Episteme, Techne, Phronesis (AcWriMo Update)

Having a schedule of specific times for writing every day is helping, though I missed Tuesday entirely, had to bump my writing time to later in the day on Monday because of a doctor's appointment, and seriously overslept on Friday. It is challenging to change from a habit of fitting my writing time around everything else in my life, to fitting everything else around my writing time. Still, other than Tuesday I did spend at least 2 hours writing, or doing writing-related reading every day this week, and as a result I have written 1300 more words for my first portfolio paper--not even remotely close to my goal, but progress nonetheless. I have also written about 3700 words of annotations for the books and articles I read this week. The balance of writing should really have been be the other way around, but at least my extensive annotations will help me when it comes time to study for my comprehensive exams.

One of the things I'm trying to do with my revision is to construct a new theoretical framework from which to make sense of my data, and in fact to make new sense of the entire project. When I say "make new sense," I mean that it already makes a kind of sense. I know what happened, and even a good deal about the chain of cause and effect that led to the point I'm at now--the point of having a mess of data that I need to write something meaningful about. I'm not exaggerating when I say mess, by the way. It's such a mess that I've spent the better part of the past five months in a cyclical pattern of anger, anxiety, and avoidance over what to do with it. This, my colleagues and advisor assure me, is not uncommon and does not mean I am a total failure as a researcher. So they say.

To make new sense of my research means to go from merely knowing what happened, to constructing particular meaning from it, meaning that will be recognized as meaningful by the community of scholars I'm trying to join. To do that, I needed a theory, grounded in the discipline, which would not only help me interpret the data but also the ultimately quite haphazard method by which it was obtained. To find it, I went all the way back to Aristotle, mainly by way of Janet Atwill and Joseph Dunne.

The ancient Greeks loved knowledge, and they loved to classify and systematize absolutely everything--including knowledge itself. They recognized, and had words for, many kinds of knowledge: nous meant first principles, which must be apprehended since they cannot be derived from observation or logic; episteme, or theoretical knowledge, is logically demonstrable truth; sophia is the power of both apprehending first principles and demonstrating theoretical knowledge; phronesis is practical knowledge, or the virtue of wise action; and techne is productive knowledge--that is, the power of rational creation, or of knowing how to intervene in specific cases in order to bring about a desired end. Whereas episteme is universal, techne and phronesis are particular, and whereas phronesis constitutes a mode of being, techne is about accomplishing specific ends. Though there is some ambiguity about the boundaries (and even the legitimacy) of some of these definitions of knowledge, the ancient Greeks as well as modern theorists generally agree that rhetoric is a type of techne. Atwill, however, gives an account of rhetoric that seems closer to phronesis. Even Dunne admits that the distinction between the two is ambiguous; his whole book is a project of teasing out the difference.

Anyway, the problem I had with my portfolio paper is that I wanted my research project to yield episteme. I wanted to be able to construct a rational account connecting my data to universal principles as unambiguously as possible. It couldn't possibly have worked--not only because I am such an amateur when it comes to designing and conducting such a study, but because the subject itself is one of particulars and not of universals. What I need--and what I ought to be seeking, is not theoretical but practical or productive knowledge, a rational but highly flexible way to deal with inherently messy and largely uncontrollable situations, ideally in order to increase the likelihood of bringing about specific ends. In order to be a techne, that way has to be teachable: it can't just work once, or only for me. As Charles Bazerman explains, "We consider theories successful when we do better with their guidance than without, when we accomplish more of what we wish when following their accounts than when following any or no other account. When considered this way, theories can be seen as heuristics for action" (103). Really though, I'm not sure that what I have--an application of Kenneth Burke's "comic frame"--amounts to a techne, or is more a type of phronesis. In any case such a heuristic would not only help me make sense of the data at hand but also make sense of the larger process of doing this research and writing project--and, I hope, future projects.

If you've actually read this far, congratulations! You're a giant nerd. Here's a cookie. 

...What's that? Aristotle ate your cookie! What a jerk. No, no, it totally wasn't me. It was Aristotle. Check out that guilty look on his face! Well, you know what they say about gifs bearing Greeks.

Source of images: Wikimedia commons.

Growing Up, and Growing Up Again

I just read "The Real Reason Why Grown-Ups Love Young-Adult Fantasy Books" over at one of my favorite blogs, io9. The author, Marie Rutoski (herself a writer of YA fantasy), suggests that the most powerful element of YA Fantasy is the essence of change which is inherent in the experience of youth. I think she's on to something. Puberty is perhaps the most archetypal, embodied change that all of us experience, and it's one that continues to bewilder us. It's only natural we'd attempt to make sense of such profound transformation through stories.

Rutoski notes the odd structure of some coming-of-age stories, such as C.S. Lewis's Pevensie children, who grow up in Narnia, are transformed back into children when they return to England, and there have to grow up again. It occurred to me that this twice-growing-up might be semi-autobiographical. You see, Lewis was an atheist, and it was "fairy stories", as he called them--and an encounter as an adult with one fairy story in particular (Phantastes, by George MacDonald), that first "baptized [his] imagination" and started him on the path to conversion. You can read more about his conversion in his books, Surprised by Joy and The Great Divorce. At the close of The Voyage of the 'Dawn Treader', Lucy is heartbroken by the thought of never seeing the Great Lion, Aslan again:

“It isn't Narnia, you know," sobbed Lucy. "It's you. We shan't meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?"
"But you shall meet me, dear one," said Aslan.
"Are -are you there too, Sir?" said Edmund.
"I am," said Aslan. "But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.” 

