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I've just started to read Otto Scharmer's book, Theory U, and this passage grabbed my attention.
Twenty-three hundred years ago Aristotle. arguably the greatest pioneer and innovator of Western inquiry and thought, wrote on Book VI of his Nicomachean Ethics that there are five different ways, faculties, or capacities in the human soul to grasp the truth. Only one of them is science (episteme). Science (episteme), according to Aristotle, is limited to the things that cannot be otherwise than they are (in other words, things that are determined by necessity). By contrast, the other four ways and capacities of grasping the truth apply to all other contexts or reality and life. They are: art or producing (techne), practical wisdom (phronesis), theoretical wisdom (sophia), and intuition or the capacity to grasp first principles or sources (nous).
To date the primary focus has been on episteme and we are only beginning to see leaders valuing the other approaches in a systematic way.
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Comments
Sounds too hard. I think I'll limit my Aristotle to 4 causes and theoria, poiesis and praxis.
Posted by: BrianSJ at March 21, 2008 8:21 AM
I wonder if Heron & Reason partly derived their 'extended epistemology' from this line of thought - in their (four) terms labelled as: practical knowing, propositional knowing, presentational knowing, and experiential knowing.
Also interested in what the metaphor 'grasping' the truth entails... substance, solidity, handle-ability? Others might be visual (the truth can only be glimpsed not held), or dynamic (the truth is a continuous process of unhiding, not a thing).
Posted by: Andrew at March 28, 2008 9:35 PM
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