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...what kinds of tasks are the making of revolutions and creating new forms of production. ...such tasks are voyages in uncharted waters. There may be some rules of thumb, but there can be no blueprints or battle plans drawn up in advance; the numerous unknowns in the equation make a one-step solution inconceivable. In more technical language, such goals can be approached only by a stochastic process of successive approximations, trial and error, experiment, and learning through experience. The kind of knowledge required in such endeavors is not deductive knowledge from first principles but rather what Greeks of the classical period called mètis. Usually translated as "cunning," mètis is better understood as the kind of knowledge that can be acquired by long practice at similar but rarely identical tasks, which requires constant adaptation to changing circumstances. James C. Scott, Seeing Through the Eyes of State, Yale University Press 1998, pp177-178 as quoted by Marvin J. Malecha, FAIA, NCSU School of Design News, Design Guild, Summer 1999, p4
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