, and much practice, did her free throw shooting become “automatic.” As Quintilian says in the Institutes of Oratory, extemporary speaking is the crowning achievement of the rhetor. It comes only after long practice, and it is limited to some degree by the talent of the speaker. The work of making speech look effortless takes much much effort. Much more complex than free throw shooting, of course.

Artful knowing thus emerges from attention and energy and patient application. It also emerges from reflection and extension. One must listen to the music of others, and notice the good ideas of others, and put these things to work in their own practice. Great artists, and writers, and musicians, and athletes employ artful knowing all the time. Salespeople, and teachers, and managers, and mechanics can also do so.