Technique

“ Such matters as knowledge of the past, of current technique, of materials, of the ways in which one's own best results are assured, supply the material for what may be called general method. There exists a cumulative body of fairly stable methods for reaching results, a body authorized by past experience and by intellectual analysis, which an individual ignores at his peril. ”

“ But as this theory of "training" is for the moment so generally adopted, and as so much depends upon it, it is necessary that we should examine it very closely. The "technique," say the Minority, is not yet developed. ”

“ We may borrow words from a context less technical than that of biology, and convey the same idea by saying that habits are arts. They involve skill of sensory and motor organs, cunning or craft, and objective materials. They assimilate objective energies, and eventuate in command of environment. They require order, discipline, and manifest technique. They have a beginning, middle and end. Each stage marks progress in dealing with materials and tools, advance in converting material to active use. ”

“ But technique, we know, is something more, far more, than a trick of hand, and in other cases we can be sure that we shall find the crying want of it manifesting itself in a writer's essential qualities of spirit and intellect. ”

“ As engaging the emotions and the imagination, they have the qualities which give the fine arts their quality. As demanding method or skill, the adaptation of tools to materials with constantly increasing perfection, they involve the element of technique indispensable to artistic production. ”

“ Even if a certain degree of intelligence and the development of the hand forms the necessary condition for the discovery and production of tools, yet it was the social character of man which offered the conditions for the continual addition of new and the improvement of old discoveries, thus for a continual development of the technique. ”

“ They develop an alleged sense of technique, which is too often no more than the attempt to exact a laboriousness of method, or to insist upon peculiarities of method which impress the professional critic 177not so much as being merits as being meritorious. ”

“ Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the æsthetic critic can understand it. ”

“ Education, then, is the development of all the powers of man to the culminating point of action. What kind of action? Action in art. What is art? “The power of doing something not taught by nature or instinct; power or skill in the use of knowledge; the practical application of the rules or principles of science.” Again we have the last analysis of education—“skill in the use of knowledge; the application of the rules or principles of science.” And this is tool practice. ”

“ Flexibility and initiative in dealing with problems are characteristic of any conception to which method is a way of managing material to develop a conclusion. Mechanical rigid woodenness is an inevitable corollary of any theory which separates mind from activity motivated by a purpose.
2. Method as General and as Individual. In brief, the method of teaching is the method of an art, of action intelligently directed by ends. But the practice of a fine art is far from being a matter of extemporized inspirations. ”

“ Theory—that is, the comprehension and understanding of whatsoever we undertake—is the foundation upon which practice may build; theory will necessarily acquire the mechanical ability to put its ideas into shape by a reasonable amount of practice; but practice, though it be of years, does not by any means guarantee theoretical or even an intellectual appreciation of the results that labor accomplishes, and without this what can be expected from the mechanic? ”

“ Practice is laborious either from the multitude of instruments, or the bulk of matter and substances requisite for any given work. Those instances, therefore, are valuable, which either direct practice to that which is of most consequence to mankind, or lessen the number of instruments or of matter to be worked upon. ”

“ Such would be, as if a man possessing a curious and exquisite piece of mechanism were to direct the observers to remark the beauty of the material, the regularity of the movements, and the certainty of the results, and yet to forbid them to examine into the principle of construction and the mode of operation, on which those movements and that certainty depend. ”

“ Invention is in its youth, and manual training is the very breath of its nostrils.
7. The Elevation of Manual Occupations from the Realm of Brute, Unintelligent Labor to one requiring and rewarding Cultivation and Skill.—A brute can exert brute strength; to man alone is it given to invent and use tools. Man subdues Nature and develops art through the instrumentality of tools. ”

“ Why should the more difficult, but more ingenious and liberal arts, scorn to be taught wisdom from their example? Is it easier to understand the intricate structure of the animal frame, the work of God, than to learn the construction of any machine, as a watch or clock, the work of human invention? ”

“ Science was the analysis of the outer self, the elementary substance of the self, the outer world. And the machine is the great reconstructed selfless power. Hence the active worship to which we were given at the end of the last century, the worship of mechanized force. ”

“ These arts have worked by tradition, by prescription, by precedent. They all wait for an infusion of the scientific method, the method of principle based upon natural laws immutable and indestructible. ”

“ Technical training looks to progress in some one definite line, one radius of the growing circle of the domain of human intelligence, and ignores the rest of the circumference. It is to the intellectual man what variation is to the physical man. By culture we hold our own, and by technical training we advance to higher levels. ”

“ But we see that the case is reversed in the mechanical arts, which are founded on nature and the light of experience, for they (as long as they are popular) seem full of life, and uninterruptedly thrive and [52] grow, being at first rude, then convenient, lastly polished, and perpetually improved. ”

“ Suppose that the methods for practice are accurately laid down, where shall we find a sufficient motive? Suppose that an unexceptionable machinery has been constructed, whence shall we obtain an adequate force to set it in motion? ”

“ The technic of the laboratory instruments appealed to you exactly as does the management of a motor-car or the handling of a shotgun; most young men like to use a machine and to get mechanical results. But as to learning the insatiable love of truth, the precise observation and the inexorable deduction which are essential in the scientist, you probably have not even made a beginning. ”

