Biological processes are often explained by identifying the underlying mechanisms that generate a phenomenon of interest. I characterize a basic account of mechanistic explanation and then present three challenges to this account, illustrated with examples from molecular biology. The basic mechanistic account is insufficient for explaining nonsequential and nonlinear dynamic processes, is insufficient for explaining the inherently stochastic nature of many biological mechanisms, and fails to give a proper framework for analyzing organization. I suggest that biological processes are best approached (...) as a multidimensional gradient—with some processes being paradigmatic cases of mechanisms and some being marginal cases. (shrink)

Is the human tendency toward musicality better thought of as the product of a specific, evolved instinct or an acquired skill? Developmental and evolutionary arguments are considered, along with issues of domain‐specificity. The article also considers the question of why humans might be consistently and intensely drawn to music if musicality is not in fact the product of a specifically evolved instinct.

The categories and contours of a normative social theory are prefigured by its ‘anthropological’ presuppositions. The discourse/communicative-theoretic basis of Habermasian theory was prefigured by a strong anthropological demarcation between an instrumentally structured realm of science, technology and labor versus a normatively structured realm of social interaction. An alternative anthropology, bolstered by current work in the empirical sciences, finds fundamental normative needs for orientation and ‘compensation’ also to be embedded in embodied material practices. An emerging anthropologically informed concept of (...) class='Hi'>skill that goes beyond old manual versus intellectual dichotomies and brings forth internal criteria of autonomy and authenticity can serve as a new bridge between categories of social justice, such as Sen and Nussbaum’s basic human ‘capabilities’, and new cutting-edge work in the empirical human sciences and thereby provide Critical Theory with a renewed point of departure that is both normatively and descriptively rich, for advancing its dialectical, historical mission. (shrink)

A crucial task for sport research is to understand and explain the processes and conditions underlying skillful motor behavior. One way to account for these processes and conditions is to describe and analyze the distinct stages a learner goes through when acquiring a skill. This article starts by elaborating one of the most dominant conceptualizations of motor skills in sport, namely the information-processing approach to skills, and then it briefly recapitulates Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus’s phenomenology of skill acquisition. (...) In a second part, these two distinct perspectives of skills are discussed. The discussion progresses in a dialectical way where the author alternately argues for both perspectives. Emerging from this dialectic, the article presents two arguments for why Dreyfus’s phenomenology of skill acquisition is superior to the information-processing approach. (shrink)

An analysis of student learning with the LISP tutor indicates that while LISP is complex, learning it is simple. The key to factoring out the complexity of LISP is to monitor the learning of the 500 productions in the LISP tutor which describe the programming skill. The learning of these productions follows the power‐law learning curve typical of skill acquisition. There is transfer from other programming experience to the extent that this programming experience involves the same productions. Subjects (...) appear to differ only on the general dimensions of how well they acquire the productions and how well they retain the productions. Instructional manipulations such as remediation, content of feedback, and timing of feedback are effective to the extent they give students more practice programming, and explain to students why correct solutions work. (shrink)

The temporal structure for motivating, monitoring, and making sense of agency depends on encoding, maintaining, and accessing the right contents at the right times. These functions are facilitated by memory. Moreover, in informing action, memory is itself often active. That remembering is essential to and an expression of agency and is often active suggests that it is a type of action. Despite this, Galen Strawson (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 103, 227–257, 2003) and Alfred Mele (2009) deny that remembering is (...) an action. They claim that memory fails to admit of control. Remembering is automatic—once remembering starts, the process can neither be stopped nor intervened on. Moreover, the agent does not initiate remembering. An agent has control over an event or process if and only if she has the capacity and opportunity to initiate and intervene on that event or process. Actions are events over which an agent has control. Since it is automatic, we fail to have control over remembering. Thus, remembering is not an action. In this paper, I draw out an assumption of Strawson’s and Mele’s accounts: an event-type whose tokens exhibit automaticity cannot, for that reason, be an action (§2). Against this assumption, I draw parallels between skilled bodily action and memory. I show that memory exhibits two defining features of skill: it can be learned with practice and it admits of attributions of excellence (§3). These features reveal how intelligent control is exerted in the exercise of skill despite apparent automaticity—control is gained over time (§4). Since exercises of skill are by definition actions and since memory exemplifies the defining features of skill, memory is a skill and instances of remembering are actions too. (shrink)

