The last section of The Way of Heaven, (天道, tian dao), the 13th chapter of the Zhuangzi, relates an exchange between duke Huan and Bian the wheelwright – I have used the translations from Schipper’s The Taoist Body and the Chinese Text Project.
Duke Huan sat in his hall, reading out loud. Downstairs [in the courtyard] stood Bian the wheelwright, making a wheel. Putting down his work, Bian went up the steps and asked the duke: “May I ask your Grace what are you reading?”
“The words of the sages,” answered the duke.
“Living sages?”
“No, these have died.”
“So, what you are reading is just the dregs and sediments of men of former times.”
“What! A wheelwright ventures to judge what his prince is reading? Explain yourself or I will have your life!”
Bian the wheelwright said: “Your servant looks at this from the point of view of his craft. In making a wheel, if I go at it too carefully, it won’t be round; if I go too fast, it won’t be the right size. Neither too carefully, nor too fast; my hand knows how to do it in harmony with my mind, but my mouth cannot put into words how this is done. There is an enormous distance between the word and the doing. I cannot even instruct my own son in my art, nor is he able to learn it from me. That is why at seventy, I am still making wheels in my old age. But these ancients, these men of former times, and what it was not possible for them to put into words, are dead and gone: so then what you, my Ruler, are reading is but their dregs and sediments!”
The insights of Bian the wheelwright are profound, yet very familiar. One insight is that there is so much about doing that is unverbalizable, cannot be put into words (口不能言, kou bu neng yan). Another insight is about the enormous distance between the description of doing and doing itself. And these insights are familiar to us all from our daily lives, from describing how we, say, drive a car from one place to another, to how we prepare a meal. Verbal accounts of our activities amount to a superficial sliver of what we do.
The dialogue between Duke Huan and Bian reminds me of the gap between “evidence based practice” and “practice based evidence”. This gap might be “filled” with participatory research for social change.
Beyond the gap between theory and practice, the mutual contempt between Duke Huan, a noble thinker, and Bian, a man of the world, reflects the natural limitations of the human cognition.
Chomsky says,” we are not surprised to discover that rats are unable to run prime number mazes no matter how much training they receive; they simply lack the relevant concept in their cognitive repertoire. By the same token, we are not surprised that humans are incapable of the remarkable navigational feats of ants and bees; we simply lack the cognitive capacities, though we can sometimes duplicate their feats with sophisticated instruments.”
Chomsky continues: “With no limits to growth and development, our cognitive capacities would also have no scope. Similarly, if the genetic endowment imposed no constraints on growth and development of an organism it could become only a shapeless amoeboid creature, reflecting accidents of an unanalyzed environment, each quite unlike the next.”
My question: In forming experiences in the world, how important is to better understand the innate constrains of our cognitive capacities?
Considering bees and ants in relation to humans, I find it difficult to view six legs, antennas, compound eyes that detect light polarization, or sensory channels supporting chemical communication, as “cognitive capacities.” I find “cognition” a grossly inadequate term for describing bodily performance in the material world. Here are a couple of interesting examples about human performance. The first is about a sprint runner’s body, which readies itself before the race begins, with increased heart rate, changes in vascular tone and blood distribution, overall a feedforward reaction in anticipation of the race – a good performance would be out of reach if the body were to catch up to the demands after the race had begun. The second is about the timing of an archer or a sharp shooter, as for increased accuracy they need to shoot in-between heartbeats, and it helps to slow down the heart rate. Both performance examples involve changes in the activity of the autonomic nervous system, which is not readily under voluntary control – though it can of course be trained. “Cognition” does not capture such dimensions of knowing, of knowing how to run a good race or shoot an accurate arrow. Nevertheless, we do know how to develop such abilities, by training that is.
To address the question about limitations and constraints without getting mired into the inadequacies of the concept of “cognition,” is better to talk more broadly about limitations and constraints of bodily capacities, cognition included. We are all familiar with limitations and constraints on our abilities. For example, I may very well be able to drive a car and I may very well be able to read a newspaper, but doing both at the same time is beyond my capacities. So, yes, we are faced with limitations and constraints when we engage with the world.
