Re: tacit knowing
Dale Cyphert (DXC20 who-is-at PSUVM.PSU.EDU)
Sun, 5 May 96 08:56 EDT
Jay,
I too have found Polanyi and Zen to be helpful perspectives. I am very
interested, though, in your distinction between topological and categorical
knowledge. I have been working with a cultural event (a motorized picnic
table) to explore the "discourse" of a non-linguistic narrative, and I am
struck by the physicality of the meaning. That is, where it is possible for
language to abstract "meaning" from an event, it must ignore the "physical"
elements of meaning. If language is not priviledged, it is possible to
understand the picnic table event with a much richer sense of "beingness". I'm
not at all sure what it is that I'm describing, so I might not be doing it
well, but does this sound at all like your medical students? The spatial
metaphor might be telling us both something.
Regards, Dale Cyphert
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dxc20 who-is-at psuvm.psu.edu/Department of Speech Communication/Penn State Univ