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I've been thinking a bit recently about poetic knowledge and its significance for life-changing learning. In this post I will give a definition and two examples of how poetic knowledge differs from "head" knowledge and offer two simple ideas of how as teachers we can become more poetic in our instruction.
For a definition of poetic knowledge, I turn to Dr. James Taylor (no, not that James Taylor):
Poetic experience indicates an encounter with reality that is nonanalytical, something that is perceived as beautiful, awful (awe-full), spontaneous, mysterious… Poetic knowledge is a spontaneous act of the external and internal senses with the intellect, integrated and whole, rather than an act associated with the powers of analytic reasoning… It is, we might say, knowledge from the inside out, radically different from a knowledge about things. In other words, it is the opposite of scientific knowledge.
We have to be very careful with this definition or we risk doing great violence science itself. Taylor's definition concludes with a simple antonym to poetic knowledge: "it is the opposite of scientific knowledge." This is what Taylor means: we can know "with our head" or we can know "with our entire selves". This is the key: true, deep knowledge cannot be divorced from the head (it is not anti-rational or anti-"fact"), however, true knowledge also cannot be only, or even primarily, based in the mind and aimed at the other from a distance. True knowledge comes from coming close to another (whether it be a person, an animal, or a volcano). Imagine saying that you "know" a woman whom you have never met because you have seen her lab work on a chart or know her DNA chain. Imagine saying that you know what a sunset or symphony is because someone has described the facts of the light and notes. This is the point Taylor is making.
Following are two illustrations of this distinction in types of knowing from the world of science and literature. First I want to demonstrate a volcanologist and PhD student from Cambridge experiencing poetic knowledge:
I want to highlight two moments. The first is at 1:40 when the PhD student is speaking. Look at his face; he can barely contain his joy. Listen to his word choice, "incredible," "special," "exciting," and "odd feeling." This is not the diction of the head or of the "unbiased observer". It is the language of the heart and the soul. Next notice that his mentor echoes him, having studied volcanoes for 40 years and finally getting to experience one! His language illustrates this key break in terms of knowledge even more perfectly! He says, "So, professionally I knew all about it, technically, scientifically, but actually experiencing it is a visceral experience, if I can put it that way, because it assaults all your senses at once." (Emphasis original) This is exactly the dichotomy Taylor laid out: the head versus the experiential knowledge of the whole person that coming into real contact with the Other gives.
Secondly, I turn to Dickens and his novel Hard Times, where we see the British master painting a picture of the preference for scientific knowledge over poetic in the schoolmasters of his day:
Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir—peremptorily Thomas—Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic.
For Gradgrind even humans are just "facts" in bodies, ready to be measured and divided using arithmetic. We are then introduced to his interaction with his students, "the little pitchers before him, who were to be filled so full of facts," with him looking forward to blowing them out of childhood by removing their "tender young imaginations." A sample of his teaching follows as he interacts with "Sissy," whose father works with horses and who is intimately familiar with them, and Bitzer, a pupil more to his liking. He instructs Sissy,
(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.)
‘Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. ‘Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals! Some boy’s definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours.’ ...
‘Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.’ Thus (and much more) Bitzer. ‘Now girl number twenty,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘You know what a horse is.’
Of course the reader is in on the tragic joke that Sissy knows infinitely more about horses than Bitzer and Gradgrind combined. She knows their sounds, scents, and majesty. She knows awe. But her "un-scientific" knowledge is not only inferior, it is not even knowledge according to Gradgrind. ("Now you know what a horse is.")
What does it look like as teachers and parents to continually introduce our children to real knowledge, knowledge that humbles them as they learn, because they are coming into contact with the things themselves, which are so much more than just the facts? In the very least it looks like getting out into the world for science and getting into the Great Books for literature and grammar. Instead of textbooks, let's get out to the volcanoes and into the books that change us as we interact with them.
