According to a common view, bookish knowledge is categorically distinct from manual knowledge. Proponents of this epistemic divide point to related distinctions in pedagogical approaches along with related social and political consequences. These divisions in knowledge and learning hinge on a split in the category of experience. On the one hand, knowledge is acquired through the indirect experience of learning about certain things. On the other hand, knowledge is gained – and learning is defined – by direct experience with the things themselves. This article does not argue for or against such splits but rather aims to historicise them. At the start of the seventeenth century, a variety of different actors argued for a type of knowledge derived from direct and hands-on experience. From authors of a genre called books of secrets to Francis Bacon, these practitioners positioned their knowledge against university scholasticism and the elevated status of its adherents. In doing so, they participated in establishing epistemologies and pedagogies of the hand that had lasting contributions to what we think of as empirical science as well as the discourse and thought that continues to organise education today.
Jais Brohinsky (Mon,) studied this question.