Official Luthiers Forum!

-Michael Polanyi's books 'Personal Knowledge' and 'The Tacit Dimension'
are worth mentioning in this context. I wouldn't attempt a synopsis of
his work, having just a slight knowledge of it myself, but others might
be interested. The books are not light reading- his wiki entry gives a
glimpse.

Can you give an example? Philosophy *is* questioning presuppositions.
I don't think that's a bad thing. In our historical phase I don't think it's
surprising that there's a lot of questioning going on, warranted or not.

Tom Blackshear eh. Thank you Allan.

tP

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Audiences and dispensations on Thursdays ~ by appointment only.


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I like that last bit - sure helps when starting out... and I hope that it is accepted that because so much has been done, documented and confirmed, that folk dont think all newbies need to start from scratch - the best analogy is that we dont currently ask medical stutents to discover anatomy from scratch, or molecular biologists to rediscover DNA - with science, what was once in the post doc labs is now in school textbooks, so there is an ever increasing volume of knowledge that can be used as a starting block as the 'science' advances. Add to that the way that unlike the secrecy of the Guilds of old or those that jealously guard their 'secrets', this community shares so much - something that in itself helps to improve the overall standards of instruments being made... as someone might say (if we ignore the shortages in some of the most sought after tonewoods) this is a golden era of guitar building because the communication between pros and ams alike has allowed more to build good instruments... 'Great' instruments will always be the domain (in most cases) of those that possess the elusive combinations of raw natural talent that the greatest artists AND scientists have, combined with great skills developed through practice in the practical, combined with the experience that only time provides.... but then again after that its down to the player - I have heard great players make amazing art/music on cheap instrumenst, because toneis only 1 variable to their playing, the expressiveness and emotion that is portrayed in each note becomes the predominate factor... I have also heard many poor players make very good instruments sound truely average - and I should knwo because I am sure I do it most of the time I play!

Bob, I was responding to Filippo, and I don't think I was talking about engineering, especially if that's what you do when science is through. I don't get the point in your last sentence; if I learn something by any method, why can't I pass it on without forcing someone to retrace my steps? Or are you saying that the only way we actually can learn anything is by scientific method? That would be dubious. And Feynmann says that to do science, you should retrace your predecessor's steps as much as possible.

Polanyi? Different set of issues, IMO.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Can you give an example? Philosophy *is* questioning presuppositions.
I don't think that's a bad thing. In our historical phase I don't think it's
surprising that there's a lot of questioning going on, warranted or not.[/quote]

I should have called it rhetoric rather than philosophy. I used the term philosophy rather loosely. After all, I spent a big part of my life studying philosophy pretty seriously: I like to think of mathematics as philosophy where your assumptions all have to be true (except in the case of proof by contradiction / reduction ad absurdum, of course)

Acquaintances of mine have attended art schools that give marks predominantly for the 'message' of the piece, rather than the actual quality of the work. All the good (ie: professional) artists I personally know think that's BS; they make their art to see what it looks like, or because they're compelled, not because there's a message to get out. If they're trying to say something, they do it the more efficient way: with words! The students who end up succeeding later do it in spite of their schooling, as they end up having to teach themselves. The kids are going into 10-15K+ of debt per year to learn to paint/sculpt/etc, not to be prosthelytized to!

The engineering department here often gives more marks for 'improvements to initial design' rather than the quality of the final design. In other words, it doesn't matter if you design something good or not, it just matters if it's better than your first idea. Problem: students who make good solutions need to make up poor solutions and then write up a false process of 'improving them' to their original solutions or they'll get poor marks! It's A for Effort rather than A for Effective. The way they look down on 'technicians' and therefore don't teach the kids any practical skills puts murderous intent into real engineers, as well, because they're once again released into the real world with a head full of 'what an engineer is/should be' and no ability to execute.

