...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
