A Case Study in Sensemaking:
A Thesis submitted to the faculty of graduate studies at the University of Calgary
Note: This document has been reformatted from its original format,
Having given an account of the field trip in the previous chapter, it is now time to give meaning to the events which occurred during it. In this chapter I focus on analyzing the activities, actions and comments of the participants in terms of the sensemaking patterns which emerged during the field trip as a lived experience. I began this research project with the intention of exploring the question, "How does what occurs on a scientific field trip influence the evolution of knowledge within a community of scholars?" Prior to the field trip, my expectation was that during the trip people would actively generate new ideas "in the moment" as a result of the activities in which they were engaging and that this process would be easily discernible. As a result of having participated in the field trip, I now realize that this expectation was rather naive. What I have come to understand is that this field trip was not a "breaking-new-ground" expedition as I had anticipated; instead, it was more of a "visiting-well-established-sites" tour. Hence, the type of knowledge construction that occurred on the trip was more subtle and personal than I first imagined it would be. It was more about confirming and sharing current knowledge than about generating new knowledge. In terms of broad-scale sensemaking, the field trip proved to be more foundational than generative. It served more to develop and maintain a community of knowers from which knowledge emanates than actually produce knowledge new to the community. How I have come to these understandings is the focus of this and the next chapter. Assuming that meaning is dependent upon the interplay between lived experience and theoretical (cultural and social) constructs, the task of this chapter in analyzing the sensemaking processes and activities which occurred during the field trip is to integrate lived experiences with theoretical constructs in such a way that the meanings generated from this integration resonate as valid for both field trip participants and informed readers. Or to paraphrase Ken Wilber,1 through the integration of subjective truthfulness and objective truth we seek mutual understanding. To achieve this end, my analysis incorporates the three strands of valid knowing (instrumental injunction, direct experience, and communal confirmation), as outlined in chapter two, and the three cultural value spheres (subjective, intersubjective, and objective domains of knowing), also outlined in chapter two, with three sensemaking themes (being there, storytelling, and living together) which emerged directly from the lived experiences of the participants during the course of the field trip.
Science is a way of knowing, a way of making meaning, which demands that knowledge claims be based on experiential evidence. Thus, it requires a methodology for obtaining direct evidence and evaluating the validity of that evidence. Examined from this perspective, the experiences of the participants of the Rocky Mountain pre-conference field trip as a case study in sensemaking will be framed within Ken Wilber"s notion of deep science. The methodology of deep science, as discussed in chapter two, begins with an injunction in the form "If you want to know this, do this."2 In general, the geological field trip is one such injunction embedded within the larger injunction of doing geological science. According to Martin Rudwick, "geology is a science in which fieldwork is a central element of practice."3 As such, it informs geologists and paleontologists as to one of the activities in which they must engage in order to understand various aspects of geology and paleontology. If you are to know the nature of rocks and fossils, you must see them in the context of the environment in which they exist - you must go there and see them for yourself. In other words, the injunction is the objective or "It"-domain of knowing where scientists seek representational truth through direct experience with the external physical world as afforded by the field trip. The injunction along with direct experience embodies Humberto Maturana"s notion that knowing is doing and doing is knowing.4 Direct experience with the physical world forms the basis of new assertions that are presented to other members of the scientific community for confirmation or rejection. Or alternatively, it forms a first hand basis for examining the assertions made by others within the community who have visited the same sites. This is the subjective/ intersubjective or I/we-domains of knowing in which scientists make interpretations and seek meanings for that which they have experienced. Specifically in this case study, the Rocky Mountain pre-conference field trip, as an injunction, brought the participants into direct contact with a small section of the Canadian Rocky Mountains and a few specific paleontological sites from which they could make assertions, from which they could confirm or reject the ideas and notions they brought with them whether they be their own or those of others. In an effort to understand the field trip experience as a case of sensemaking, the sensemaking processes and activities emerging from the participants" experiences have been organized into three themes. Within the context of deep science, these themes serve as conceptual constructs that provide a structure for analyzing the sensemaking processes and activities observed during the field trip. When considered collectively these three themes incorporate the seven characteristics Karl Weick describes as constituting an instance of sensemaking: identity construction, retrospection, enaction of sensible environments, social, ongoing, focused on and by extracted cues, and driven by plausibility rather than accuracy.5 The first theme, being there, focuses on the value and practice of going out into the field to learn about and understand geology. It is also about the immediate experience brought about by direct experience with the external environment. The second theme, storytelling, concentrates on giving meaning to the direct experiences of the field trip as well as on building a sense of community from which confirmation or rejection is given. The third theme, living together, also concentrates on building a community of knowers who develop and maintain a sense of shared knowledge. While these themes are discussed as if they are separate, independent entities, it must be realized this is done for the purpose of illustrating the sensemaking processes and activities that occurred during the field trip. In the actual lived-experience of the field trip, these themes emerged not as separate entities independent of each other but rather as interdependent processes and activities that generated and supported one another. Or in Maturanian terminology, the three themes were brought forth as a result of the distinctions in patterns of behavior we, the field trip participants and I, were able to notice. In other words, the three themes are mental constructs used to make sense of the sensemaking processes occurring during the field trip.
