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Short abstract:

Based on teaching sociology through Aikido, ethnographic sensibility through art and examining what butchers and carvers can teach scientists, this paper will examine how training in embodied skills may transfer to various modalities of inquiry in arts and sciences?

Long abstract:

“Nature should be carved at its joints,” Plato advised, but such carving is notoriously difficult in practice. Master cutters, such as butchers and carvers, could teach us about slicing at the joints as a modality of flexible inquiry, or “elastic rigor” across arts and sciences. “The carver begins as a god and ends as slave; the carving begins as a slave and ends as a god” – so did the late master carver David Esterly formulate this carving chiasmus. From this skillful conversation between cleavers and tendons, or sharp chisels and wood it is but a step to the dance biologists use in their laboratories to extract 3D models of complex protein molecules from the fuzzy X-ray crystallography images. I follow Zhuangzi’s famous dexterous butcher, skillful carvers, motorcycle mechanics and molecule dancers as teachers and models of flexible inquiry across arts and sciences. I am interested not only in how embodied craft skills can provide metaphors and models, but even more whether actually training in such skills (dance, martial arts, woodworking or motorcycle maintenance) may be transferable across domains and modes of inquiry. I will use my own experience in teaching ethnographic sensibility through training developed in fine arts, sociology of conflict through Aikido, and the way my own woodworking has informed my thinking.