Getting It: Withness-Thinking and the Dialogical in Practice

This is a book for reflective practitioners, for people wishing to inquire into what is involved in thinking "in the moment" when encountering unique, "first-time" events. It is also a book about complexity considered as a third realm of mysterious events subsisting between those we call problems which we can solve by rational thought, and those we call ineffable which we cannot at all describe in words–for we can, with the help of Wittgenstein’s methods, Shotter claims, find our "way about" within this realm of the mysterious, even though we may never fully understand it. Thus, instead of thinking about the difficulties we encounter in life, as if they are objects "over there" in the world about us, Shotter argues that if we can "relate to" and "enter into" our difficulties in an exploratory fashion–a process that he calls withness-thinking–then felt action-guiding anticipations will in fact emerge within us as to how we might next act in relation to overcoming each unique difficulty we face. Thus Shotter’s inquiry is not to do theories, with any general ways of thinking. His focus is on our living, bodily activities, and the ways in which they are always spontaneously responsive to their particular surroundings, as well as always being expressive in some way to others. But more than this. When two or more of us gather together in meetings, and our activities intertwine, something novel, an "it", characteristic of our situation as an integrated whole is always created between us. This is why the book is called "Getting It": for it is the unique nature of these situated "its" that we must sense, and do detailed justice to, if we are to fit our practices to the requirements of our always unique circumstances.