p.2 Phronesis goes beyond both analytical, scientific knowledge (episteme) and technical knowledge or know-how (techne) and involves judgments and decisions made in the manner of a virtuoso social and political actor. I will argue that phronesis is commonly involved in social practice, and that therefore attempts to reduce social science and theory either to episteme or techne, or to comprehend them in those terms, are misguided. [Flyvbjerg's idea deserves an exclamation point, or several]

p.3 as Richard Bernstein points out, if we are to think about what can be done to the problems and risks of our time, we must advance from the original conception of phronesis to one explicitly including power.... I will argue that in modern society, conflict and power are phenomena constitutive of social and political inquiry. And I will develop the classic concept of phronesis to include issues of power.

p.20 professionals have a difficult time explaining to the system designers what they are doing in terms of specific procedures and rules... "When [the professional practitioner] tries, on rare occasions, to say what he knows - when he tries to put his knowing into the form of knowledge - his formulations of principles, theories, maxims, and rules of thumb are often incongruent with the understanding and know-how implicit in his patterns of practice."

p.20 the rules for expert systems are formulated only because the systems demand it. They are characteristics of the systems, but not of the real experts.

p.20 Only in areas which are context-independent, which can be strictly separated from daily understanding and from change, and which have well-defined problems with clear rules for their solution, only in these rare areas, and in tasks where brute computational number crunching can solve problems, will expert systems succeed as well or better than human experts.

p.25 can the study of humans and society be scientific in the same manner as the study of natural objects? Can we speak of a unified science, or should natural-science inquiry and social-science inquiry be viewed as two basically different activities?

p.36 According to Foucault, however, this attempt to understand what makes understanding possible drives the study of human activity into an "essential instability."

p.36 unlike other sciences, they [the human sciences] seek not so much to generalize themselves or make themselves more precise as to be constantly demystifying themselves

p.39 Just as ideal natural science explains and predicts in terms of context-independent elements which can be abstracted from the everyday world - mass and position in physics, for example - the study of society, insofar as it attempts to follow natural science, must also abstract such elements from the context-dependent activities of human beings and predict those activities in terms of formal relations (rules or laws) between the abstracted elements.

p.55 as Richard Bernstein points out, "no practical discussion is going to take place unless you understand the relevance of phronesis. But no practical philosophy can be adequate for our time unless it confronts the analysis of power." This, then, is a methodological aim of what follows: to develop the classic concept of phronesis to include issues of power.

p.56 Whereas episteme concerns theoretical know why and techne denotes technicalknow how, phronesis emphasizes practical knowledge and practical ethics. Phronesis is often translated as "prudence" or "practical common sense."

p.57 The person possessing practical wisdom (phronesis) has knowledge of how to behave in each particular circumstance that can never be equated with or reduced to knowledge of general truths. Phronesis is a sense of the ethically practical rather than a kind of science.

p.57 the three intellectual virtues episteme, techne, and phronesis can be characterized as follows:

Episteme Scientific knowledge. Universal, invariable, context-independent. Based on general analytical rationality. The original concept is known today from the terms "epistemology" and "epistemic."

Techne Craft/art. Pragmatic, variable, context-dependent. oriented towards production. Based on practical instrumental rationality governed by a conscious goal. The original concept appears today in terms such as "technique." "technical," and "technology."

Phronesis Ethics. Deliberations about values with reference to praxis. Pragmatic, variable, context-dependent. Oriented toward action. Based on practical value-rationality. The original concept has no analogous contemporary term.

p.57 Phronesis thus concerns the analysis of values... as a point of departure for action...Phronesis requires an interaction between the general and the concrete; it requires consideration, judgment, and choice.

p.60 the principal objective for social science with a phronetic approach is to carry out analyses and interpretations of the status of values and interests in society aimed at social commentary and social action, i.e. praxis.

p.60 (1) Where are we going?

(2) Is this desirable?

(3) What should be done?