In recent works, Kind has argued that imagination is a skill, since it possesses the two hallmarks of skill: improvability by practice, and control. I agree with Kind that and are indeed hallmarks of skill, and I also endorse her claim that imagination is a skill in virtue of possessing these two features. However, in this paper, I argue that Kind’s case for imagination’s being a skill is unsatisfactory, since it lacks robust empirical evidence. Here, (...) I will provide evidence for by considering data from mental rotation experiments and for by considering data from developmental experiments. I conclude that imagination is a skill, but there is a further pressing question of how the cognitive architecture of imagination has to be structured to make this possible. I begin by considering how can be implemented sub-personally. I argue that this can be accounted for by positing a selection mechanism which selects content from memory representations to be recombined into imaginings, using Bayesian generation. I then show that such an account can also explain. On this basis, I hold that not only is imagination a skill, but that it is also plausibly implemented sub-personally by a Bayesian selection mechanism. (shrink)

Using an observational sample of players of a simple online game, we are able to trace the development of skill in that game. Information on playing time, and player location, allows us to estimate time of day during which practice took place. We compare those whose breaks in practice probably contained a night's sleep and those whose breaks in practice probably did not contain a night's sleep. Our analysis confirms experimental evidence showing a benefit of spacing for skill (...) learning, but it fails to find any additional benefit of sleeping during a break from practice. We discuss reasons why the well-established phenomenon of sleep consolidation might not manifest in an observational study of skill development. We put the spacing effect into the context of the other known influences on skill learning: improvement with practice, and individual differences in initial performance. Analysis of performance data from games allows experimental results to be demonstrated outside of the lab and for experimental phenomenon to be put in the context of the performance of the whole task. (shrink)

Philosophical questions surrounding skill and expertise can be traced back as far as Ancient Greece, China, and India. In the twentieth century skilled action was an important factor in the work of phenomenologists such as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty and analytic philosophers including Gilbert Ryle. However, as a subject in its own right it has, until now, remained largely in the background. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Skill and Expertise is an outstanding reference source and the first major (...) collection of its kind, reflecting the explosion of interest in the topic recent years. Comprising thirty-nine chapters written by leading international contributors, the Handbook is organised into six clear parts: Skill in the History of Philosophy Skill in Epistemology Skill, intelligence, and agency Skill in Perception, Imagination, and Emotion Skill, Language, and, Social Cognition Skill and Expertise in Normative Philosophy. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind and psychology, epistemology and ethics, The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Skill and Expertise is also suitable for those in related disciplines such as social psychology and cognitive science. It is also relevant to those who are interested in conceptual issues underlying skill and expertise in fields such as sport, the performing arts, and medicine. (shrink)

An experiment was performed to test the hypothesis that people sometimes take physical actions to make themselves more effective problem solvers. The task was to generate all possible words that could be formed from seven Scrabble letters. In one condition, participants could use their hands to manipulate the letters, and in another condition, they could not. Results show that more words were generated with physical manipulation than without. However, an interaction was obtained between the physical manipulation conditions and the specific (...) letter sets chosen, indicating that physical manipulation helps more for generating words in some circumstances than in others. Overall, our findings can be explained in terms of an interactive search process in which external, physical activity effectively complements internal, cognitive activity. Within this framework, the interaction can be explained in terms of the relative difficulty of generating words from the letters given in the different sets. (shrink)

Whether enough highly qualified STEM workers are being educated and trained in the UK is an important question. The answer has implications not only for educators, employers and policymakers but also for individuals who are currently engaged in, or are considering entering, education or training in this area. Set against a policy backdrop that prioritises students studying more science for longer, this paper considers long-term patterns of participation in STEM education – from school science through to graduate entry (...) into the highly skilled STEM labour market. Using a unique dataset that extends across seven decades and comprises many hundreds of thousands of students, the paper finds that patterns of participation in most STEM subjects have varied little over the period considered; suggesting that efforts to increase the numbers of students studying science in school has had limited impact on the throughput of students who study STEM, including the pure sciences, at university level and, subsequently, on the number of graduates who would be available to undertake highly skilled work in areas for which degree-level skills are a pre-requisite. (shrink)

. Early microbiome research found numerous associations between microbial community patterns and host physiological states. These findings hinted at community-level explanations. “Top-down” experiments, working with whole communities, strengthened these explanatory expectations. Now, “bottom-up” mechanism-seeking approaches are dissecting communities to focus on specific microbes carrying out particular biochemical activities. To understand the interplay between methodological and explanatory scales, we examine claims of “dysbiosis,” when host illness is proposed as the consequence of a community state. Our analysis concludes with general observations about (...) how methodologies relate to explanations, and the implications for microbiome research. (shrink)

The following is a summary of the author’s five-stage model of adult skill acquisition, developed in collaboration with Hubert L. Dreyfus. An earlier version of this article appeared in chapter 1 of Mind Over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer (1986, Free Press, New York).

