‘The Value of the Inexact’: An Apology for Inaccurate Motor Performance

Abstract

Philosophic inquiry into the mental states of elite athletes during skilled motor performance continues to grow. In contrast to the bulk of these works that focus almost exclusively on skillful performance, this paper examines athletic motor behavior from a point of inexactness – or even failure – in athletic performance. Utilizing the works of Michael Polanyi, who believed that both ideas of achievement and failure were equally necessary to understand the behavior of living things and their physical actions, I examine the notion of failure as a framework to scrutinize the cognitive processes occurring during the development and performance of skilled motor behavior. After reviewing Polanyi’s conceptions of personal knowing to locate the source of inaccuracy in human activity, I present Polanyi’s distinction between two kinds of mistakes and apply each to inaccurate sport performance. I then suggest that mistakes in sport should be re-conceptualized beyond their current negative connotations. Instead, conceptions of mistakes should also include respect for ‘man’s most distinguished act’ – that being the production of knowledge. From this expanded perspective, the value of inexact motor performance can be found in addition to notions of uncertainty and skill development in what Polanyi calls ‘metaphysical implication of a groping for reality’. In some final thoughts, I will suggest future implications of the value of the inexact on broader sport issues.

Keywords:

• Polanyi
• mistakes
• inaccuracy
• athletic motor performance

Notes

1. This title is borrowed from a letter Polanyi wrote to the British journal, The Philosophy of Science (Polanyi 1936).

2. Sport is filled with many definitions, demonstrations, and degrees of failure – and success. It is not my intention to define either here.

3. In a recent presentation, Elcombe (2010) described what draws both participants and spectators to sport as the ‘aesthetics of inefficiency’. He suggests a ‘tension implicit in human experience between the possible and impossible (which) gives sport its force as a meaningful form of life’.

4. See Csikszentmihalyi (1990) and Murphy and White (1995) for descriptions of these phenomenons.

5. I use the term ‘negative connotation’ here to highlight the overwhelming desire by most sport practitioners to negate inaccuracy and error from all sport performances.

6. I explored Polanyi’s framework and its application to the phenomenon of skilled motor behavior in a previous work (Hopsicker 2009).

7. This acronym stands for Balance (in weight distribution between the feet), Eyes (focused on the target), Elbow (arm bent at a ninety-degree angle forming an ‘L’ with the elbow pointing down), and Follow-through (arm straightening toward the basket with the wrist flexing at the point of release). While there are many other physical actions that comprise the jump shot, these four are generally accepted as central to shooting success. I would suggest that most modern skills textbooks include these shooting skill cues in one way or another.

8. For discussion regarding consciousness in skilled motor behavior, see Birch 2009, Breivik 2007, Erikson 2010, Hopsicker 2009, Moe 2005, and Moe 2007.

9. Those unfamiliar with baseball may imagine an analogous situation between the bowler and the batsman in cricket. The bowler is attempting to get the batsman to erroneously swing or not swing at the ball in an effort to hit the wicket.

10. I concede that interactive sports, those in which one person or team play directly against others (soccer, basketball, tennis), would be more conducive to a rapidly changing environment than a parallel sport, those in which one competitor’s score is created independently of the other competitor’s influence (sprinting, high jump, golf). However, even in parallel sports, an opponent’s score and actions can create significant psychological pressure on competing athletes. The deterioration of golf scores by leaders in major tournaments exemplifies such reactions. While the environment does not ‘rapidly’ change, it does change and creates opportunities for inaccuracy. See Hardman et al. (1996, 61–2) for complete descriptions of interactive and parallel sports.

11. Modern American football kickers use the soccer-style kick in which the kicker approaches the ball at an angle rather than in a straight-on fashion.

12. The National Basketball Association’s average free throw shooting percentage has only increased 6% in the past 50 years (Branch 2009).

13. While beyond the scope of this paper, Loland’s ecosophical treatment of ‘sustainable development’ in sport provides an interesting analysis of this dilemma between human quest for achievement and the finite composition of a human’s material conditions (2006).