“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” Albert Einstein
Reason and logic are super helpful so long as we know their place
Just like there are big ideas we can’t prove but also can’t live well without — like beauty, dignity, and hope — likewise we need bigger accounts of how we know than those confined to reason and logic.
Reason is the ability to think clearly. No more and no less. Logic is a set of rules to show when an argument does or doesn’t work. We need to value and teach these skills well.
But knowing is bigger than reason and logic … bigger in fact than thinking.
The wonder of knowing — each other, the world, and ourselves — is more complex and profound, more beautifully ordinary and simple than the essential but narrower tasks of thinking well.
What does that mean in practice? Let’s start with something close to home.
All knowing is relational
This woman knows her child. This child knows his mother. For both of them, this knowing goes beyond anything we recognise as thinking. The child has no language. The mother’s knowing is felt more than thought.
There are beautiful complexities to this knowing. The mother will come to know herself as she knows her child, and as she welcomes her child knowing her. The child will come to know himself as he knows his mother, and as he welcomes his mother knowing him. What a wonderful jumble of knowing!
This ‘bigger’ and ‘more’ about knowing is not just about knowing people.
All knowing is a kind of immersion
Consider how you learned to ride a bicycle, play an instrument, juggle, or swing a bat or club. Consider any skill you can do without concentrating.
First, your fluency in that skill depends on not knowing what you are doing — at least not explicitly. Sounds odd, doesn’t it? But the better you can kick a ball or play the piano, the less you need to think about it. Details like musical notes and finger movements live somewhere in the background for a musician.
Second, your fluency in your skill depends on knowing the parts and the whole at the same time. When we try to concentrate on our finger movements, for example (such as when playing an instrument ), we lose the bigger picture of the playing and the music.
We simply can’t think our way through exercising our skill. And the same is true of listening to music or looking at a painting — we move back and forth between the whole and the parts without ever realising it. We throw ourselves into the experience in order to know it.
This is also how a professional learns her craft. A young doctor may master every textbook, but only the experience of diagnosing and misdiagnosing will lead her into true expertise. It’s the same for an athlete, architect, artist, builder, chef, designer, engineer, mechanic — parent, grandparent and friend!
Five dimensions to how we know
Here are some things I think we can and need to affirm about the ways we know:
- All knowing is contextual.
- All knowing is relational.
- All knowing is a kind of immersion.
- All knowing transforms us and what we know.
- All knowing is more tacit than what we can list, explain, or even be aware of.
Three ways we can nurture our knowing
How can we encourage and make a place for this bigger knowing?
- Let yourself know and be known by others. Here we learn a kind of ‘relational rigour’ in knowing well.
- Let yourself feel the ways the context shapes you and you shape it. Here we learn a kind of ‘contextual rigour’ in knowing well.
- Let yourself sense the perspectives that shape you, the ways you shape your perspectives, and the pull of new questions. Here we learn a kind of ‘perspectival and attentive rigour’ in knowing well.
“Don’t for heaven’s sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.” Ludwig Wittgenstein
Some everyday ways we know
Knowing, it seems, depends even more on believing, hoping, and caring deeply than it does on thinking and arguing well (as important as those skills truly are).
“The only emotion that expands intelligence is love … Love is visionary.” Humberto Maturana
Where do you see knowing limited to thinking?
How can you make room for bigger ways of knowing?
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