In 2016, Bowen and Prentice published a dialogue on Benner's model ‘From Novice to Expert’. Their main concern was to explore the development of expertise in nursing and the evolution of this expertise when domains of practice change. In this contribution, this dialogue by Bowen and Prentice (2016) is the starting point to consider Advanced Practice Nurses (APN). The argument will propose that Benner's model can help perceive APN skill (and knowledge) acquisition. For this purpose, Benner's original works, the (...) philosophical bases on knowing that and knowing how, as well as the concept of APN, which was developed by Ann Hamric (2014; Tracy et al. 2023), are consulted. Eventually, it will be demonstrated that Benner's model can be employed in conjunction with APN and can provide valuable insight into skill and knowledge acquisition and career development. Therefore, APN can reinvigorate Benner's model and render it again very valid for today. This contribution will conclude with suggestions for supporting APNs' skill and knowledge development and indications for the evolvement of Benner's model. (shrink)

Can we conceive of a philosophy of technology that is not technophobic, yet takes seriously the problem of alienation and human meaning-giving? This paperretrieves the concern with alienation, but brings it into dialogue with more recent philosophy of technology. It defines and responds to the problem of alienation in a way that avoids both old-style human-centered approaches and contemporary thingcentered or hybridity approaches. In contrast to the latter, it proposes to reconcile subject and object not at the ontic level but (...) at the ontological, transcendental level and at the level of skilled activity. Taking inspiration from Dreyfus’s reading of Heidegger and engaging critically with the work of Borgmann and Arendt, it explores a phenomenology and ethics of skill. It is concluded that new and emerging technologies must be evaluated not only as artifacts and their consequences, but also in terms of the skills and activities they involve and require. Do they promote engagement with the world and with others, thus making us into better persons? (shrink)

We assume that acting ethically is a skill. We then use a phenomenological description of five stages of skill acquisition to argue that an ethics based on principles corresponds to a beginner’s reliance on rules and so is developmentally inferior to an ethics based on expert response that claims that, after long experience, the ethical expert learns to respond appropriately to each unique situation. The skills model thus supports an ethics of situated involvement such as that of Aristotle, (...) John Dewey, and Carol Gilligan against the detached, rationalist ethics of Kant, John Rawls, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Jürgen Habermas. (shrink)

This paper challenges traditional accuracy-centric accounts of rationality by synthesising the Free Energy Principle (FEP) with Charles Peirce’s pragmatist epistemology. Whereas the FEP frames cognition as a biological imperative to minimise surprise through predictive models, we argue that its normative force emerges when integrated with Peircean abduction and skill-based metrics. By reinterpreting rationality through skill scores—Peirce’s 1884 method for evaluating rare-event predictions—we demonstrate that survival-driven inference prioritises context-sensitive skill over abstract accuracy. The FEP’s variational free-energy minimisation aligns (...) with abduction’s dynamic conjecture-making, revealing rationality as a pragmatic negotiation between organismic survival and environmental complexity. Critically, we show that Bayesian accuracy measures (e.g., Kullback–Leibler divergence) fail to capture the adequacy conditions for skillful forecasting, whereas Peirce’s skill score satisfies constraints such as error weighting and directionality. This fusion of FEP and pragmatism advances a naturalistic-normative framework in which rationality is grounded in adaptive, enactive inference rather than idealised coherence, bridging computational neuroscience and theoretical biology with philosophical accounts of inquiry. (shrink)

