ABSTRACT
Cognitive science often uses a logic focused on what we do as opposed to one that asks how things come about. In reversing what Ingold calls the logic of inversion, the chapter makes three contributions based on a systemic view. First, it presents case studies to clarify how people improvise epistemic outcomes. Using systemic ethnography, we initially extend Hutchins’ account of how a crew programs a flight path. Then, we turn to how epistemic outcomes arise in two minutes of goalkeeper training. We thus clarify both how change can be managed and how it can draw on joint and spontaneous control. Second, the social practices exemplify cognitive cross-over or how “reciprocal sensitivity” enables emplaced parties to bring forth “epistemic outcomes.” Information transfer and neural resonance co-function with emplaced flux as people use experience to shape ‘what happens.’ In the examples, the results unite what people do (in a social unit) with a concern for doing things right. Together, bodies generate intent as they reach outcomes. Third, we turn to social organizing: We trace cognitive cross-over to ecologies where communication and coordination presuppose public microcognition. Spontaneity serves not only to display, explore, and get things right but, just as importantly, to build soft skills as parties develop flexibility, resilience, and adaptivity. Hence human practices depend on social organizing as persons prompt selves and each other to achieve epistemic outcomes.