“ Thus enlightened, we recognize in science the deliberate effort to reduce the chaos of sensible experiences within the orderliness of ideal constructions, condensing multitudes of facts into simple laws—an effort which the intellect acknowledges as a supreme duty, and which conduct acknowledges as a guide. ”

“ I then told them that God, to compensate for the weakness of man, had bestowed on him reason, invention, and skill in workmanship. The result of these had produced a science which, under the name of Mechanics, taught us to increase and extend our limited powers incredibly by the aid of instruments. ”

“ We may, therefore, hope for further, better, and more frequent results from man's reason, industry, method, and application, than from chance and mere animal instinct, and the like, which have hitherto been the sources of invention. ”

“ Now in such a case it is requisite that science, that theory, be available at every step of the undertaking, and this in the most detailed way. Every stage of the proceeding must, indeed, be absolutely controlled by scientific method. ”

“ It remains only to offer a few remarks on the employment of remedies. The practice of physic may, according to the intellect, cultivation, and moral qualities of the individual pursuing it, be regarded as a science, an art, or a trade. ”

“ In fixing the meaning of the Technical Terms which form the Terminology of any science, at least of the descriptive Terms, we necessarily fix, at the same time, the perceptions and notions which the Terms are to convey to a hearer. ”

“ We can only say that from practice are evolved certain methods or principles, consciously or unconsciously; and it is only these general methods or principles that can be explained and tested for the benefit of those essaying to follow the arduous and difficult path of art. ”

“ Not until the laws of physics, chemistry, anatomy, and physiology, were determined by a long course of patient and assiduous observation and experiment, pursued with no reference to any thing but the simple establishment of the truth, did the various arts become settled in their practice, so that they could be pursued with efficiency, economy, and success. ”

“ Writers upon science have gone on up to modern times forming such technical terms as they had occasion for, by the three processes above 270 described;—namely, appropriating and limiting words in common use;—constructing for themselves words descriptive of the conception which they wished to convey;—or framing terms which by their signification imply the adoption of a theory. ”

“ A habit also marks an intellectual disposition. Where there is a habit, there is acquaintance with the materials and equipment to which action is applied. There is a definite way of understanding the situations in which the habit operates. Modes of thought, of observation and reflection, enter as forms of skill and of desire into the habits that make a man an engineer, an architect, a physician, or a merchant. ”

“ From whence there may arise many admirable advantages, towards the increase of the Operative, and the Mechanick Knowledge, to which this Age seems so much inclined, because we may perhaps be inabled to discern all the secret workings of Nature, almost in the same manner as we do those that are the productions of Art, and are manag’d by Wheels, and Engines, and Springs, that were devised by humane Wit. ”

“ They are there for an end. They are true, as the tools are good, precisely by reason of their adjustment to this end. To ask me which of two ideas is the more nearly true, is like asking me which of two tools is the better tool. ”

“ The most manifest value of these slow and laborious researches is, that amid speculative studies they maintain the activity and suppleness of the body, by training the hands to labor, and creating habits useful to any man. So many instruments are invented to aid in our experiments and to supplement the action of our senses, that we neglect to use the senses themselves. ”

“ And for that matter, the task of technical education does not differ in this regard from the task of general education, which is simply the vision of the whole of human experience, as a whole, with reference to one’s own life among all kinds and conditions of men. ”

“ The individual who proposes to occupy himself with any one of these arts must first master the foundation of knowledge, of formal traditions, and of manual practice upon which the superstructure is based. ”

“ Thus, e.g., in classifying a series of implements dating from different periods in the history of civilisation, so as to throw light on the evolution of some particular type of tool or machine, we have to take as our fundamentum divisionis the adequacy with which the different varieties accomplish the kind of work they were designed to perform, and are thus committed at once to the use of the psychological concepts of purpose and satisfaction. ”

“ We have completed the survey of the human mind; we have created a foundation, upon which a scientific system, as the correct representation of the original system in man, may be built. In conclusion, let us take a glance at the whole. ”

“ The unexampled success of the mechanical arts, would, upon the above principles, naturally lead us to conclude, that the sciences, from which they have derived all that they possess, must have been cultivated with corresponding energy. ”

“ Before you can get an art, you must first get your tools; and if you are to make good use of your tools, they must be fashioned sufficiently strong to stand use. To learn to think, we must accordingly exercise our limbs, our senses, and our bodily organs, for these are the tools of intellect. To get the best use of these tools, the body that supplies us with these tools must be kept strong and healthy. ”

“ It clearly points out two well-marked natural divisions of such education—education or training in the movements to be made, and education in a knowledge of the consequences of such movements—i.e. in a knowledge of the forces of Nature which actually do the work when man has suitably arranged the materials. ”

“ For if he can be directed to some similar operation of Nature, or have pointed out to him some one or more of Nature's pupils,—some animal or insect, perhaps,—whose labour or object is similar to his own, he will most probably find there, or have suggested to him by their mode of procedure, the very thing he is in search of. By studying their methods of operating, and the means employed by them for accomplishing their end, some principle or device will be exhibited, by the imitation of which his own special object will most readily and most successfully be attained. ”

“ For we moderns, while we have dominated Nature and external results in the most extraordinary way through our mechanical and other sciences, have just neglected this other field of mastery over our own internal mechanism. ”