We examined the effects of three different training conditions, all of which involve the motor system, on kindergarteners’ mental transformation skill. We focused on three main questions. First, we asked whether training that involves making a motor movement that is relevant to the mental transformation—either concretely through action or more abstractly through gestural movements that represent the action —resulted in greater gains than training using motor movements irrelevant to the mental transformation. We tested children prior to training, immediately after (...) training, and 1 week after training, and we found greater improvement in mental transformation skill in both the action and move-gesture training conditions than in the point-gesture condition, at both posttest and retest. Second, we asked whether the total gain made by retest differed depending on the abstractness of the movement-relevant training, and we found that it did not. Finally, we asked whether the time course of improvement differed for the two movement-relevant conditions, and we found that it did—gains in the action condition were realized immediately at posttest, with no further gains at retest; gains in the move-gesture condition were realized throughout, with comparable gains from pretest-to-posttest and from posttest-to-retest. Training that involves movement, whether concrete or abstract, can thus benefit children's mental transformation skill. However, the benefits unfold differently over time—the benefits of concrete training unfold immediately after training ; the benefits of more abstract training unfold in equal steps immediately after training and during the intervening week with no additional training. These findings have implications for the kinds of instruction that can best support spatial learning. (shrink)

The study of expertise is difficult to do in a laboratory environment due to the challenge of finding people at different skill levels and the lack of time for participants to acquire mastery. In this paper, we report on two studies that analyze naturalistic gameplay data using cohort analysis to better understand how skill relates to practice and habit. Two cohorts are analyzed, each from two different games. Our work follows skill progression through 7 months of Halo (...) matches for a holistic perspective, but also explores low-level in-game habits when controlling game units in StarCraft 2. Players who played moderately frequently without long breaks were able to gain skill the most efficiently. What set the highest performers apart was their ability to gain skill more rapidly and without dips compared to other players. At the beginning of matches, top players habitually warmed up by selecting and re-selecting groups of units repeatedly in a meaningless cycle. They exhibited unique routines during their play that aided them when under pressure. (shrink)

Over two decades ago, Davids et al. (1994) and Handford et al. (1997) raised theoretical concerns associated with traditional, reductionist, and mechanistic perspectives of movement coordination and skill acquisition for sport scientists interested in practical applications for training designs. These seminal papers advocated an emerging consciousness grounded in an ecological approach, signaling the need for sports practitioners to appreciate the constraints-led, deeply entangled, and non-linear reciprocity between the organism (performer), task, and environment subsystems. Over two decades later, the areas (...) of skill acquisition, practice and training design, performance analysis and preparation, and talent development in sport science have never been so vibrant in terms of theoretical modeling, knowledge generation and innovation, and technological deployment. Viewed at an ecological level of analysis, the work of sports practitioners has progressively transitioned toward the facilitation of an evolving relationship between an organism (athlete and team) and its environment (sports competition). This commentary sets out to explore how these original ideas from Davids et al. (1994) and Handford et al. (1997) have been advanced through the theoretical lens of ecological dynamics. Concurrently, we provide case study exemplars, from applied practice in high-performance sports organizations, to illustrate how these contemporary perspectives are shaping the work of sports practitioners (sport ecology designers) in practice and in performance preparation. (shrink)

This article investigates the construction of laboratory animal science as a version of “good science.” In the 1950s, a transnational community of scientists initiated large-scale standardization of animals for biomedicine, which included the standardization of care of laboratory animals as well as the development of guidelines and regulations on laboratory animal use. The article traces these developments and investigates how the standardization work took part in enacting laboratory animals as compound objects of care—and laboratory animal science as (...) being an intrinsically ethical practice—as good science. Importantly, the analysis shows how technological development is inextricably accompanied by ethics, as it is the result of complex social organization involving multiple ethical commitments. By investigating the development of laboratory animal science historically, it is possible to tease out how values, norms, and standards have been made integral to specific practices in the first place and how they have developed and been sustained over time. The article contributes to current concerns in science and technology studies about how life is made, valued, and ordered at the intersection of science and society and in biomedicine, including how certain values and positions of valuation come to count as authoritative and others not. (shrink)

It is widely argued that the skills of scientific expertise are tacit, meaning that they are difficult to study. In this essay, I draw on work from the philosophy of action about the nature of skills to show that there is another access point for the study of skills—namely, skill transmission in science education. I will begin by outlining Small’s Aristotelian account of skills, including a brief exposition of its advantages over alternative accounts of skills. He argues that (...) skills exist in a sort of life cycle between learning, practicing, and transmitting, which provides reasons to think that we should pay close attention to the way skills are transmitted in teaching and learning. To demonstrate how a study of skill transmittance can be revealing about the nature of skills in expertise, I explore an example—what I identify as the skill of tension-balancing in model-building. After describing the skill, I briefly examine two case studies from the science education literature that reveal insights about the skill of tension-balancing as it functions in the practice of model-building. (shrink)

