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Welcome to the site; I hope you find it informative. I'll discuss a wide variety of trades-related topics that reflect my own path in the trades, and issues relevant to what is happening with the new "College of Trades" here in the province of Ontario. Be sure to check older posts, and I'd welcome your comments

Dave

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

The Way of the Blacksmith

I'd like to share a post I entered on mrWorks recently in which I reminiced on my childhood and a
study that relates to a link posted on that forum, http://www.dfoggknives.com/wayof.htm take a look at what this chap has written.

I'm not normally a links guy, but for me personally you've struck gold on this one. First with a childhood memory, second with an important text book I bought in a bookstore for $5.00 with a broken spline (value over $125) on a Russian neurophysiologist, and lastly, on its discussion of craft. Do you mind if I pick a few segments when I have time and comment on them? It's very meaty and demands several rereadings?

When I was 6 my dad had just come to a small town, to a tiny church with cramped living quarters behind. I could play on the wide steps at the front of the church, and watch as teams of workhorses with hay wagon's were brought to a halt in front of the church, lined up to have the massive (to a 6 year old!) belgians and clydes unharnessed and led unside the blacksmith shop right next door! I can't imagine how dangerous it was for a child to be so close to those horses, would never happen today. I was less than 10 feet away.

Peering into the dark recesses of the blacksmith shop, I could hear the farmers and the blacksmith getting the horses under control so their hooves could be prepared, new shoes take from a wide selection on the wall, then heated and shaped in the coal forge and on the anvil..

It was 50 years before that book came into my hands due to a major consolidation of book chains in Ontario, which precipitated a massive clearance of hundreds of thousands of books. The book was a major treatment by two fellow countrymen to Nicolai Alexandrovich Bernstein, a brilliant scientist who grew up watching his highly intelligent mother dextrously performing needlework, then went on to a premium Soviet education, and was assigned to watch a blacksmith work and teach him how to work more efficiently, but fortunately for us but not him, Nicolai, a small man with striking features and almost tsar like bearing, was not about to teach anyone anything.

http://www.amazon.com/Dexterity-Development-Resources-Ecological-Psychology/dp/0805816461

As Nicolai watched the hammer being swung by the smithy, swarthy arm raising high over his head and striking the hot metal repeatedly, other hand moving the beaten metal ever so slightly, something happened that caused changed his life forever.

What Nicolai observed was that the hammer never struck the iron in the same place twice; the implications of that led Nicolai to extensive study on skilled work that led to publication on dexterity, quoting western research at a time when the Russians were fiercely proud of the fame of their star boy, comrade Pavlov, of salivating dog fame. The short story is that Nicolai's offices were smashed, he descended into obscurity more or less, and his written work would have disappeared had not the two authors interrupted a descendent cleaning out his apartment while she was readying to trash piles which included his manuscript, which became the core of the book.

Only the very latest books on motor theory are beginning to correct the foolery of comrade Pavlov, whose stupidity regarding motivation and learning pervade all literature today. Books on motion study are exactly like what Bernstein was hired to do; tell a skilled person how to grasp a hammer. There is simply too much invested in Pavlovianist theories to change.

I wouldn't go on so long, but the implications for skilled work and respect are enormoous. how can one respect what one equates to salivating dogs. Bernstein was a brilliant man, but his respect for skilled work was profound. I recommend reading with the utmost care "the mower scene" from Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, which was quoted and commented on by Bernstein. it will give you a taste of his thinking. Thank you again for that contribution. It bought back a lot of thinking, that I didn't expect to ever bring to light.

This is the link http://www.dfoggknives.com/wayof.htm

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