Some days ago in conversation with a friend here at Starbucks, Alex insisted that knowledge was possible without the symbolic representation of reason.  I thought to myself, “What a radical thought.”  I think of “knowledge” as what can be diagrammed, presented in the form 2+2=4, or encoded with words and grammar.

On the other hand, what about the “knowledge” of how to ride a bicycle, which every kid “knows” by 5 or 6 years old?  Perhaps a physicist  could express completely with mathematics the forces and their relationships in play when one rides a bicycle.  Notwithstanding, no one has ever learned to ride a bicycle by examination of formulas written on a blackboard, explained by a physicist.  Still every kid knows.

A wild rabbit searching for nourishment in my backyard “knows” which hosta plants it prefers on its menu.  A dog knows the meaning of certain odors, by a canine keen sense of smell.  Bicycle riding, wild rabbit behavior, the exercise of a dog’s smell seem examples of knowledge that are immediate, intimate, existing outside of a duration of time.  The kid on a bike, the rabbit consuming a rather expensive hosta, the dog sampling the smells at hand in the park, are sketches of life, of beings involved with things — and without felt awareness of distinction between animal and world.  A knowledge where “doing,” acting and living without any process of representation, reason’s symbolic expression of “how to…..”

Seated in Corvette Friday afternoon, I contemplated a race track that I certainly did not know,  I was fortunate to have the experienced instructor in the passenger seat who verbally and by hand signals indicated what must be done, to negotiate each turn as the car approached.  I was limited by my ignorance of the race track, and by time required to understand the instructions given, to translate those signals into requisite action with  accelerator and brake pedal, and the steering wheel.  The car was engineered to perform far beyond the ability of this driver to engage himself intimately with the machine, the impairment of a neophyte driver,  by reason depending upon an experienced instructor.

THERE WAS ONE EXCEPTION, one respite to the handicap imposed by a dependency upon the transmission of knowledge, — the straightaway of nearly a quarter mile in length.  After nursing the car through a 90 degree turn, the accelerator was pressed to add speed through the next sweeping turn.  Then full-on, accelerator pedal to the floor for the quarter mile long straight away.  The Corvette lunged, the engine scream rose and fell as the transmission shifted at designated rpm points,…   I knew “this” is life with nothing in between, no “stutter step” of alienation between a human and “the world.”  Mind/body to accelerator pedal, to seat with G force and the bite of rubber to asphalt…  For those few seconds of wild, violent acceleration, time imposed no limitation and there was no separation between consciousness and machine.  I glimpsed the possibility of intimate engagement, a “knowing,” – more of a feeling than of something understood.

Here is a snippet of video capturing the windshield view of the Corvette accelerating down the straightaway.

TO WHOM LIFE IS AN EXPERIENCE TO BE CARRIED AS FAR AS POSSIBLE…

— Georges Bataille

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This post is dedicated to my good friend, Chuck Seyler.