Later, when we have discussed the implications of power for phronesis, we will add a fourth question: Who gains and who loses; by which mechanisms of power?

p.61 It should be stressed that no one is experienced enough and wise enough to give complete answers to the four questions... What should be expected, however, is attempts from phronetic social scientists to develop their partial answers to the questions; such answers would be input to the ongoing social dialogue about the problems and risks we face and how things may be done differently.

p.61 A first step toward achieving this kind of perspective in social science is for researchers to make explicit the different roles of science as episteme, techne, and phronesis, respectively. Today's researchers seldom make explicit which one of these three roles they are practicing. The whole enterprise is simply called "science," even through we are dealing with quite different activities. It is often the case that these activities are rationalized as episteme even though they are actually techne or phronesis... In their role as phronesis, the social sciences are strongest where the natural sciences are weakest.

p.70 The study of human activity, according to Aristotle, demands that one practice phronesis, that is, that one occupy oneself with values as a point of departure for praxis.

p.70 "[Phronesis] is not concerned with universals only," Aristotle says, "it must also take cognizance of particulars, because it is concerned with conduct, and conduct has its sphere in particular circumstances."

p.76 Chapters three and four explain why there does not exist and probably never will appear "compelling theories" in political science and the other social sciences.

p.86 The sociolinguist William Labov writes that when a good narrative is over "it should be unthinkable for a bystander to say, 'So what?'" [William Labov, Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience] Every good narrator is continually warding off this question... A successful narrative does not allow the question to be raised at all. The narrative has already supplied the answer before the question is asked. The narrative itself is the answer.

p.88 The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics. -Bertrand Russell

p.98 If our goal is to move towards Habermas's ideal - freedom from domination... then our first task is... to understand the realities of power. Here we turn to the work of Michel Foucault, who has tried to develop such an understanding.

p.102 Foucault seeks out a genealogical understanding of actual power relations in specific contexts. Foucault is oriented towards phronesis... Resistance, struggle, and conflict... are for Foucault the most solid bases for the practice of freedom.

p.103 Foucault would prescribe neither process nor outcome; he would only recommend a focus on conflict and on power relations as the most effective point of departure for the fight against domination.

p.109 A strong democracy guarantees the existence of conflict. A strong understanding of democracy must therefore be based on thought that places conflict and power at its center, as Foucault does

p.110 In the previous chapter we saw that social and political thinking becomes problematic if it does not contain a well-developed conception of power.

p.110 Foucault gave us tools to use not an agenda to follow.

p.110 Foucault identifies phronesis as practical reason, as is common, and he says that phronesis is what permits one to chase away false opinions and make good decisions.

p.116 Foucault, in contrast, understands power in terms of its concrete application in strategies and tactics - power as force relations.

p.117 Foucault states that he is not primarily interested in the outcomes or localizations of power, nor even in power in itself. Rather, his focus is the relations of power... "power is not something that is acquired, seized, or shared, something that one holds on to or allows to slip away." Or as Foucault says elsewhere: "power is exercised rather than possessed."

p.117-118 I wish to suggest that one must analyze institutions from the standpoint of power relations, rather than vice versa," says Foucault, "and that the fundamental point of anchorage of the relationships, even if they are embodied and crystallized in an institution, is to be found outside the institution

p.118 Foucault's principal question... "How," asks Foucault, "is power exercised?"

p.119 Foucault is interested in "an analytics of power." ...if power is in reality an open, more-or-less coordinated cluster of relations, then the "only problem is to provide oneself with a grid of analysis which makes possible an analytic of relations of power," according to Foucault. [JLJ - yes, and so should we when playing a game. Only problem is, our subconscious mind does this for us, and does not tell us how it does it. We must re-figure out how to do this, if we are to write a procedure for a machine to follow.]

p.120 Foucault's response to the question, "What is power?", takes the following form: Power must be understood as a multiplicity of force relations "immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization." Power is the process, which via struggles and confrontations transforms, supports, or reverses these force relations. Power is the support which the force relations find in each other via the creation of chains of systems, or conversely, via the separation and opposition which isolate them from each other. Power is the strategies in which the force relations obtain effects... Strategies and force relations are local and omnipresent, they are changeable and unstable. Power is dynamic and everywhere... because power is produced from one moment to the next in all points and all relations.

