Knowledge in Action

A response to Jos Kessels ‘Socrates Comes to Market’1

Jim Platts

Without decrying what Jos Kessels has presented in ‘Socrates Comes to Market’, which is very
useful, I propose to extend it because, whilst pointing towards something important, he
simultaneously misrepresents it.

He makes a mistake when he calls Socrates the father of Western philosophy. This is too focused
and thus shuts out many learning routes. It would be more precise to describe Socrates as one early
exemplar of Western philosophical practice – which leaves these learning routes open. He then
notes that Socrates didn’t write about it but practised it, and he also says that you can’t learn it by
reading about it, you have to learn it (that is, how to think and act philosophically) from someone
who can do it – which is why it is important to leave the access to those other learning routes open.
Unfortunately he then goes on to restrict himself to written descriptive material on modern
philosophical processes (the Socratic dialogue in the Nelsonian form), and complains that Peter
Senge’s descriptive work inThe Fifth Discipline (1990) falls short of what he is looking for. By his
own premises, what did he expect? He then himself describes an example of Socratic dialogue,
mostly for the purpose of illustrating the approach as a methodology, and it is an example which
does not achieve a very rich end state. What he completely fails to include is any discussion of
competence, which is what generates the end state, and what competence looks like and feels like in
these sorts of philosophical processes, which could have been illustrated by two examples, one with
inexperienced people participating and the other with seasoned practitioners.

In this context he is quite wrong to presume that Plato’s portrayal of Socratic dialogue is seriously
edited. My own experience of Quaker dialogue, the practice of which is anchored in a similar way
to what Kessels describes as Socratic practice, is that when it is amongst deeply experienced people,
it achieves succinct clarity of understanding in an exceedingly short time, with a remarkable brevity
of speech. This isn’t something ‘rediscovered’. This has been Quaker practice for 350 years and is
current business practice for 18,000 people in the UK alone, some better and some worse at it,
obviously, but nevertheless well established, and its extraordinary productiveness is amply
demonstrated by the central contribution Quakers made, despite their small numbers, to what is
now called the industrial revolution and also to the de facto standards of good corporate governance
in the UK. However, like Socrates, these people don’t write about it. They don’t even think it is
special. They just do it. And each generation picks it up from the previous one by practising it with
them. So Kessels knows nothing about it.

With slight variations in the practices, these meditative ways of thinking and working are central to
current Kabbalistic (Jewish meditative philosophical) practice and Sufi (Islamic meditative
philosophical) practice. In his epilogue to School of Kabbalah (1985) Halevi points out that what
has been continuous practice for millennia is hardly written about at all and has to be learnt from
someone who can do it, and in his preface to The Sufis (1964) Idries Shah says the same, and goes
further. He points out that information without the appropriate related experience does not
produce understanding, and so it is Sufi practice never to give real teaching outside of the
appropriate context which gives it its meaning. Real teaching is like food. It is intended to be
absorbed and transformed into an absorbed capability. It is not intended to be waved about as a
possession. I say the same in my own brief outline of aspects of Quaker practice in ‘Achieving
Consensus’ and I point towards it in other papers such as ‘Participating in the Work of Creation’
and ‘The Cambridge Manufacturing Leaders’ Programme’, which also point towards the necessity
of one to one guidance.2 Schön captures the essence of the teaching and learning relationship well
in Educating the Reflective Practitioner (1987) when he says

1
Reason in Practice Vol 1 Number 1 2001 pp 49-72

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Jim Platts

It is as though the studio master had said to him, ‘I can tell you there is something you need to know, and
with my help you may be able to learn it. But I cannot tell you what it is in a way you can now
understand. I can only arrange for you to have the right sorts of experience for yourself. You must be
willing, therefore, to have these experiences. Then you will be able to make an informed choice about
whether you wish to continue. If you are unwilling to step into this new experience without knowing
ahead of time what it will be like, I cannot help you. You must trust me’.

All the lines of practice I refer to use highly developed modes of thought which today are more often
referred to as involving meditative processes, rather than philosophical processes, and usually with
some negative connotation to the word ‘meditative’. Philosophy, in contrast, has too often become
academic word-play with no relationship either to the processes of thought or to how we actually
live. All the lines of practice referred to here however are intimately related to both. Thought and
action are integral. Literally, to understand a principle is to stand under it – to embody that
principle. The point of reflective practice is that you learn from experience, but it isn’t understood
until you are doing it. Until you embody it in action, knowledge is not present. My comment on
Kessels’ work as represented by the Reason in Practice translation is thus that it focuses too much on
the idea of Socrates’ approach as a methodology and does not follow the guidance Socrates gave,
which was to develop competence. Which means finding someone who knows.

Jim Platts

Jim Platts spent 23 years in industry, was a Partner in the consulting engineering practice Gifford
and Partners 1981-6, Managing Director of Composite Technology Ltd 1986-9, and is now a
lecturer in the Institute for Manufacturing at the University of Cambridge. His interests are design
and manufacturing, particularly skill-based manufacturing, and a concern for ethical leadership.

2
Platts, M J ‘Participating in the Work of Creation’ European Journal of Engineering Education 23 (2) 1998
pp163-169; Platts, M J ‘The Cambridge Manufacturing Leaders’ Programme’ Dienstleistungen - Innovation für
Wachstum und Beschäftigung Tagung BMB+F, Bonn August/September 1998 pp 483-497; Platts, M J ‘Achieving
Consensus’ Conclave on Human Values and Conflict Resolution Centre for Management Training and Research,
Chandigarh April 1999

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© Copyright Reason in Practice 2001