p.129 To be thinking what he is here and now up against, he must both be trying
to adjust himself to just this present once-only situation and in doing this to be applying lessons already learned.
There must be in his response a union of some Ad Hockery with some know-how. If he is not at once improvising
and improvising warily, he is not engaging his somewhat trained wits in a partly fresh situation. It
is the pitting of an acquired competence or skill against unprogrammed opportunity, obstacle or hazard. It is a bit like putting
some new wine into old bottles.
Improvisation, Mind 85, no. 337 (1976): 69-83
p.69 We admire and envy people for, inter alia, their ability and readiness to innovate; especially so, of course,
for the high qualities of some of their innovations.
p.73 Despite what we are encouraged to believe about the Uniformity of Nature,
in fact the vast majority of things that happen in the universe are in high or low degree unprecedented, unpredictable, and
never to be repeated. They are really partly fortuitous... What comes to pass on one occasion has, with all its concomitants,
origins, and details, never taken place before and will never take place again. It may be and usually is completely unremarkable;
as unsurprising when it happens as it had been unanticipated before it happened. The world and what occurs in it are, with
a few exceptions, neither like a chaos not yet like clockwork... It follows that the things that we say and do in trying to
exploit, avoid or remedy that small minority of the particular partly chance concatenations that happen to concern us cannot
be completely pre-arranged. To a partly novel situation the response is necessarily partly novel, else it is not a
response.
p.74 what we said was, for the most part, a pertinent, ad hoc innovation...
It was said in some degree heedfully
p.76 If Le Penseur [JLJ - French, the thinker] is on a certain occasion thinking, then
(a) he must be engaging himself... in an at least partly fresh contingency. He is... being exploratory and/or
experimental and/or enterprising, etc. Else he is not applying his wits to just this contingency. But (b)
he must be, in some measure, exploiting on this once-only particular contingency some general lessons
previously learned and not since totally forgotten. Else he is not paying to the situation any degree of
heed, and so is not minding what he is doing or saying
p.77 to be thinking what he is here and now up against, he must be trying to adjust himself to just this present
once-only situation and in doing this to be applying lessons already learned. There must be in his response
an union of some Ad Hockery with some know-how.
p.77 If he is not at once improvising and improvising warily,
he is not engaging his somewhat trained wits in some momentarily live issue, but perhaps acting from sheer unthinking habit.
So thinking, I now declare quite generally, is, at the least, the engaging of partly trained wits in a partly fresh
situation. It is the pitting of an acquired competence or skill against an unprogrammed opportunity, obstacle or
hazard. It is a bit like putting some new wine into old bottles.
