How does John Ruskin, writing some 150 years ago, bring guidance for our future as researchers? His writings The Stones of Venice and The Nature of Gothic provide commentary, criticism and research that can be seen to be based on the fusion of social context awareness combined with great technical skill – Ruskins championing of Turner being the perfect example of this. This combination of connectedness, broad disregard for the confines of specialisms and an emphasis on technical excellence, or the finely honed skills of the craftsman, I would suggest, shows research at its best.
At one level, Ruskin represents the archetypal polymath: the founding father of the National Trust, a contributor to the conservation and ecology movement, social and political commentator and influencer of the Labour Movement, artist, art critic and supporter of both Turner and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement, and of course natural researcher and classifier of fossils. But at a higher level he also developed ideas of craft and explored the relationship between the objects created, the artist/craftsman, and society.
Ruskin did not see buildings merely as works of art created by individuals for the use of other individuals. They were social artefacts and, as such expressed the moral condition of the society in which and for which they were built. In other words, such creativity at its best is giving meaning, making sense and becoming part of a complex and multi-level relationship the researchers ideal!
But to understand this requires an understanding of the interconnections between method or skill, technology and the social and behavioural contexts, whether it be a subject of research or a work of art.
At a time of great industrial and cultural change broadly analogous to our own, Ruskin speaks to us, as then, with a refusal in an age of growing specialisation, to separate one discipline from another or to see questions of art and science as distinct from questions of morality, and thus issues challenges to many of our current research practices, methodologies and ways of working.
As Ruskin points out, many of these challenges relate to the nature or manner of the labour involved in the creative processes. Is the craftsman, or the researcher, in danger of being reduced to certain fixed conventions whereby the creative freedom of the workman is repressed and controlled? Or does his work give freedom to the workers imagination? Importantly, Ruskin never ceases to emphasis the role of skill or technical mastery, but only as one element of the creative process.
This commentary can be brought up to date by considering it the context of work by Dreyfus and his notions of hierarchy of learning and expression, wherein the expert, artist or practitioner transcends simple rules and guidelines (although these are a key element of the framework for understanding) to reinterpret a situation based on profound understanding and deep connectivity to contextual location and use.
Today, much use is made within research of the word insight, a word rapidly becoming debased. Insight without the combination of technical mastery and creativity is just an empty word. Or even worse, an example of misleading marketing. Gaining deep understanding, or insight, involves commitment, a commitment so profound it is akin to higher emotions such as love.
Such commitment lies in the skill of the craftsman working to draw forth from his work deeper and more profound meanings, and this drawing-forth is the work of the individual in direct relation to the subject of interest. Ruskin s concern with the emergence of the factory and the dominance of processes over content and craft took the form of championing the individual.
He was concerned to discover and demonstrate how craft could flourish even against this background of factory and the onset of mass-production, with its and alienation from context and meaning. Such concerns are of equal relevance to us in the research industry today.
Michael Hulme
2003-08-19
Em Foco – Opinião