In response to Near and far skills
Comment author: gmcrews 20 October 2009 11:55:15AM *  4 points [-]

Perhaps you should have used the example of the bicycle. Remove any requirement for athletic skill, and the practical distinction between the propositional and procedural fades considerably.

For example, as a kid, I was able to ride a bicycle the first time I tried. Of course, it had training wheels.

Another example. As a young man, I was able to pilot (taxi out, take off, and fly) a small aircraft the first time I tried. (This was 1974, before the common use of simulators.) I had informed my instructor that although I had never even been in a small aircraft before, I had an engineering science education and had already studied the relationships of the basic instrumentation (especially the airspeed indicator) to a wing's angle-of-attack. After a certain amount of grilling, he let me go for it and he never had to touch the controls.

My point is that I can be successful without ever having to admit propositional knowledge is actually true. I just have to be able to take advantage of its utility in predicting outcomes. I consider this the distinction between engineering and science.