The Dominance of Imperial Knowledge

I have been intending to read James C. Scott’s ‘Thinking Like a State’ for several years, but for various reasons, I never gotten around to it. Somewhat spookily, I eventually began reading it a day before his recent death was announced. Not sure what that says or if I should provide advance warning to future authors I intend to read, but the book is a fitting tribute to a great brain. Written over 25 years ago, ‘Thinking Like a State’ remains highly relevant, prescient and very thought provoking. The body of the book explores what Scott calls ‘Authoritarian High Modernism’ which is way of describing attempts to impose strategic top-down change on communities and social groups. It is a masterful critique - well researched, clear and grounded that demonstrates how good intentions and an absolute belief in engineering and science can so readily lead to impoverished and unsustainable outcomes. His ideas has spurned wide range of subsequent books and studies, including how this top down authoritarianism plays out in safety through management systems, rules and command-driven methods. Scott’s thinking can be seen in much of the Safety-II thinking and his work is often cited. ?The broader ideas Scott outlines are worthy of another discussion, so I will dedicate this article to explore his answer to the problem he sets-out. Scott challenges us to recognise the importance of Metis, the accumulated wisdom or knowhow that comes from practice or lived experience. The dominance of Techne knowledge and dismissal of Metis underscores many of our problems. While its not a new argument, it’s a bold claim. I find his distinction of Metis and Techne knowledge both useful and interesting. Scott refers to Techne as Imperial Knowledge, because of its dominance over local knowhow, practical skills and experiance.

The Arguments

In the conclusion of ‘Thinking Like a State’, Scott argued that many failed attempts to control complexity and impose order from above arise from not recognising the value of practical skills, ‘experience-based intelligence’ and local knowledge. This is an advancement on mere tacit knowledge. He describe the accumulated wisdom, knowhow and the local knowledge that emerges from and is embedded in local experience Metis. This is contextual, practical and flexible skills and knowledge. The opposite of Metis is Techne which is the abstract, universal technical and scientific knowledge that is objective, empirical, logical and often deployed by experts (yes, people like me with our spreadsheets, pretty models, nice theories and neat frameworks).

Scott argued that many of the large-scale government-led change programmes and attempts to order society stem from prioritising Techne over Metis. Bureaucrats and technical specialists attempt to impose order, rationality and change onto others using Techne-based logic and experience. Techne dominates, dismisses and denies the local experience that is Metis. Now, at this point you may be thinking what has this got to do with work or the world of safety, quality or sustainability. Well several leading figures have applied Scott’s arguments to safety and quality within healthcare, maritime, aviation, indeed a range of safety-related fields. Scott’s arguments that local expertise, knowledge and knowhow is being overshadowed and even dismissed in favour of formal processes, competencies and expertise is one of the tensions running though contemporary debates in safety. Scott’s two forms of knowledge provide a useful window through which to view these discussions.

Scott makes a second argument. Not only do dismiss Metis knowledge and skill in favour of the technical, scientific and formal knowledge that is Techne, but many of the advancements that we think were developed through Techne methods (i.e. research, studies, scientific breakthroughs, etc) were actually on closer examination, retrospective capturing long held experienced-based intelligence. Put simply, the knowledge and insights were long known by local experts and communities, but only become widely known when they were formalised through studies and research. He cites many medical ‘breakthroughs’ such as penicillin, smallpox, malaria, scurvy as examples. We can equally looks to disasters for the dominance and over-confidence in Techne knowledge over Metis, including the building of a Japanese nuclear power plant about historic tsunami markers. You may know of other examples where local knowledge and experienced ?was dismissed in favour of external expertise. Scott summarises this second argument:

“A recurrent theme of Western philosophy and science, including social science, has been the attempt to reformulate systems of knowledge in order to bracket uncertainty and thereby permit the kind of logical deductive rigour possessed by Euclidean geometry”

There are strong parallels between Scott’s arguments, notably the prioritisation of Techne over Metis and the world of Naturalistic Decision Making. Not sure the two ever met or collaborated, but the argument Scott makes for local expertise and knowhow has strong parallels within Gary Klein’s critiques of logic-based decision-making. See my previous articles including, “War on Error”.

Techne

Techne is a Greek word for ?craft, technique, or skill. It refers to scientific knowledge that is systematically derived, universal and analytically organised into verifiable, small, and logical steps. It is formal, precise, objective and hard knowledge. It is abstracted, generalised in universally applicable methods and rules. For example, the mathematical formulae to explain gravity are universal. They work everywhere, every time, without question. Scott writes:

“Technical knowledge, or techne, could be expressed precisely and comprehensively in the form of hard-and-fast rules (not rules of thumb), principles, and propositions. At its most rigorous, techne is based on logical deduction from self-evident first principles.”