I'm not saying there isn't a place for meta-analysis in education, but in a skills-based program it should be getting an order of magnitude less attention than the actual 'how to do this work' part. It's the 'the right answer is the one that agrees with the prof' approach to English essays taken to the extreme. There's a stark contrast to that sort of thinking in the science departments I've been in, where I've heard profs grumble about a student being more or less a jack*** but admitting that they were talented and deserved credit. At the end of the day, it just ticks me off that these kids are putting years and a whole lot of money in and getting a lot more rhetoric and a lot less knowledge than they paid for.

Brevity is definitely not my strong point.



No-one would argue that a lot of the top builders clearly have learned something about what they're doing when it comes to wood selection and 'tuning' as it were, but with the exception of very few all they have to pass on is 'listen to as much wood as I have and you'll learn'. Anyone who learns something in a way such that they can pass on to another does science whether they know it or not. The better the science, the more they can pass on.

And Feynman is absolutely correct but in science we only need to retrace the steps that lead to answers, not the loops and backtracking that didn't produce anything. I can replicate Newton's experiments and gain that insight, but there's no value to me replicating the ones that didn't work nor the large quantity of banging of head against hard surface inherent in that process. That's in stark contrast to 'want to learn physics? here's a rock, teach yourself!'.

(I think he would have called it natural philosophy, but that would have really obfuscated the point )

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Surgery has a lot of parallels to lutherie. Both an art and a science. Based on 30+ years experience as a surgeon and 10+ building I'd say the formula for success is pretty similar. Good training from respected people, keeping up with the literature, interacting with your peers at meetings, workshops, and the web, learning to deal with complications, and the most important one: volume. The art and the science will slowly melt together and take you to a nice place. Kenny Hill said it best. "Just keep building".

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

[quote="Bob Garrish"]
The engineering department here often gives more marks for 'improvements to initial design' rather than the quality of the final design. In other words, it doesn't matter if you design something good or not, it just matters if it's better than your first idea. Problem: students who make good solutions need to make up poor solutions and then write up a false process of 'improving them' to their original solutions or they'll get poor marks! It's A for Effort rather than A for Effective. The way they look down on 'technicians' and therefore don't teach the kids any practical skills puts murderous intent into real engineers, as well, because they're once again released into the real world with a head full of 'what an engineer is/should be' and no ability to execute.
[quote="Bob Garrish"]

I think there is a *very* good reason for this... Engineers need to be taught a robust method for process improvement... because the majority of Engineers will forever be fixing something that someone else designed and built...

I have NEVER once bought a piece of industrial equipment that was actually RIGHT on the 1st design iteration.... I think many engineers (Myself included) spend years and years and years making improvements to other people's designs... The crazy part that happens in our case is that the "Old, Decrepit" unit actually runs better than anything else in the shop -- because it has been "Fixed" so many times... All the badly designed parts are now gone.... It was a 1-off, built for 1 specific purpose, then modified continually to make everything else run on it.. We only ever bought 1... so the fab shop that built the thing won't ever build any more...

And so while it is a good exercise to speak of perfection in the initial Rev 0.1 design, it's usually never the case... The best, most robust products tend to be "Mature"... The ones that have been through several rounds of improvements to weed out the bad ideas, poorly conceived "Brilliant" ideas, and to put the bolts where you can get to them... (Why you never, ever, ever buy a 1st model year, brand new "Clean Sheet" design Chevy or Ford or Chrysler..)

Fortunately for us, the Guitar is an *Extremely* mature design.... so we can go twiddling around with European vs Sitka vs Red Spruce and Varnish vs Lacquer vs Shellac and Coated vs PB vs 80/20 strings galore and "Optimize" till our heart is content we won't ruin the design too much....

I am glad a few here have brought up Feynman -- I am a big fan of his "Cargo Cult Science" lecture -- it is one of my guiding principal ideas.... Unfortunately, it seems like here in the "Craft" world -- things work differently.... Experiments take a *LONG* time to conduct.... and there isn't a whole lot of "Peer reviewed" published research.... It would be as-if someone handed a young Med-student a 30-year old manual on Surgery and said "Here you go, young Surgeon... Now, go get yourself a Scalpel and have at it... You will get the hang of it after 20-30 patients..."

Thanks

John