Being there, as a sensemaking activity, concerns the events and activities of the pre-conference field trip which supported the ongoing process of extracting cues from direct interaction with the physical world. It included among other activities, driving through the Rocky Mountains, stopping to "look at some geology," and visiting various fossil localities as well as the Royal Tyrell Museum (see chapter three for full description of these activities). These first-hand field activities coupled with map study, guide book reading, picture taking, and note taking, as well as in-the-moment discussions concerning the geology at hand, facilitated the ongoing nature of sensemaking for field trip participants by extending their sensemaking activities beyond laboratory, classroom, and text-based experiences to direct face-to-face encounters with the rocks and fossils within the context of the natural environment. These first hand experiences are of particular importance to geologists and paleontologists "because so many important geological features are not mobile."6 Hence, the field trip functioned to reinforce and expand what was previously known from other indirect sources. Comments made by various participants throughout the field trip bare this out: Tolsoe: I had never been to the Burgess Shale. I went there to see the forms. I had seen all of the fossils from the text book pictures, but it wasn"t real in my mind. When I saw them in the field, in the outcrop, that was real. I saw those animals with my eyes. So, they"re real, they"re not fake. When we went out in the field, they came alive and then it struck my mind, "Wow, it"s there." Seeing is believing. Sam: You can never get enough from books, so going up there [to the Burgess Shale] is a totally different story. If you look at things only through text, you"re not going to get the full picture. Going to the Burgess Shale excites you about reading about evolution and stuff - it sort of led me in the right direction. It makes it more real. Patrick: In visiting the Burgess Shale I was able to more easily put myself in Walcott"s shoes and understand his interpretations of the fauna. By treading the same paths he took and visiting the quarry and looking at the actual fossils, it was easier to turn back the clock to 1908 and try to see the fossils and their meaning unencumbered by the preconceptions of nearly 90 years of subsequent interpretation. So by visiting the site I tried to imagine how I would have fared in Walcott"s place had I found a new and previously unstudied group of organisms. Not only did the direct interaction with the mountains, the rocks, and the fossils, enable the field trip participants to extract cues that would enable them to better understand the geology and paleontology of the localities visited, but, as two of the Koreans stated, it allowed them to make connections with previously visited localities: Kildong: Today we looked at some good trilobite specimens. I have never seen preservation like that in Korea. Fantastic preservation. Tomorrow, I hope to look at more Cambrian-Ordivician rocks. This may help me understand the comparison of rocks separated by long distances - Korea and here in North America. Tolsoe: They [Kildong and Mongryong] are trying to correlate Korean trilobites with other parts of the world. They saw particular species on the mountain [Mount Stephen] they think they might correlate with a certain part of the Korean Cambrian seascape. In addition to the connections made by the Koreans, other individuals saw things they had never seen before or experienced emotional and sensory responses that come only from having been there interacting with the environment. Still others came to new realizations as a result of having experienced geological localities first-hand. Jerry: I hadn"t realized how complex the Canadian Rockies were. It"s an incredibly complex environment. Carl: You certainly remember the things you see, feel, and touch. That"s the important part about it [the field trip]. I think you"re absorbing the information you were exposed to in the field and it"s partly a tactile experience. Something that you don"t read on a page. You actually pick up a specimen and you talk to people and you remember the day and the weather and everything else. [What you see] has to be in context. You have to have other things around it, beneath it, and above it to truly see how these things are important. Sam: I was really into trilobites, and I loved Anomalocaris. I was happy when I found one on Mount Stephen. It was off to the side and hadn"t been piled up on another rock. No one else had found it. No one had seen it ever, and it"s millions and millions of years old, hundred of millions of years old. It"s just a neat feeling. Hans: For me actually it is somewhat amazing how many people spend a lot of time in that locality [the Burgess Shale], but it"s still not really clear what happened. That"s remarkable. Being there involved getting to know the physical world through interaction with people as well as through direct experience with the environment. Stopping to "look at some geology" is a particularly good example of how this manifested itself during the field trip. While Carl and Paul would begin these sessions by sharing their knowledge of the formations under consideration, they quite intentionally kept their comments to a minimum in order for others to contribute to the discussion by asking questions or by making comments regarding similar formations they had seen in other parts of the world. Often on these occasions people would break up into small groups of two or three and spend a few minutes conversing about the geology of the locality. On our way down to Field from the Burgess Shale, Henry remarked that, as a result of these stops to look at some geology, he was finally becoming familiar with