Techne can be precisely and comprehensively described in the form of rules, first principles, and propositions. It can be organised analytically into small, explicit, logical steps that can be taught formally and verified. Techne is settled and stable knowledge, rarely changing.

Such technical knowledge develops through processes which identify patterns that are ‘not bound to specific circumstances of time, place and culture. Because of its universality, Techne is best applied to knowledge after it is discovered, not to its method of discovery. It is viewed as been superior because it affords predictability, controllability, quantitative accuracy and objectivity, and helps establish expertise. Techne is most suitable for activities with specific goals that need quantitative accuracy and verification.

Metris

Metis (mētis) was the Greek goddess of wisdom and deep thought. She was the embodiment of prudence and wise counsel. Metis had the power to shapeshift, being able to assume any shape she wishes. The term Metis now designates the combined wisdom and cunning that develops from a problem, in order to create a solution. So Metis is practical, experiential, tacit knowledge – the local or specific experience, skills and knowledge that can only be learned through practice. It’s the accumulated wisdom or knowhow that comes from practice or lived experience. Metis is the language of the street and the back steps. It entails adaptability and the ability to respond intuitively in context. It tends to be local, situational, informal and decentralised. Other modern ways of calling it are know-how, common sense, experience and knack. Scott himself describes it as:

“The sort of practical skills situated in the large gap between genius and codified knowledge”

Examples are playing sport, operating a machine, riding a bike or driving a car. An understanding of these things can be gained through a book or class but each skill can only be mastered through practice. Metis is dynamic and continually being revised as problems change, so do the solutions. It responds to the constantly changing natural and human environment. Scott defines Metis as:

“a wide array of practical skills and acquired intelligence in responding to a constantly changing natural and human environment.”

It entails the use of heuristics that are acquired through practice. It also resists simplification into deductive principles which can successfully be transmitted through book learning, because the environments in which it is exercised are so complex and non-repeatable that formal procedures are impossible to apply. On the environment in which Metis thrives, Scott claims that “the practices and experiences of Metis are almost always local” and is “applicable to similar but never identical situations.”

Scott advises that Metis is most appropriate to complex material and social tasks where the uncertainties are so daunting that we must trust our experienced intuition and feel our way. Techne is most suitable to activities that ‘have a singular end or goal, an end that is specifiable apart from the activity itself, and one susceptible to quantitative measurement. But we must attempts to capture Metis in formal procedures of rational decision making are inherently problematic.

Intertwining and Interdependency

Although Metis and Techne are two distinct forms of knowledge, they are not disconnected. The problem is not that Metis and Techne are incompatible; they inform and reinforce one another. Indeed few roles are exclusively one of the other , and there are not many tasks that could be achieved by either independently. The different forms of knowledge represented in Metis and Techne are often entangled in complex networks of knowledge. They provide a useful analytical repertoire to understand what elements of skills and knowledge are required to perform a specific task, and what forms of knowledge need to be defined in a formal way as opposed to those that can only be achieved informally.

These two conceptions are also relevant to the ongoing debates risk and safety about what elements can be conceived through technical, objective and formal knowledge i.e. the systems, checklists, risk assessments, procedures and rules, and thus systematically learned and applied, as opposed to the practical, experiential, tacit knowledge. In safety, Metis is ability to make risk decisions based the accumulated wisdom or knowhow that comes from practice or lived experience. The concept also aligns to many elements of Naturalistic Decision Making.

But what do you think?

?? Do you Scott is right that formal knowledge dominates and downplays the informal tacit and experiential?

?? Do you find these categories of Metis and Techne useful?

?? Do you already apply them, or something similar?

References and additional sources

?? An article providing a broader overview of the concepts discussed: https://abroadlifestyles.com/metis-techne/

?? James C Scott, ‘Think Like a State’ Yalke University Press.

?? Robert L.?Wears?and?Garth S.?Hunte, “Seeing patient safety ‘Like a State’” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925753514000277

?? Sidney Dekker, “Safety Differently Sidney Dekker Human Factors for a New Era”. Second edition accessible here: https://api.taylorfrancis.com/content/books/mono/download?identifierName=doi&identifierValue=10.1201/b17126&type=googlepdf

?? An article I wrote on Gary Klein's ideas on managing complexity: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/managing-risk-complexity-james-pomeroy-ompfe/?trackingId=73pPp8AwQ%2Fe1As5zF%2BV0ZA%3D%3D

?? Another previous article on Gary Klein's ideas on the 'War on Error': https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/war-error-time-ceasefire-james-pomeroy-osgme/?trackingId=73pPp8AwQ%2Fe1As5zF%2BV0ZA%3D%3D