p.123 a Foucauldian, and phronetic, point of departure for particular case studies of power are the following questions: What are the most immediate and the most local power relations operating, and how do they operate? How has the active exercise of power in the relations being investigated affected the possibilities for the further exercise of power, with the resulting reinforcement of certain power relations and the attenuation of others? How are power relations linked together, according to what logic and strategy? How have these relations made certain rationalities possible and others impossible, and how do the rationalities support or oppose the power relations? How can the games of power be played differently? [JLJ - yes, and this is exactly what we should be asking ourselves, and in fact doing, when we "play" a game.]

p.123 Foucault sees discourses [see above] not simply as surface projections of power mechanisms; via discourse and interpretation, rationality and power become interwoven... Discourses, therefore, must be viewed as a series of interrupted segments whose tactical function is neither uniform nor stable... one should operate with a multiplicity of discursive elements, which can be put into operation in various strategies... it is the distribution of this multiplicity of discursive elements which must be reconstructed in a concrete study of rationality and power. This is done by describing that which is said and that which is hidden, the necessary articulations, and the forbidden ones, and relations between these.

p.126 The production of truth "is thoroughly imbued with relations of power."

p.132 Knowledge and power... are analytically inseparable from each other; power produces knowledge, and knowledge produces power.

p.134 Phronetic research focuses on practical activity and practical knowledge in everyday situations.

p.135 The description of practices as events endures and gains its strength from detecting the forces that make life work.

p.136 Foucault stressed that our understanding will suffer if we do not start our analyses with a "How?"
 Asking "How?" and doing a narrative analysis are closely interlinked activities.

p.136-137 Earlier we saw that a central question for phronesis is: What should we do? To this Alasdair MacIntyre answers: "I can only answer the question 'What am I to do?' if I can answer the prior question 'Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?'"

p.137 Cheryl Mattingly points out [Narrative Reflections on Practical Actions, p.237] that narratives... provide us a forward glance, helping us to envision alternative futures... they begin with an interest in a particular phenomenon that is best understood narratively. Narrative inquiries then develop descriptions and interpretations of the phenomenon

p.138 As anyone who has tried it can testify, it is a demanding task to account simultaneously for the structural influences that shape the development of a given phenomenon and still craft a clear, penetrating narrative or microanalysis of that phenomenon... Phronetic researchers deliberately seek out information for answering questions about what structural factors influence individual actions, how those actions are constructed, and their structural consequences.

p.139 In Habits of the Heart, Robert Bellah and his coauthors expressed their hope that "the reader will test what we say against his or her own experience, will argue with us when what we say does not fit, and, best of all, will join the public discussion by offering interpretations superior to ours that can then receive further discussion."

p.139 phronetic research explicitly sees itself as not having a privileged position from which the final truth can be told and further discussion stopped.

p.140 Phronetic research is... not about, nor does it try to develop, theory or universal method. Thus, phronetic research is an analytical project, but not a theoretical or methodological one.

p.140 The task of phronetic social science is to clarify and deliberate about the problems and risks we face and to outline how things may be done differently, in full knowledge that we cannot find ultimate answers to these questions

p.143 Ideals seem to block the view to reality.

p.145 1. Where are we going...?

2. Who gains, and who loses, by which mechanisms of power?

3. Is it desirable?

4. What should be done?

p.155 power defines what gets to count as knowledge... power defines... reality itself.

p.166 Indeed he knows not how to know who knows not also how to un-know. Richard Francis Burton

p.167 The second scenario replaces the view that the social sciences can be practiced as episteme with their role as phronesis. In this scenario, the purpose of social science is not to develop theory, but to contribute to society's practical rationality in elucidating where we are, where we want to go, and what is desirable according to diverse sets of values and interests.