the local geological terminology for the various formations of the Rocky Mountains and thus able to converse more easily with others about them. Though not to the same extent as Henry, by the end of the trip, I, too, had become familiar with some of the more commonly used geological and paleontological terms. Being able to discuss the geology with others while looking at it was an integral aspect of being there as Kildong and Levi"s remarks suggest: Kildong: [Different formations are] difficult to talk about. If we discuss them while looking at the rocks, then we may understand them much better. Levi: I must have spent an hour with him [Peter] on the way down [from Mount Stephen] just trying to clarify what he meant by the fault [on the cathedral of Mount Stephen]. It"s not a simple concept. There"s all sorts of different variations. Both Kildong and Levi"s comments are consistent with the notion that knowledge is not simply out there in the external physical world waiting to be discovered. Rather, knowledge is what people create through their co-creation of shared experience of the external physical world. Their comments reflect Humberto Maturana"s idea that our understanding of the external world is dependent upon the distinctions we are able to make as a result of our experience with others in that world.7 In the following excerpt taken from a post-field trip interview, Peter"s comments on the value of the field experience in relation to the laboratory experience give further support to this notion: Peter: As a field geologist your typical first [sensemaking] experiences are in the field. When you"re working on a hypothesis, you"re trying to solve something - you"ve got the idea in your head. Now you"re out in the field looking at the rocks trying to make sense of it, trying to find that piece that finally makes it fit. As you are walking around and you"re doing your fieldwork and collecting the data, you suddenly find yourself on "the" outcrop. Suddenly, there it is, the relation makes sense. This is the thing that puts everything into context. This totally tosses out a half dozen hypothesis. It can"t be anything else. I think the thing about a field experience as opposed to a lab experience is that it is far less controlled. On any natural rock outcrop, there"s countless variables. So you"re out there looking at nature in all its variations. You"ve got certain ideas in your head, so you"re filtering it through your context and coming up with answers. In a lab experience you have already done the filtering. You cut off nature so your results are already small. So if someone else comes in and looks at your results, you"re still looking at that first. Whereas in the field, if you"re trying to figure things out, its all there. It"s also large enough that you bring other people in, you"re standing on the same place, you"re all looking at the same thing at the same time, but you"re all looking at it somewhat differently depending upon what your background is. And so with a field experience you can suddenly have far more interaction with other people because you can share far more. Suddenly, you are having to be there on the same spot with two or ten other people whatever it"s going to be, and you"re all expressing your own version of reality. You"re all looking at the same thing. You"re all saying, "This is what it is. This is what it has to be. This is what I see." And the person beside you is looking at exactly the same thing but coming up with a completely different view of it and you"re having to deal with it right there. So typically, a field trip, a field experience is by far the best learning experience, or the chance for you to jump to a different level. You get on an outcrop on a field trip, with ten of your colleagues with whom you share some common background, but your field experiences are different. You"re going to get all those different experiences at once and there is going to be heated debate, there always is. I think they"re never quiet, especially if it is a contentious issue. So you get it all out there; it"s all discussed. You walk away but the arguments continue. The heatedness of the exchange really burns the images into your brain, so when you walk off, you may go back to the hotel at night but the ten of you are still arguing about the same thing - you are going to hash it out until you come to some sort of resolution. Seen from Peter"s comments, one of the distinguishing characteristics of the field experience versus the laboratory experience is that being there "puts everything into context." This allows for extracting cues from "countless variables" that would otherwise be absent in a laboratory experience. As Peter suggests, all who are standing there on the outcrop filter what they see based on their own background. In other words from a Maturanian point of view, people on Peter"s outcrop are making sense of what they see as a result of the distinctions they are able to make which in turn is based upon each individual"s personal history rather than on a single pregiven reality independent of the observer. Peter goes on to say that these differences in perspective lead to debates which go on "until you come to some sort of resolution." Thus, his remarks support Karl Weick"s contention that sensemaking is both an enactive and a social process. In a continuation of the above excerpt, Peter points out that context, as provided by field experience, is missing in journal articles as well as during conference presentations. Consequently, neither prove as valuable a source for sensemaking for him as does field experience. Peter: For me personally I get very little from reading a journal article. All I ever read a journal article for is to get groundwork. For instance, today I photocopied an article about an ore deposit in Australia because I"m starting to