Craft Knowledge: Undercurrents

The results of craftwork have been admired since antiquity; but not always the doing. The ancient Greeks openly disdained hand work. A Chinese Emperor from around the Eleventh Century made a point of trying to learn some of the trade secrets of the artisans within his realm, whose work attracted his admiration and fascination; to little avail. Visitors to pioneer villages, where demonstrations are given of various pioneer crafts that once were common to farm communities, also draw curiosity; but perhaps not to the degree that would lead to genuine appreciation.

Nicholai A. Bernstein, the Russian neurophysiologist whose work I've discussed before, put it right when he said that watching a master at work fools us into feeling that we could easily replicate what we are seeing. However, without having the advantage of schooling or self-learning, and 10,000 hours of meaningful practice, we would make as big fools of ourselves as we would by going into a tournament foursome which included Tiger Woods with the media following behind (as one Toronto executive learned the hard way some years ago).

It's not likely that a casual chat with a guest craftworker would make you any wiser than the emperor of a millenia ago, and for a very good reason. The craftworker's wisdom, like an iceberg, lies predominently below the surface. What the intelligentia know is largely 'an open book', and someone with enough time (as did Karl Marx and others)could spend a decade in good libraries and emerge well educated, as long as we were reasonably selective and productive. And we could I would assume be able to articulate what we had learned and write about it. But craft knowledge is in contrast predominantly tacit knowledge, meaning that even craftworkers don't always know what they know, unless they are exceptionally self-aware, self-monitoring, about their skills and the reasons for their selections and methods.

As a brain function, intellectual activity centers in the area behind the forehead, the frontal lobes. That is where conscious, deliberate thought takes place. If I intend to do something, my frontal lobes are active, making decisions and choices; but when I awake in the morning, get ready for work, mercifully getting out of bed and performing morning rituals does not require my deciding what to do. (Age helps too!) I'll have checked the clock a few times, then find myself doing one of the several things needful to be ready to go out the door.

Few craftworkers or artisans write about the experience of "watching themselves working"; thereby seeing what others watching them see. I've had other tradesmen say to me, "That's not the first time you've done that!", meaning, the work I (like any experienced worker) was doing flowed, without undue hesitation, whereas they themselves wouldn't have known even what material to buy for the job, without planning. Therefore, planning a small electrical installation would have been taxing on the frontal cortex ("That gave me a headache!") whereas 35 years experience means it presents no challenge. Occasionally bosses, even highly educated ones, can't ask you to do something they can plan themselves. Sometimes, humourous, sometimes frustrating.

(in progress)