is an attitude to work that connects to honesty, determination and even moral and ethical judgements; honesty, because there is no gain in cheating on the material, determination is needed to overcome material resistance, and moral and ethical judgement in knowing what to do and when to do it.
The German “Homo Faber,” is another exemplar of societal values expressed by working.
European nations have welcomed craft programs into their universities, . Clearly, in our country, the separation between academic research and worker education is more clearly felt:
- When Covid cut off “hands on,” I was like an α smashing into Rutherford’s gold nuclei.
- Right now, the best I can fathom is it has something to do with the inversion of analog-digital craft migration, abruptly to post-digital (and post-human) systems taking priority.
- In one of my 4133 classes, I don’t know which, we read an article that mentioned choreography. Is there a science to dance? Making everything scientific leads to the danger of embodied cognition being reduced to mechanical aspects, material results, social preconditions, or other contingencies.
That digital materiality is reduced to mere digitalism. - The knowledge of touch and feel that it is gained through the senses from repeated experiences of working with a specific material over time. A translation of material and form by means of gestural action and tacit knowledge.
The learning [of a cabinetmaker’s apprentice] is not mere practice, to gain facility in the use of tools. Nor does he merely gather knowledge about the customary forms of things he is to build.
Heidegger, Martin. 1954. What Is Called Thinking. Trans. Glenn Gray. New York:
If he is to become a true cabinetmaker, he makes himself answer and respond above all to the different kinds of wood and to the shapes slumbering within wood – to wood as it enters into man’s dwelling with all the hidden riches of its nature.
In fact, this relatedness to wood is what maintains the whole craft. Without that relatedness, the craft will never be anything but empty busywork, any occupation with it will be determined exclusively by business concerns.
Harper Collins Publishers.