be curious about the little fine sulfide grains in the Burgess Shale and what their origin is and what that might tell us about the exact environment. Now I"m reading that just to get the groundwork about what other people have said about these shapes of grains. What have other people done? But it"s the lowest level of research in the field. Just getting some very very broad ideas. It"s very, very rarely that I read an article that changes my perspective on things because it"s static. It"s either "Oh ya, I like that because it is a point that I think," so you underline it for referencing in your papers. Or you come across something and you go "Where does that come from. I don"t see that." And what you end up writing in the columns is "Why this? What about this?" - lots of questions, but there can be no exchange. It"s all that you"ve got. It"s frustrating, you just want to pull extra information out, but there"s none to be had. Whereas in a one to one situation, let"s say at a conference, you"re sitting back doing that the same sort of thing saying "Oh I like that," or "Where does that come from? It doesn"t make any sense to me from what I"ve seen." Well, now you have the question period afterwards where you can start to pull in some of those questions. But still it"s just an exchange of words. They"re trying to bring their reality and give it to me. But what I want to see is exactly what it is that it"s based on. Peter"s desire to "see exactly what it is that it [the other person"s interpretation] is based on" gives support to the argument that being there, as described in this thesis, is a critical sensemaking activity. Up to this point in our discussion, being there has been limited to actual time spent in the field. However, as a sensemaking activity it extends beyond the time and space boundaries of the field trip through souvenirs purchased, specimens collected, and pictures taken. All three occurred regularly throughout the pre-conference field trip. Souvenirs, ranging from t-shirts to postcards to guide books, were purchased along the way at shops in Jasper and Field, as well as at information centres at the Frank Slide and the Royal Tyrell Museum. When the situation allowed, fossils were collected by each and every participant. And whenever there was an opportunity during the trip to photograph geological formations or fossils, every single member of the group produced a camera. Below, Mongryong comments on how he used his photographs to extend his field experience beyond the immediate: Mongryong: I took so many pictures of mountains, rocks, and fossils with color slides. As soon as I came back from Canada, I had a slide show for my students and family. Not only do such artifacts remind people of their field experience, but as Paul explains, rock or fossil specimens can also serve as a focus of contemplation for understanding the geological processes associated with the particular sample collected during a field experience: Paul: So I collected the samples and I spray-lacquered them so they looked okay and left them on the mantle piece. I would just look at them, you know, then pick them up and look at them, and think about them and just look at them all the time and keep thinking. And so over about maybe six months, I felt that maybe, I really do understand them. . . . I"m sure that can happen in paleontology. You put some nice specimens out and you"re thinking about them all the time and you could come up with let"s say an interpretation. Anyway, for me this is something I do myself a lot if I"m contemplating something, a model or theory. I"ll put stuff out so that I can look it, a lot of people don"t do that, but it works for me. It keeps me thinking because for me I like to deal with ideas a lot not just documentation, and if you have reminders, it keeps you thinking so that a thought might come to you in an unusual way. You"re reading a book on the john or you"re cooking or something or walking to school or whatever, and then an idea pops into your head because the question has been circulating in your mind. I think most people probably do that if they are concerned about ideas and connections. From Paul"s comments, artifacts such as rock or fossil specimens have the potential to influence sensemaking through ongoing, retrospective construction of meaning long after the original field experience. While not stated explicitly in Paul"s remarks, I think it is fair to say that contemplation as he practices is grounded not only in direct field experience associated with the specimen under consideration but also in an understanding of basic geological principles pertaining to the specimen. I, for example, being a person with minimal knowledge of geology, could contemplate Paul"s specimens for years and still not be able to make sense of the geological processes influencing their formation. Or in Martin Rudwick"s words, "Without experience of the familiar - that is to say, without that initial training in interpretation - the observer of the unfamiliar will experience only bewilderment; he will not gain new conceptual insights that will stand up successfully to later testing."8 From a geologist"s point of view, the value of field experience as a sensemaking experience has long been understood and, of all the comments made during the pre-conference field trip, is best summarized by the following observation: Carl: There was a famous old geologist called Reed. One of the comments he made is that "all else being equal, the best geologist is the one who has seen the most rocks." And he"d say that "experience is important and field work for geologists is going out and seeing a lot of different sections and a lot of different rocks. A lot of different situations provide you with more of a memory bank and perhaps more tools than somebody who hasn"t done that." In other words, to