It's apparent that Lewis himself believed that he had been drawn to the world of fairy stories so that he might encounter in some of them what he called "holiness," so that, eventually, he could recognize its original in Christianity. So, having abandoned Christianity as a child, he grew up in the world of Fantasy, and returned to Christianity as an adult, becoming "as a little child" in the faith, before growing into one of its greatest apologists.

I also recall a conversation I had with my oldest brother, years ago, when his children were very young. He said that when he graduated college, he felt like he was finally a grown up. But when he got married, he realized that he still had a lot of growing up to do. And when he had children, he felt that he was only then really starting to grow up.

Last year, I fell in love for the first time in my life. I'm in my thirties, and I thought I might have been in love once or twice before, but it had seemed like a pale thing--not at all like what others said being in love was like. I had thought that what poets and lovers called "love" must just be exaggerated, or that I just wasn't the sort of person who could feel it, until it really happened, and though I had a hard time describing it myself, there was just no mistaking it. And I discovered that I still have a lot of growing up to do, because when it comes to love, with all its joy, intensity, exhilaration, silliness, messiness, patience, hurt, forgiving, and learning to be an "Us" instead of a "Me", I'm like a little child. That first love made me glad, and it made me grow, even after the relationship itself was over. Every time we open our hearts, we grow--the more we open our hearts, the more we grow. I still have a lot of growing to do.

Two weeks ago, my youngest brother got married. He's just a couple of years younger than me, and it's been a privilege to grow up with him. In many ways, because of the physical challenges our family has faced, we had to "grow up" faster than many children do. He has been very responsible toward his family for as long as I can remember. But maturity is a pattern woven of many threads, and some are longer than others. I've admired the man my brother has been for many years, but as he stood next to his new wife, I saw a man I'd never seen before, and with a heart full of sisterly pride, I thought "Now he's really grown up." Then my oldest brother's words echoed in my memory, and my second thought was "No, this is just the beginning of really growing up."

I don't think we ever stop growing up. All life is change, is transformation. Adolescence and young adulthood may be the most tangible stage in the process, but for all its "firsts", it's by no means the most profound. The end of all our "growing up", after all, is to become as our Father in Heaven is. Jesus taught that we must become "as little children," humble and teachable, if we are to grow into the kinds of beings who can inherit His kingdom, and this, I think, is a process we must repeat again and again, because every time we think we've finally grown up, we discover we still have much more growing to do. The sorrows, hurts, griefs, and shames of mortal life--those are growing pains. But for all its awkwardness and agonies, youth, with all the revelations of first experiences, is also often a period of ecstatic joy. So, I'm looking forward to growing up, and growing up again.

Redwood Forest, May 2010. 

That's my brother who just got married, 

looking at a tree several hundred years old, 

which still has plenty of growing up to do.

How to Solve a Problem Like a Gorilla

Last week when I was at Hogle Zoo with Nancy, we saw this gorilla. When we first got there, he was banging that piece of pipe against the wall, then occasionally looking into it, or sticking his fingers in it, before banging it against the wall some more. At first we couldn't figure out what was going on, and as another woman walked off I heard her say to her companion, "Let's get out of here. This is too depressing." But as my friend and I kept watching it became clear that the gorilla wasn't acting out of frustration. There was something edible stuck inside the pipe (I overheard somebody say peanut butter, but it looked like bits of apple to me), and by banging it against the wall, he was able to knock some of it loose and eat it.

After a while, though, when it no longer seemed to be working, the gorilla looked around himself, picked up that sheet you see at his feet, twisted it up, and shoved it into the end of the pipe. But the twist of sheet was too thick to go in far enough to get to the food. That's when things got really interesting. The gorilla shook out the sheet, grabbed a corner of it in his teeth, and tore a smaller length of sheet off, then twisted this smaller piece of fabric, and pushed it back into the pipe. This time, the improvised pipe cleaner was too small, and Nancy and I began speculating about what he would try next, when a zoo keeper called him into a different part of the habitat, so we never got to see whether he eventually would have figured out how to get the rest of his snack.

Even so, it was a fascinating, eye-opening experience for us. I knew gorillas were among the smartest of animals, and besides being capable of learning rudimentary sign language, have been known to use tools both in the wild and in captivity, but I had no idea they were such good problem solvers. It made me think about other highly intelligent animals, like dolphins and corvids, and how some experts have argued that such animals deserve rights as "non-human persons". I'm still not sure how I feel about that, but the line between human and animal intelligence does seem blurrier than it used to.

I don't know how well this guy's behavior compares to wild gorillas, but it was quite impressive anyway. In fact, I wish more people would be as creative and persistent at solving their problems as this gorilla was. I'm not disparaging my fellow humans' intelligence: I'm sure that, faced with a similar challenge, the average person would have come up with a solution on the first try, with very little difficulty. What impressed me about the gorilla--and what I myself sometimes forget--is that when his solution no longer worked, he tried a different method, and when that method didn't work, rather than just giving up or trying something else entirely, he reflected on what was wrong with his current method and modified it. Sometimes, we need a completely different solution, and sometimes we only need to tweak a solution we already have. But mostly, we just need to keep trying.