Although several accounts of scientific understanding exist, the concept of understanding in relation to technology remains underexplored. This paper addresses this gap by proposing a philosophical account of technological understanding—the type of understanding that is required for and reflected by successfully designing and using technological artefacts. We develop this notion by building on the concept of scientific understanding. Drawing on parallels between science and technology, and specifically between scientific theories and technological artefacts, we extend the idea of scientific understanding (...) into the realm of technology. We argue that, just as scientific understanding involves the ability to explain a phenomenon using a theory, technological understanding involves the ability to use a technological artefact to realise a practical aim. Technological understanding can thus be considered a specific application of knowledge: it encompasses the cognitive skill of recognising how a practical aim can be achieved by using a technological artefact. In a context of design, this general notion of technological understanding is specified as the ability to design an artefact that, by producing a phenomenon through its physical structure, achieves the intended aim. We illustrate our concept of technological understanding through two running examples: magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and superconducting quantum computers. Our account highlights the epistemic dimension of engaging with technology and, by allowing for context-dependent specifications, provides guidance for testing and improving technological understanding in specific contexts. (shrink)

Previous accounts of cognitive skill acquisition have demonstrated how procedural knowledge can be obtained and transformed over time into skilled task performance. This article focuses on a complementary aspect of skill acquisition, namely the integration and reuse of previously known component skills. The article posits that, in addition to mechanisms that proceduralize knowledge into more efficient forms, skill acquisition requires tight integration of newly acquired knowledge and previously learned knowledge. Skill acquisition also benefits from reuse of (...) existing knowledge across disparate task domains, relying on indexicals to reference and share necessary information across knowledge components. To demonstrate these ideas, the article proposes a computational model of skill acquisition from instructions focused on integration and reuse, and applies this model to account for behavior across seven task domains. (shrink)

We studied collaborative skill acquisition in a dynamic setting with the game Co-op Space Fortress. While gaining expertise, the majority of subjects became increasingly consistent in the role they adopted without being able to communicate. Moreover, they acted in anticipation of the future task state. We constructed a collaborative skill acquisition model in the cognitive architecture ACT-R that reproduced subject skill acquisition trajectory. It modeled role adoption through reinforcement learning and predictive processes through motion extrapolation and learned (...) relevant control parameters using both a reinforcement learning procedure and a new to ACT-R supervised learning procedure. This is the first integrated cognitive model of collaborative skill acquisition and, as such, gives us valuable insights into the multiple cognitive processes that are involved in learning to collaborate. (shrink)

Spatial ability plays important roles in academic learning and everyday activities. A type of spatial thinking that is of particular significance to people's daily lives is cognitive mapping, that is, the process of acquiring, representing, and using knowledge about spatial environments. However, the skill of cognitive mapping shows large individual differences, and the task of spatial orientation and navigation poses great difficulty for some people. In this article, I look at the motivation and findings in the research into spatial (...) knowledge acquisition from an individual differences perspective. I also discuss major implications of the existence of large individual differences, particularly the possibility of improving cognitive mapping by training and adjusting navigation assistance to the wide variations in spatial aptitudes and preferences among people. (shrink)

in Jeremy McKenna (ed), At the Boundaries of Cricket, to be published in 2007 as a special issue of the journal Sport in Society and as a book in the series Sport in the Global Society (Taylor and Francis).

Many theories of complex cognitive-motor skill learning are built on the notion that basic cognitive processes group actions into easy-to-perform sequences. The present work examines predictions derived from laboratory-based studies of motor chunking and motor preparation using data collected from the real-time strategy video game StarCraft 2. We examined 996,163 action sequences in the telemetry data of 3,317 players across seven levels of skill. As predicted, the latency to the first action is delayed relative to the other actions (...) in the group. Other predictions, inspired by the memory drum theory of Henry and Rogers, received only weak support. (shrink)

We present a comprehension‐based computational model of UNIX user skill acquisition and performance in a training context (UNICOM). The work extends a comprehension‐based theory of planning to account for skill acquisition and learning. Individual models of 22 UNIX users were constructed and used to simulate user performance on successive command production problems in a training context. Comparisons of model and the human empirical data result in a high degree of agreement, validating the ability of UNICOM to predict user (...) response to training. (shrink)

