The Wheelwright Who Could Not Teach His Skill in Words
A craftsman tells a duke that the books he's absorbed in preserve nothing but the leftover husk of a skill that could never actually be written down.
Wheelwright Bian asks the Duke what he's reading; told it's the words of the sages, and that they're dead, Bian says then what you're reading is nothing but the dregs of the ancient men. Ordered to explain himself or be executed, he describes his own craft: when he chisels a wheel, if he goes too slowly the chisel slides and doesn't grip, if too fast it binds and won't go in — the right pace is something he feels in the hand and responds to from the heart, a knack his mouth cannot put into words. He adds the detail that gives the story its edge: he cannot teach this knack even to his own son, nor can his son learn it from him, which is why at seventy years old he is still out there chiseling wheels himself. Chapter 13's point through this story is sharp toward its own tradition — the wisdom later generations inherit as texts is, on Zhuangzi's account, necessarily only the residue of a living, embodied skill that could never fully survive translation into words.
What you are reading is nothing but the dregs of the ancient men.
The wheelwright's claim that his skill can't survive translation into words anticipates a distinction philosophers now call 'tacit knowledge' — know-how that resists full verbal articulation.
Zhuangzi
Written about in
- What Taoism says about what to say and what to leave unsaid
Bian tells the Duke that the books of the sages are nothing but the dregs of the ancient men. His claim is specific rather than cynical: the feel of the chisel is something his mouth cannot put into words, so he cannot pass it to his son, and at seventy he is still doing the work himself.