Paper short abstract:

Focusing on stone masons at Glasgow cathedral the paper examines their notion that awareness of ignorance is a necessary precondition for the positive virtues of discipline, patience, tradition, and correct technique to be instilled

Paper long abstract:

According to the stonemasons working at Glasgow cathedral, masonry entails a paradox: while the principles are simple, their practical application is complex and acquiring the capacities to successfully enact these takes a lifetime to learn. Experienced masons thus deride apprentices for what they take to be a misplaced confidence in their own abilities, and see the task of instilling knowledge of their own ignorance as the pre-requisite to learning. Specifically this is achieved through joking or 'slanging' that takes place in the yard and mess-hut. Over time this is intended to turn the apprentice into a tabula rasa, a necessary pre-requisite for the positive virtues of discipline, patience and tradition, and correct technique to be instilled. Taking a conceptual lead from recent work in anthropology, this paper seeks to draw out the specific ways in which ignorance thus emerges not as the inverse of knowledge but as an explicit and cultivated virtue, and as a form of knowledge in its own right.