Toward Ithaka: hiking along paths of knowing of/in an ecologically dynamic world

ABSTRACT

Anthropologist, Tim Ingold, recounts that humans inhabit a familiar, yet evolving world – stretched between ‘the happened’ and ‘the not yet’. Despite efforts to the contrary, we can never fully be sure of its future configurations, making it difficult to determine how to solve yet-to-be-encountered problems, or how to skilfully navigate through uncharted terrain. Following on, I contend that to thrive in such a world is not to coordinate our orientation onto its surface in advance, but is to move, immersed with its opportunities for action; knowing as we go. Specifically, weaving together works from ecological psychologist James Gibson, and educational philosopher Jan Masschelein, with those of Ingold, I review the idea that knowledge growth of everyday tasks requires correspondence with threads of inquiry. This proposition highlights three principles of skilled behaviour, knowledge and education in an ecologically dynamic world: mastery as submission to constraint; knowing about as subsequent to knowing of; guidance without specification. I bring life to these principles through various applications in sporting contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Anthropology
• ecological dynamics
• complexity
• education
• knowledge
• transdisciplinarity

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank professor Keith Davids for his guidance on earlier versions of this paper. I would also like to thank my father for his thoughtful and guiding critiques on an earlier version of this paper. Along with my wonderful mother, I have much to thank them for – none more than setting up the conditions for my growth, which have led me to where I am today.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I borrow this phrasing from Ingold (2007).

2 Inspired by Homer's Odyssey, Constantine P. Cavafy's (1911) poem, Ithaka, elaborates on a metaphorical journey one takes toward a destination never reached. While on the journey, one encounters and explores many different places, growing their knowledge of these places and its inhabitants as they go. In this sense, knowledge is not an end point to be reached, but is a journey that continually unfolds along a path toward Ithaka.

3 Defined here phenomenally, as invitations to act (cf. Withagen et al., 2012).

4 Dynamically, this is captured by the concept of degeneracy, which describes how the same output (i.e. getting my lunch) can be achieved by structurally different system configurations (Edelman & Gally, 2001).

5 For further insight, see Juarrero (1999), where agency and intentionality are re-considered beyond static cause-effect relations, viewed instead as emergent from surrounding constraints.

6 In line with van Dijk and Rietveld (2017), skilled individuals can anticipate future events by way of an active participation with. The skilled angler, for example, has a ‘niggle’ (or is ‘instinctive’) about catching a fish in ‘this’ location using ‘this’ equipment, because they participate with the activity of fishing. Progressively, this leads to a sensitivity toward the invitations that keep open ‘catching fish’. Thus, what is learned is not just the act of fishing, but a capability to read the unfolding situation (i.e. they are becoming enskiled to the taskscape – see Woods et al., 2021).

7 A conventional interpretation of ‘scape’ is one of ‘scopic’, implying land-looked-at. However, Olwig (1996) reminds us of its Germanic etymology of shaft, meaning land-being-shaped. This emphasises the landscapes temporality, which Ingold (2000) emphasises as the ‘on-going-ness’ of time entangled with the resonate and interlocking tasks of inhabitants. It is through these ongoing tasks where the landscape is continually shaped.

8 In pushing against Western traditions of knowledge integration being vertical or lateral (representing categorical knowledge about), Ingold (2011) introduces the neologism of alongly, arguing that inhabitant knowledge of is grown ‘along’ paths of movement.