Posted on 5/31/2017, 11:01:20 AM by Kaslin
Fingerspitzengefuhl. There is no equivalent word in English. Expertise doesn't quite fit. Know-how comes closer. Literally, the German word means "fingertip-feeling." The sense of the word is an intuition, both deep and broad, about the nature of things. Such intuition comes from hands-on experience of what works and what doesn't work. For convenience, we will refer to the German word as gefuhl.
Our vitally important tech schools aren't helping. They have lost sight of what a broadening university education is supposed to deliver. Recently, I attended an aerospace industry expo. There I got into a conversation with a senior government program manager – a man who builds and flies satellites. He is finding that most freshly minted Millennial college graduates have two major handicaps. The first is that they focus mostly on career advancement. The intrinsic fascination of space satellite projects is of little interest. Second, even people arriving from graduate engineering programs have almost no technical, or intellectual, breadth. They know just one narrow technical specialty. They have no great desire to develop gefuhl.
For centuries, our nation's rapid ascendency has been because of the plentiful gefuhl in America. Much of it was brought to our shores by technically skilled immigrants – many from Germany. More than that, Americans, of pioneering necessity, became practical people, taking pride in know-how. Gefuhl best describes the original American practical culture.
No more. Today the elitist media, academic, and political culture is more comfortable with airy abstractions. Real-world experience is discounted in favor of ungrounded theory. Progressives, to this day, pine for Marxist socialism despite a century of Marxist bloodshed and misery. Theory trumps reality.
Perhaps it starts with our schools. Progressive multiculturalism denigrates, and attempts to shatter, the obvious superiority of Western civilization.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The problem is not so much our universities as our industries that think people are a commodity rather than a vital part of the enterprise, and that a company’s continuing value to its customers resides in the specialized knowledge and skills of its key employees.
bump for later reading
‘There is no equivalent word in English. Expertise doesn’t quite fit. Know-how comes closer. Literally, the German word means “fingertip-feeling.” ‘
I am not sure about that. Didn’t Heinlein coin the English word “grok”?
dvwjr
Themis, the goddess of comity, natural law and justice, holds a sword in her right hand.
Love the word.
Problem is every job offer is for a very specific skill set. Few employers care about broad experience, exposure to multiple disciplines and cross-applicable skills.
They are looking for cheap specialists, not expensive generalists.
Lots of grads are simply following the market.
That most young folks can’t bake a cake, grow roses, change a tire, or change a lamp cord; much less calculate basic algebraic equations, change a timing belt, re-load brass; nor deploy skills further up the technical food chain reveals a frightening lack of curiosity of the world around them.
We are in deep doo-doo.
“A light touch” covers it well enough.
“...my gut tells me...”
Oh, and having read the rest, the author is off the mark. “Expertise” or “know-how” as the author uses it is not what Fingerspitzengefühl means.
Definition of Grok
: to understand profoundly and intuitively
Grok may be the only English word that derives from Martian. Yes, we do mean the language of the planet Mars. No, we're not getting spacey; we've just ventured into the realm of science fiction. "Grok" was introduced in Robert A. Heinlein's 1961 science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land. The book's main character, Valentine Michael Smith, is a Martian-raised human who comes to earth as an adult, bringing with him words from his native tongue and a unique perspective on the strange, strange ways of earthlings. "Grok" was quickly adopted by the youth culture of America and has since peppered the vernacular of those who grok it, from the hippies of the '60s to the computerniks of the '90
You make a great point and yes he did. ‘Grok’ would have been a great word to use in this article.
It’s not? I disagree with you. German is my native language and it is exactly what it means.
I have a harder time remembering ones that are stored in the phone in the past 10 years than the older ones.
Also, going back to high school after Christmas break and totally forgetting your locker combination, so you close you eyes and let your hands work from experience. I know a few guys who were shocked that that worked.
We have people here who think they are engineers and yet they would call a licensed electrician if they needed to change a light switch. If they can’t do it with a computer simulation then it is too difficult.
Doctor: "I'm afraid your son has ... the Knack."
Mother: "The knack?"
Doctor: "The Knack. It's a rare condition characterized by an extreme intuition about all things mechanical and electrical ... and utter social ineptitude."
Mother: "Can he lead a normal life?"
Doctor: "No. He'll be an engineer."
Mother: "Oh, no! [crying]
He was an acolyte of John Boyd. Have Richards’ book.
Good post!
“Progressive multiculturalism denigrates, and attempts to shatter, the obvious superiority of Western civilization.”
Not quite verbatim, but I have made the above statement at least a 100 times. We built the modern world with the help of our Christian roots.
“That most young folks can’t bake a cake, grow roses, change a tire, or change a lamp cord; much less calculate basic algebraic equations, change a timing belt, re-load brass; nor deploy skills further up the technical food chain reveals a frightening lack of curiosity of the world around them.”
“...or run a trot line... country boys can survive.”
Amazing how many people I run across who don’t know how to hook up jumper cables properly, I guess that’s why someone invented the jumper cable that you just plug into the “cigarette lighter.”
I gots Fingerspitzengefuhl in my Fahrvergnügen.................
That was Martian, not English...............
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