Knowledge and the nettle situation.

Taking a walking route along ill-defined paths, and with a small scale map, in an area that is attractive but unfamiliar, is the kind of exploration achievable by everyone of reasonable fitness.  When navigation is easy, the journey does not engage the mind, and so is less satisfying.  If the way forward is obscured, judgement is required if backtracking, and it's associated waste of energy, is to be avoided.

It is in the nature of judgement that sometimes our decisions are incorrect.  We are forced to take responsibility for this fact, and allow for this when deciding to use judgement as opposed to more reliable forms of decision-making. 

So, when I find myself in a forest of nettles, with barbed wire in front of me and a steep and recently descended incline behind me, I revel in my self-created problematic situation.  I have created a situation - a problem - that I must solve, through further acts of will, by making judgements.

Experiential knowledge is used in times of navigational challenge.  This particular kind of knowledge is most emphatically learnt by getting lost, and lost in extremis.  In some ways, this is like taking responsibility for one's own learning.

I test my abilities to navigate, and these abilities in part rely on knowledge of how to get unlost.  A theory of navigation may be applied.  This might amount to principles, like following a watercourse, or looking for hard-to-see evidence that walkers have passed your way before.

Theories are utilitarian.  A good theory is useful.  It enables you to do something.  It enables you to know something.  It enables you to understand something.

Doing and thinking: Practice and theory

       Theory and doing: Thinking and practice