Module5 What's the big idea?

Thinking with the body depends on our sense of muscle movement, posture, balance, and touch. (p161) This general sense is called proprioception. As we walk or run we are constantly aware of how our body feels. However this sense is hidden from us because it is automatic and unconscious.  When we learn new skills, this unconsciousness becomes a consciousness. Then, we realize the sensation of muscle movement, body feeling, and touch as a powerful tool for imaginative thinking. The body thinking includes not only our movements but also our feelings about the movements. It can be expressed by movements or anything else as well. (Such as music, dance, math, sculpture, science and chemical) For example, I was told that sushi artists with much experience can always pick out exactly the same amount of rice by scooping up a handful of rice when they make sushi.  The rice is supposed to be composed around 200 grains in it and expert sushi men can pick the exact amount without consciously thinking about it. The sushi men trained themselves for a long time and developed a kinesthetic feel, which requires a strong and deep understanding of the work. This muscular, tactile, and manipulative thinking skill combines objective and subjective ways of knowing. Only when the thing we manipulate is no longer “other “but an extension of “I” does it obey our will and desire. (p179) Thus, there is a great need for a fuller consciousness of this special sense, for it to be ordered and made comprehensive.

“Empathy means to glide with one’s own feeling into the dynamic structure of an object, a pillar or a crystal or the branch of a tree, or even of an animal or a man, and as it were to trace it from within, understanding the formation and motoriality of the object with the perception of one’s own muscles.” (p186) We can find out this skill when actor and actress create their roles by empathizing with characters they are to portray. The real empathizing requires understanding other people (things) not only objectively from the outside but subjectively from inside (p186). For actors and actresses, they need to absorb themselves in someone else’s role fully which goes beyond merely acting it out. Many physicians use empathy to understand their patient, historians use this to see the past world with other people’s views. The biographers also use empathy to facilitate emotional and intellectual understanding so that they can grasp the essence of the life they study. These people not only know their subjects objectively, they know the objects of their work subjectively. We use this thinking too in our education often. To teach foreign language words, we encourage students to describe the words by moving and acting so that the students understand the world by being that words. Acting a part in a system does build real understanding and provide various perspectives to students.  

These two thinking tools have a similarity. Both thinking tool require human’s body memories for real understanding. Also both make a contribution to combine objective and subjective knowing.