Page 114 - Composing Processes and Artistic Agency

Orchestrating different forms of knowledge 103
3.4 The synergy between the various forms of knowledge

Recognising that there are many different forms of knowledge raises the
question of their relationship to each other. Here, the contrasting forms of
knowledge –“knowing how” versus “knowing that” (Ryle), “tacit” versus
“explicit knowledge” (Polanyi) and “knowing” versus “known” (Dewey) –
need to be considered synergistically to prevent discussions from reductively
stressing their differences. Most theories of knowledge discuss this synergy,
but they emphasise different aspects of it. Some give epistemic priority to the
bodily dimension (e.g. Merleau-Ponty 1945/2005: 216) or the tacit dimension,
as Polanyi (1964/1969: 144) writes:

We have seen tacit knowledge to comprise two kinds of awareness, subsidiary
awareness and focal awareness. Now we see tacit knowledge opposed to
explicit knowledge; but these two are not sharply divided. While tacit
knowledge can be possessed by itself, explicit knowledge must rely on being
tacitly understood and applied. Hence all knowledge is either tacit or rooted
in tacit knowledge.A wholly explicit knowledge is unthinkable.

Such prioritising, however, does not suggest that some forms of knowledge
are more valuable than others. Rather, it assumes that the forms are inter-
linked. Conversely, other approaches attempt to reduce practical knowledge
to propositional knowledge. For instance, Jason Stanley and Timothy
Williamson (Stanley & Williamson 2001: 444) assume that “all knowing-how
is knowing-that. The intellectualist legend is true”. John Hawthorne and
Jason Stanley (Hawthorne & Stanley 2008: 574) remark that “[i]f you know
that p, then it should not be a problem to act as if p”. These approaches do
not draw on the immanent critique of rationality and representationality that
is so crucial to the theories of Dewey, Polanyi, Ryle and Merleau-Ponty (see
e.g. Duguid 2005; Jung 2012: 31–77).
Composing practices consist of interwined activities and are complemented
by paratexts and wrapped around with aesthetic and ethic commitments, in
other words, by statements made before, during and after the various actions.
Discourses, propositional contents and conditions of production are a com-
pound that forms an integral part of practices (see Zembylas 2004: 89–96).
Expressions in conceptual, mathematical and technical languages are also
constituents of practices. Language and symbolic forms are involved in
everything we perceive, think and do, as well as in all our sensations, wishes
and intentions. The interleaving of doings and sayings and of practices and
discourses is also operative in spontaneous results, for instance in gestalt
perception. Allan Janik’s (1994: 41f.) remarks on medical activities thus hold
true for composers:

Learning to see is thus learning to judge “at a glance” that this complex
before me is a significant unity, a Gestalt. This is a matter of judgement