Commentary: The Poetics of Daily Life—The Invisible Becomes Visible

Abstract

There are different patterns to experience the reality and search for knowl-edge. The researcher shapes theories, a poet shapes verses, a dancer shapes steps, a musician shapes melodies—they all shape hypotheses of living. The aim is similar for all of them—to find novelty of being, created by inner intricate passion and shaped by outer reality, in order to find harmony. The main interest of the section " The poetics of daily life " lies in its discussion of the role of poetic and scientific ways of experiencing reality. Reality is permanent in its existence, but the patterns of experiencing reality vary—from determined structure to aspired personal spontaneous harmony. As the regulation of human life depends greatly on certain established rhythms of nature, such as seasonal changes and the alterna-tion of day and night, commitments, habits and traditions seem like attempts to structure the compliance of daily human life with nature. Though daily life is full of structured repetitive routines prescribed by the rhythm of nature and social organization, the experience of reality is K. Uriko (*) Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia 276 synchronized with intrapersonal receptive capacity. This capacity deter-mines how reality is perceived and used as a tool for creating harmony between a person and his environment, past and present, and for shaping his future. Different theoretical explanations have been made, attempting to define the poetic and the scientific knowledge. According to Taylor (1998), poetic knowledge is not necessarily a knowledge of poetry but rather a poetic (a sensory-emotional) experience of reality and is opposite of scientific knowledge which is empirical, quantifiable and dialectical. Are scientific knowledge and poetic experience two separated things? As poetic experience indicates an encounter with a reality that is non-analytical, in the contemporary world, the poetic way to experience real-ity is often considered to be fictional and the poetic way of experiencing the reality has sometimes been misunderstood. Though knowledge emphasizes theory and experience emphasizes practice, there is a symbi-otic relationship between knowledge (theory) and experience (practice). Our mind is flexible to roam through blind alleys before understand-ing the deadlock between these two equally important parts. Is it possible to use a poetic approach to refer to the part of the existence that is not yet within the reach of scientific knowledge? Sometimes a poetic approach serves the purpose of finding a way to scientific knowledge and vice versa. For example, without the poetic passionate extension of touching the space, the pragmatic fact of gravity could limit human capacity to see beyond existing knowledge and possibilities. To view the Earth from space might remain just a poetic imagination. Noticing, creating and developing scientific novelty is carried out by passion, which has some-times rather a poetic quality than obtainable scientific objectivity. Similar to quantifiable and analytic consideration, poetic audacity also challenges irrefutable facts. The creative process of developing knowledge can be described by tak-ing notice of something, analytical reasoning thereof, and testing the hypothesis. Some phenomena are noticeable and at the same time too complex for analytical reasoning based on traditional scientific approaches. The sensory-emotional experience of reality is private, exists before ver-balization and, in some case, cannot be translated into words. Verbalization is a structured and socially organized process (e.g. grammatical rules, K. Uriko