Video games are ideal platforms for the study of skill acquisition for a variety of reasons. However, our understanding of the development of skill and the cognitive representations that support skilled performance can be limited by a focus on game scores. We present an alternative approach to the study of skill acquisition in video games based on the tools of the Expert Performance Approach. Our investigation was motivated by a detailed analysis of the behaviors responsible for the (...) superior performance of one of the highest scoring players of the video game Space Fortress. This analysis revealed how certain behaviors contributed to his exceptional performance. In this study, we recruited a participant for a similar training regimen, but we collected concurrent and retrospective verbal protocol data throughout training. Protocol analysis revealed insights into strategies, errors, mental representations, and shifting game priorities. We argue that these insights into the developing representations that guided skilled performance could only easily have been derived from the tools of the Expert Performance Approach. We propose that the described approach could be applied to understand performance and skill acquisition in many different video games and help reveal mechanisms of transfer from gameplay to other measures of laboratory and real-world performance. (shrink)

In the first part of _De Partibus Animalium_ I.5, Aristotle encourages his audience to engage in a novel kind of philosophy: the scientific inquiry into animals and plants (hereafter: biology): “Since we have completed stating the way things appear to us about divine things, it remains to speak about animal nature, omitting nothing in our power”; “one should approach research about each of the animals without disgust, since in every one there is something natural and beautiful”. The kind of discourse (...) here, to use Aristotle’s own terminology in the _Rhetoric_, is protreptic (“exhortation,” in Latin), that is, speech encouraging the audience to do something. What Aristotle is exhorting his readers to do, biology, is newly and originally conceived, but the literary technique employed– protreptic speech or argumentation– is one of the oldest and most traditional kinds of discourse, a genre for which Aristotle had already written a general account (in the _Rhetoric_) and a popular work, the lost dialogue _Protrepticus_, which was an exhortation to philosophy itself. -/- I argue that Aristotle applied a general technique of rank-ordering skills and sciences in expounding the protreptic arguments of _De Partibus Animalium_ I.5: a technique explicitly discussed, and strongly paralleled, in both the earlier _Protrepticus_ and some of the most familiar works of the Aristotle Corpus. I will begin by introducing Aristotle’s discussion of comparing sciences in the _Rhetoric_ and _Topics_. Next, I will discuss parallel applications of this argumentative technique in the _Nicomachean Ethics_ I, _Metaphysics_ I, _Protrepticus_, and _De Anima_ I. Finally, I show how Aristotle deployed the technique in the first two protreptic arguments of _De Partibus Animalium_ I.5. (shrink)

This paper presents a skill learning model CLARION. Different from existing models of mostly high-level skill learning that use a top-down approach (that is, turning declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge through practice), we adopt a bottom-up approach toward low-level skill learning, where procedural knowledge develops first and declarative knowledge develops later. Our model is formed by integrating connectionist, reinforcement, and symbolic learning methods to perform on-line reactive learning. It adopts a two-level dual-representation framework (Sun, 1995), with a (...) combination of localist and distributed representation. We compare the model with human data in a minefield navigation task, demonstrating some match between the model and human data in several respects. (shrink)

In this paper we propose that the term skill acquisition, as commonly used in traditional psychology, and the philosophy, education, movement science and performance development literatures, has been biased by an organismic asymmetry. In cognitive and experimental psychology, for example, it refers to the establishment of an internal state or representation of an act which is believed to be acquired as a result of learning and task experience. Here we elucidate an ecological perspective which suggests that the term (...) skill acquisition may not refer to an entity but rather to the emergence of an adaptive, functional relationship between an organism and its environment, thus avoiding an inherent organismic asymmetry in theorizing. In this respect, the terms 'skill adaptation' or 'skill attunement' might be more suitable to describe this process. (shrink)

Migrant farmworkers dominate the horticultural workforce in many parts of the Minority (developed) World. The ‘manual’ work that they do—picking and packing fruits and vegetables, and pruning vines and trees—is widely designated unskilled. In policy, media, academic, activist and everyday discourses, hired farm work is framed as something anybody can do. We interrogate this notion with empirical evidence from the Sunraysia horticultural region of Australia. The region’s grape and almond farms depend heavily on migrant workers. By-and-large, the farmers and farmworkers (...) we spoke to pushed back against the unskilled tag. They asserted that farmworkers acquire knowledge and skills over time and that experienced farmworkers are valuable—their value being brought into sharp relief against accounts of inexperienced farmworkers’ errors. Our interviewees provided rich insights into farmworkers’ engagements with crops and the intricacies of picking and pruning well. Far from being bereft of knowledge and skills, they recognised that experienced farmworkers bring benefits. They improve productivity, product quality and ultimately profits. This is especially so when open communication channels exist across the farm hierarchy, when experienced farmworkers’ insights are taken seriously by their employers. Our research is informed by organisational studies literature and scholarship on craft/making. Like factory floor workers and artisans, experienced farmworkers bring accumulated knowledge and skills to their work, gained through repeat performance. They reflect on and adjust their activities in dialogue with their materials and the environment. Experienced farmworkers demonstrate care, dexterity and judgement. They are not unskilled, and they are more than labouring bodies. (shrink)

