“SAGE SKILL”: IN WHAT SENSE CAN ONE SPEAK OF “BODILY KNOWLEDGE”?
The article discusses a number of connected concepts including “practical skill”, “movement skill”, “metis”, “techniques of the body”, and “kinesthetic intelligence”. They share in common the representation of knowledge as often a non-verbal process, by half and large unconscious, based on muscular sensations as much as on brain and consciousness. The feature that they have in common can be termed “bodily knowledge”, an epistemological alternative to techne, or codified practical knowledge formalized in rules and instructions. Muscular feeling, or kinesthesia is at the foundation of bodily knowledge. I.M. Sechenov called it “dark”, or “opaque”, feeling on the grounds that this kind of sensations are rarely verbalized and reflected upon. Yet, inner sensation of the kind cannot be completely opposed to thinking. Using the poet and writer, Varlam Shalamov’s words, one may call them “sage skill”, a particular kind of knowing. Below there is a discussion of various meaning of the expression, “bodily knowledge”.