But there is something else going on, very different from limitations and constraints, which is also directly relevant to the questions posed under “Two Basic Observations.” I have given examples that point to this, as in “Ardhanarishvara”: a married woman who understands and engages with the world in secular terms will not develop paralysis of the left side of her body as a result of marital problems. The abilities and knowledge that undergird the secular approach are incompatible, incommensurable with those that undergird a religious Hindu approach. Knowing one way precludes knowing the other, seeing a rabbit is incompatible with seeing a duck, it is not a matter of limitations or constraints. The well-known conflicts surrounding the teaching of biology in US schools point to similar incompatibilities between world views and associated knowledge.
The singular emphasis on cognitive capabilities and capacities when trying to come to terms with what knowing is about, is associated with the systematic disregard for the body and its interaction with the material world. It is this disregard that results in conflating limits/constraints and incommensurability. But limits and constraints in our dealings with the world are revealed only through our particular kind of abilities. Different ways of engaging with the world encounter different kinds of limitations and constraints, different in incommensurable ways – that is, the limitations that we encounter through different ways of engaging cannot be put side-by-side, cannot be compared.
You say: “Different ways of engaging with the world encounter different kinds of limitations and constraints, different in incommensurable ways – that is, the limitations that we encounter through different ways of engaging cannot be put side-by-side, cannot be compared.”
This is an enlightening and liberating insight and it reflects your deep understanding of the nature of human physiology. Upon closer inspection, it has huge implications for the way we think about learning. I find them amazing! However, I am wondering about the cost of deconstructing cognition and seeing these incommensurabilities.
In other words, how easy is it? I think there is an analogy with the moon illusion. We know that a larger moon near the horizon is an illusion, but we tend to see it larger.
The “associative coherence” of Daniel Kahneman may also be relevant. Kahneman says: “Much like our attention, which sees only what it wants and expects to see, our associative memory looks to reinforce our existing patterns of association and deliberately discounts evidence that contradicts them. And therein lies the triumph and tragedy of our intuitive mind…The thing about the system is that it settles into a stable representation of reality, and that is just a marvelous accomplishment. … That’s not a flaw, that’s a marvel. [But] coherence has its cost.”
I have a very shallow understanding of human physiology and an even shallower one of my own body, a body that goes on without me intending, willing or even being aware of most of what it is doing.
Be that as it may, I am perplexed by the persistent worry about costs “I am wondering about the cost of deconstructing cognition and seeing these incommensurabilities”. It is a very selective worry. After all, we do not worry about the skills of the multitudes of people that have created and maintain the environment we live in. We do not get stuck thinking about the engineering that went into our houses, the elevators, the cars, or the metro; the food we purchase, the stove on which we cook it. Yes, sometimes circumstances bring to the fore our lack of specialized knowledge and skills, as when houses crumble, we find contaminants in the food or water supply, or we fall sick. Yet, we do recognize that our own skills are limited, just like everyone else’s, and keep going. Similarly, we do not get stuck worrying about how our body does so much without us willing it or even being aware of it. We just accept it, and it is when it breaks down that we become aware of how much we were dependent upon. To clarify, I am not attempting to deconstruct cognition, but rather to point to what, how much, it leaves out, and the importance of what is left out.
Recognizing incommensurabilities brings an awareness of actually having choices in how we organize our lives, and that the current way we live is of course the result of choices, and not only our own.
As it regards costs, yes, learning something new involves effort and the risk that one might not succeed in learning. But we do take a tremendous amount of abilities for granted, our own, as well as those of others. So the question becomes what is the new skill, the new ability one wants to learn or develop? What for? Why the particular choice?
About “practice based evidence”, I would think that all evidence is based on practice, on engagement with the material world. Of course, this practice may occur in a variety of settings, like an open field, a laboratory, a classroom, or an office armchair perhaps. This practice may involve a range of activities, for example from an intricate well-rehearsed performance, alone or in coordination with others, to quiet contemplation. And the evidence will of course reflect the practice and the experiences from which it originated.
About “evidence based practice”, when we want to tackle a particular question or problem, sometimes we just plunge in, without relying on previous evidence, trying out this or that, see whether something works in some way or not. We of course learn in the process, in a sense accumulating evidence. Frequently, before we begin, we seek to inform our approach, we take into account previous experiences with the particular or similar problems, our own experience or that of others. We engage in “evidence based practice”. Tackling a problem, it helps to know what has worked and what has not, how many times, in what kinds of settings, and by whom (what kind of abilities did they have). It is also relevant that we know how, we have the skills, to make use of that evidence.