Dealing with complex problems often requires argumentative skills that go beyond the natural abilities even of gifted students and lecturers. We sketch how to reconstruct and evaluate arguments and outline how the fostering of argumentative skills is integrated into the curriculum in Environmental Sciences at the Department of Environmental Systems Sciences of ETH Zurich.

For Edmund Husserl, the crisis of the modern sciences consists in the reduction of beings and the world to the mathematically measurable. Yet the lifeworld with its things that we fashion and use with our hands is no less real than the objects of science, and the scientific attitude is always nested within this lived world. Martin Heidegger by contrast finds the major source of our crisis in the Cartesian conception of subject and world. This has culminated in Nietzschean (...) theory of the will to power, which in its unity with technology has despoiled our environment. In all of this Heidegger retains a tenderness for the small-scale products of human handiwork, which are preferable to machines and machine tools. In his own philosophy of technology Gilbert Simondon shares some of these concerns, whilst contending that technological objects have untapped potentials in relation to those who invent, use and develop them. Common to all these philosophies is a worry about abstract theory and mechanization reducing our direct engagement with things. This worry is compounded by a sociocultural tendency identified by Matthew Crawford, a tendency to denigrate a career in the practical trades. Drawing on Crawford’s experience of manual engagement in the world, I argue that a revalorization of such skilled work and of caring and repairing would help to ameliorate the climate and pollution crises and improve our lives. Many of our problems come from the discarding of things through our carelessness or through planned obsolescence by their makers. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The aim of this commentary is to complement Haslanger’s view of cognition as a skill shaped by culture. I start by presenting an empirically-oriented account of the process of enculturation based on the cognitive integration framework. I then illustrate the active role of material (and not just symbolic) culture in cognition by drawing on extended cognition theory. Finally, I argue that embedding Haslanger’s work within these two theories of cognition better serves the objectives of her project and, at (...) the same time, promotes a critical philosophy of cognitive science. (shrink)

Amid the diverse ways men and women have viewed the relationship between science and religion, explicit arguments that “Science is God's Provision” remain unexamined by historians. Such arguments are examined here as they relate to the problem of theodicy, by looking at a particular case study that inspired comments on the relationship between medicine and faith, namely, the discovery of the diphtheria antitoxin. This story highlights, first, the flexibility of the tradition of natural theology, and second, the important (...) role the problem of theodicy has played in the history of the relationship between science and religion. (shrink)

Ludwik Fleck’s Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact is an extended argument for the inclusion of social factors in the history and philosophy of science. Fleck uses the history of syphilis as his case study, which falls into two parts. In the first two chapters of his book, Fleck presents a history of the change of the concept of syphilis as a “carnal scourge with strong moralistic connotations” in the middle ages to the modern concept of syphilis as (...) an infectious disease (1979, 77). In the second part of the book, he presents a detailed account of the development of a serum test for syphilis, the Wasserman reaction. Fleck also argues that perception is theory-laden, for example, in his comparative study of anatomical drawings, and for the importance of social pressures on the development of science, for example, in his discussion of the rivalry between nations to first develop a cure for syphilis, as demanded by politicians (1979, 133 ff. and 68). (shrink)

