October 10th, 2007 Fred McVittie
In ‘Beyond Understanding’, a keynote speech at the symposium on Threshold Concepts at Strathclyde University in 2006, David Perkins lays out a taxonomy of knowledge and its application to teaching and learning. He describes knowledge as located as in three ontologically distinct forms. Video here. Symposium programme here.
The first he describes as ‘possessive’ knowledge, in which the object of knowledge is felt to be owned by the individual and can be produced on request. So, for example, we might be asked in what year Columbus landed in the New World and we might retrieve the date 1492 and display this known fact, rather as one might take a rock out of one’s pocket and hold it up for inspection. Similarly, the question ‘Who who wrote the novel on which the film “Solaris” is based?’ might solicit the response ‘Stanislaw Lem”. In each of these instances the item of knowledge is considered as possessed by the individual and this possession is, in turn, conceived of as a kind of object, a rock, a book, that can be produced on demand. This metaphorical mapping of the concept of knowledge as object has the effect of awarding other object-like properties to the knowledge item. Objects tend to be relatively solid, clearly bounded, and consistent over time. Similarly, knowledge which has this character of a possessed object is also intuitively experienced as solid, bounded, stationary, and permanent. So, for example, the date of Columbus’ arrival on the shores of New Found Land is felt to be a ‘hard fact’; there is no sense in which we feel that fact to be ’slippery’ or ‘fluid’. Also, that experienced fact is clearly delineated; we do not feel that the edges of it blur into other facts, in fact it is difficult to imagine what this ‘blurring’ might mean. It is also experienced as still and intransient, that this article of knowledge is not wavering or changing its place in the index of human information, and it will continue to occupy this place, in history, in geography, in cartography, forever. This fact, as object-like, and as objective, as a rock, is something we feel we can hold, unchanging and fully graspable. We can take ownership of it and consider ourselves in possession of this fact. We can put this fact in our pocket and produce it on demand. Similar object status might be awarded to the authorship of the book on which the film ‘Solaris’ is based and the response to any question on any TV game show.
The second form of knowledge that Perkins introduces is that which he considers ‘performative’. This type of knowing goes beyond the rote recitation of solid items of data and begins to use this data, these facts, not as objects of thought but as tools to think with. Knowledge, in this formulation, becomes less like a set of solid, separate, inert entities and more like living dynamic structures, capable of breeding, hybridising, fissioning, fusing, and blending. Performative knowledge responds to situations in a way which is not hard and resistant, but which is flexible and yielding, and the clearest examples of this knowledge is its ability to respond to creative or problem-solving situations. Possessed object-like knowledge is speechless when faced with a question such as ‘In what way is the film “Solaris” a commentary on the exploration and conquest of the New World? The individual isolated facts which characterise a possessed knowledge approach do not allow the kind of analysis and creative thinking which the question demands. Performative knowing, on the other hand, is well equipped to make a response to this situation. This may be through, for example, allowing the live information structures which make up the knowledge of Stanislaw Lem’s book, and the film of that book, to mingle with those of Columbus and his first footfall in the Americas. One can imagine a text that brings out the mutability of culture and the act of projective imagination that allows us to conceive of such things as ‘nations’ and ’states’ being born from this miscegenation. This ability of what Perkins calls performative knowledge to dynamically construct novel solutions to problems and creative responses to situations is referred to frequently in literature on creativity and innovation. Koestler calls it ‘bisociation’, elsewhere it is formalised into knowledge generation systems and training routines such as Triz, Synectics, Scamper, etc. Performative knowledge is very good at responding to set briefs, solving problems, fulfulling creative criteria, and producing novel answers to well-framed questions.
The third type of knowledge which Perkins introduces, and the one which adds the most to current understanding of knowledge, is what he terms ‘proactive’. This form of knowing, as the name implies, is neither inert nor reactive or responsive, but rather is actively engaged in the processes of its own implementation. Individuals who are able to mobilise proactive knowledge resources are not ‘problem solvers’ they are ‘problem finders’, that is, the knowledge that they embody (possess is too passive a term) seems to constantly engage with the world around them looking for opportunities to perform. Proactive knowledge does not simply appear on demand when a question is posed or a problem is set, but is out there in the world looking for opportunities. This type of knowledge seems largely to be dispositional; certain attitudes or habits of behaviour need to be in place in order for proactivity to emerge, and whilst such disposition can be learned or cultivated it is likely that some individuals would find this easier than others. Proactive knowledge users, whether by accident of nature or design of education, are constantly asking questions of the world, noticing small irregularities in the fabric of society, finding new uses for old objects, coining new words and phrases because they like the taste of language. They make extensive and joyful use of metaphor and analogy, and are incontinent inventors. Give a proactive knower a new word or a new idea, and watch them scurry around looking for some way to use it.
This continuum of knowledge, from the possessive at one extreme to the most proactive at the other, is complementary to the continuum of objectivity and subjectivity. Possessive knowledge, constitutive of object-like facts, appears, unsurprisingly, at the objective end of the spectrum. It is experienced as distant, removed, existing in interpersonal space. Proactive knowledge, conversely, is felt against the surface of the body, or even inside the body, and is inseparable from the experience of being. It is part of the subjective phenomenological experience of one’s self concept.
Posted in Creativity, Knowledge, Lem, Stanislaw, Psychology, Self, Sense, Training | No Comments »