The Rookie
Imagine you are in the beautiful Tuscany, in central Italy; more specifically in Carrara. And, for whatever strange reason, you are looking at a raw marble block. Could there be a particular sculpture1 already existing in it, but only as a possibility?
Aristotle wrote approvingly of such ways of thinking, and thought about a type of causation in nature which is often ignored in scientific discussion: the potentiality of things.
Aristotle differentiates between potentiality and actuality, or potency and action, as one of several distinctions between things that exist or do not exist. Aristotle defends the existence of inactive powers (or capacities). In a sense, a thing may not exist, but the potential does exist. Consider, for example, a piece of wood, which can be shaped into a table or into a bowl. In Aristotle’s terminology, the wood has (at least) two different potentialities, since it is potentially a table and also potentially a bowl. The matter (in this case, wood) is linked with potentiality; the object (in this case, the table or the bowl) is linked with actuality. His idea is that a piece of raw wood in a workshop can be considered a potential table, since it can be transformed into one2. But transforming raw wood into a table requires certain skills, therefore the potentiality of things and the knowledge required to convert them into actual things show an inescapable relationship. A piece of wood next to me has considerably less potential of becoming a table compared to the same piece of wood next to a capable carpenter.
Potentiality puts bread on millions of people’s tables every day, including yours and mine. We are hired because of our potential, not because of our actions. When searching for a job, our “actions” are in the format of ill-formatted paper trails—resumés—and biased testimonials stating we have done X or Y, with little or no proof. Pure potentiality yet to be seen in motion. High voltages, no current.
But, while jobs might be given by potentiality, products and services are bought from actuality. This is a dilemma for early stage organizations selling anything: they are gauged from the action side of things. That is, they are asked for tables when all they have is wood.
The gambit is, whenever scrutinized as the ‘rookie with potential’, to show that the skills necessary to free the sculpture trapped inside the block of marble are there.
This is not the first time I connect engineering with sculpture, and most likely will not be the last one.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-metaphysics/#ActuPote