Teaching writing to doctoral students or academics at a technical university is a challenging task. Because they need to publish their research findings in English to pursue academic careers, they are usually highly motivated and expect a lot of the class. Their language competences, however, very often lack enough proficiency and may contribute to manuscript rejection. The paper focuses on language issues based on the rules of controlled natural languages (CNLs) and guidelines of Plain English. It shows how employing these (...) issues improves grammatical quality and readability of science-oriented written texts. The paper describes four principles: removing nominalisation and using the so-called strong verbs to make the message simpler and more direct; combining nouns in strings to express complex ideas economically; applying grammatical consistency for coordinate elements in sentences to make them less chaotic; and reducing wordiness to obtain a more precise and comprehensible piece of writing. Sample phrases and sentences from authentic student writing as well as their improved versions are provided to each of the guidelines so that a reader has a deeper insight into how the principles work in a specialist context. Because problems with, for example, research papers, grant proposals or reports are common to various disciplines and at various levels, the Author of the paper draws conclusions that these principles should be implemented not only in a technical but also legal, medical and business writing course offered by English teachers to both young researchers and experienced scientists. (shrink)

Three studies using the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition were conducted over a period of 21 years. Nurses with a range of experience and reported skill-fulness were interviewed. Each study used nurses’ narrative accounts of actual clinical situations. A subsample of participants were observed and interviewed at work. These studies extend the understanding of the Dreyfus model to complex, underdetermined, and fast-paced practices. The skill of involvement and the development of moral agency are linked with the development (...) of expertise, and change as the practitioner becomes more skillful. Nurses who had some difficulty with understanding the ends of practice and difficulty with their skills of interpersonal and problem engagement did not progress to the level of expertise. Taken together, these studies demonstrate the usefulness of the Dreyfus model for understanding the learning needs and styles of learning at different levels of skill acquisition. (shrink)

The acquisition of complex motor, cognitive, and social skills, like playing a musical instrument or mastering sports or a language, is generally associated with implicit skill learning . Although it is a general view that SL is most effective in childhood, and such skills are best acquired if learning starts early, this idea has rarely been tested by systematic empirical studies on the developmental pathways of SL from childhood to old age. In this paper, we challenge the view that (...) childhood and early school years are the prime time for skill learning by tracking age-related changes in performance in three different paradigms of SL. We collected data from participants between 7 and 87 years for a Serial Reaction Time Task testing the learning of motor sequences, an Artificial Grammar Learning task testing the extraction of regularities from auditory sequences, and Probabilistic Category Learning in the Weather Prediction task , a non-sequential categorization task. Results on all three tasks show that adolescence and adulthood are the most efficient periods for skill learning, since instead of becoming less and less effective with age, SL improves from childhood into adulthood and then later declines with aging. (shrink)

Clinical reasoning lies at the heart of healthcare and medical practice. It is the complex, nuanced process by which clinicians and healthcare professionals make sense of patient narratives, clinical data, and diagnostic possibilities in order to arrive at informed, compassionate, and effective decisions on how to treat and manage patients. It is both an art and a science—requiring not only mastery of biomedical knowledge and technological tools but also the cultivation of judgment, empathy, and reflective insight. As humanity enters (...) an era marked by unprecedented advances in artificial intelligence, digital health technologies, and systems-based care, it has become increasingly important to re-examine the nature of clinical reasoning and how it must evolve to meet the challenges and promises of twenty first-century medicine. In assembling this volume, the goal has been to offer a resource that not only informs but also inspires—one that honors the deep traditions of medical reasoning while looking boldly toward its future. If humanity is to improve the quality, safety, and benevolence of healthcare, we must learn to reason more wisely, not just more quickly. This book is a contribution to that critical endeavor. (shrink)

Science fiction is a kind of fictional narrative that is characterised by novelty, rationality, and realism. It typically and centrally imagines future developments in social organisation, science, and/or technology, though it sometimes depicts amazing inventions in the present day, present-day invasions from space, or events that happened in the deep past, in prehistoric times. Science fiction can take many forms, but at its core it is fiction about the future. Science-fiction writers are not prophets, and they (...) cannot simply provide a transparent window that opens upon the future. Hence, the title of this paper refers to a lens into the future: something more probing – and perhaps more difficult to use, requiring more activity, interpretation, and skill – than a window overlooking a future vista. In some cases, setting narratives in the future (much like the use of extraterrestrial settings) merely provides writers with exotic locales for adventure stories, something that came in handy as a plot device during a time when the surface of the Earth was increasingly being explored and mapped. However, science fiction writers often engage more meaningfully than that with ideas of the future, or of possible futures. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractAs scientific research has advanced so too has the complexity of the questions addressed. Cross-disciplinary collaborations are often the most efficient route to managing that complexity and require effective communication across boundaries. To continue driving science forward and be able to tackle global challenges, the art of good interdisciplinary communication needs to become a core skill in a scientist's portfolio.