Klarinet Archive - Posting 000056.txt from 2000/03

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] show of hands....
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 12:54:04 -0500

On Wed, 1 Mar 2000 21:52:59 -0800, bsjohnsn@-----.net said:

> I'd like a show of hands from all you folks that picked out your
> clarinet, mouthpiece, reed, ligature, reed trimmer, or cork grease at
> a scientific-type lab that put you in a room, hooked up electrodes,
> mikes, seismic gear, or other kinds of measuring stuff, and let you
> see a printout of the results, before you made your choice.
> Hmmmmm....then did you (gasp!) make your decision on ... dare I say
> it?... SUBJECTIVE criteria? Gosh. Golly. So much for the scientific
> approach. Burch

But of course. Human beings do all sorts of amazing things, knowing
very little of how they do them. Though Stradivarius undoubtedly had
rules of thumb when he made his instruments, most of his ability was
probably instinctive, springing from years of experience; when you play
a reed, it sort of 'pops into your mind' that it would be a good idea to
scrape it 'there'; your body 'knows' sometimes what sort of thing you
ought to eat if you're a bit under the weather.

But all these things are very specific to the context in which they
occur, because with two different pieces of wood both you and
Stradivarius would have done something different, and you'd have wanted
to eat something else if something else had been wrong with you.

The difficulty comes when someone wants to make a pronouncement about
what *someone else should do*. Then we have to do our best to make sure
that we speak in objective terms about what is objective, whilst
encouraging the other person to engage in themselves what only they can
contribute. Mixing the two things only results in confusion.

And the method of probing the objective world (science) can often be
very useful, because humans do fool themselves very easily about their
intuitions -- wanting to be *right*, of course!

Hence the paradox that although you 'know' a lot more about your body
than a doctor does in one sense, he 'knows' (another sense) a lot more
about your body than you do.

It's better to understand how this can be so than to come down on one
side or the other.

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE www.gmn.com/artists/welcome.asp
tel/fax 01865 553339

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