Joanna Sheldon wrote:
>
> I heard from Carrol that it would be easier to learn breadmaking standing
> next to someone demonstrating than from illustrations in a cookbook.
Exactly. I presumed that could be taken for granted, forgetting that the rule on maillists is that any time one does not mention that the sun rises in the east one could be accused of claiming that the earth was flat. A traditional example (based on older anthropology -- I don't know if it has current status) was the contrast between handmade and wheelmade pottery. The former had to be learned through observation, correction, and practice, the latter being more of a technology that could be formulated in a handbook. Some years ago there was a brief article in Business Week on a glove a baseball pitcher could wear with a number of electrodes or something on it so one could get a computer record of precisely how the pitcher gripped the ball. I don't know whether it worked or not, but one sees at least potentially how gripping the ball for pitching could be rationalized. I wouldn't be surprised that if one scanned the doctoral dissertations in physical education that one would find a lot of material like that. Once you raise a "spontaneous" practice to the level of theory, practitioners can more consciously compare their practice to the theoretical model and correct it accordingly.
Carrol