know geology or paleontology, one must practice the injunction of doing fieldwork, of having direct field experience. From the actions participants engaged in during the lived experience of the field trip and from the comments they made throughout and after the field trip, being there emerged as a distinguishable pattern of sensemaking activities that were ongoing, enactive, focused on and by extracted cues, social, and retrospective. As a result of the direct experience provided by the field trip, participants verified prior knowledge as well as extended their base of current knowledge by (1) experiencing the full environmental context within which various fossil localities exist, (2) engaging in on-site interactions with others, (3) creating strong emotional and sensory memories, and (4) collecting artifacts. Hence, the field trip experience, viewed through the lens of being there, is more than an injunctive strand of knowing which instructs the scientist as to what to do. It is more than a procedure for disclosing data. It is, as Barry Lopez suggests, an essential element in the structuring of "mind": The speculations, intuitions, and formal ideas we refer to as 'mind" are a set of relationships in the interior landscape with purpose and order; some of these are obvious, many impenetrably subtle. The shape and character of these relationships in a person"s thinking, I believe, are deeply influenced by where on this earth one goes, what one touches, the patterns one observes in nature.9 From this structuring of mind, experience is given meaning via story - story being "a way of thinking, a primary organizer of information and ideas, . . . a way in which we can know, remember, and understand."10 It is through story that an experience is carved out of what is otherwise an endless flow of lived experience.11 And, being there is the reservoir from which stories arise.
Unprocessed experience is meaningless in that meaning comes from "the kind of attention" given to experience,12 in other words, the story told. Stories represent individual and collective beliefs and values as well as the interpretations of lived experience. They are generated by the internal dimensions (the I- and We- domains) through interaction with the external dimensions (the It-domains). Stories, by "imposing a sense of coherence on the disparate elements the narrative contains,"13 function as explanations of how the physical and social aspects of our world work. Throughout the field trip when we stopped to "look at some geology" or visit a fossil site, stories of the geology or the paleontology were told, often with the caveat, "as far as we can tell," "we think," or "it"s been suggested that . . . ." Whenever we hiked the trails, rode in the van, ate meals or gathered together for a drink, stories about life as a geologist, past and present, or about life in general were part and parcel of the activity ( see chapter three for examples of the stories told). From this proliferation of stories, storytelling surfaced as a reoccurring pattern of sensemaking activities. As such, storytelling served as part of the ongoing, retrospective process of extracting cues from direct experience and from being together with other geologists and paleontologists. In discussing the practice of interpreting field observations, Peter articulates how storytelling is an essential component of the sensemaking process used by geologists and paleontologists: Peter: To me the beauty of doing research geology is that you are making stories. You"re out in the field, you"re collecting data, you"re looking for certain clues, but in the end you fully acknowledge that you"ve only got a tiny, tiny fraction of the total information. Let"s say even if you are just making a map of the Canadian Shield where I"ve done most of my work, you"re talking about seeing probably a maximum of 10% of the ground, the rest is covered by trees and swamps. So you"ve got all these segregated pieces and now your job is to make it cohesive, to fill in all the empty space - to make a picture, to make a story. But you"re doing that based on everything that has come before. If you walked in without knowing any geology, you"ve got random blocks. It would mean nothing. The ability to connect them up starts to make the story. [This ability] is based on all of your education before that and particularly all your personal experiences, every time you"ve connected something up before and made a pattern. Or put more simply: Patrick: Paleontology is detective work. That"s what it is. You search for the clues. You solve the crime. Stories help facilitate the confirmation/rejection strand of valid knowing within a community of knowers who study the same or related phenomena and share a relatively common approach to that study but don"t necessarily agree with each other"s interpretations. The interplay between different understandings of various phenomena generates questions, discussions, and subsequently the evolution of knowledge within a community of knowers. In telling stories about observed phenomena, the storyteller is asking others within the community: "Does my story resonate with the group"s story? Does it extend or expand on the stories of others? Does it contradict? Is it plausible? Does it make sense?" Paul, in reference to the spray-lacquered rocks he left on his mantle piece to contemplate (cited earlier in this chapter), describes an incident which illustrates the confirmation/rejection process as it occurs within the community of geologists: Paul: It just so happens that we don"t really understand how some of these rock types are deposited. We can make thin sections and we still don"t really understand them because sometimes the sediment grains are no longer recognizable. The process of lithification of those rocks is not really well understood. But at the time, a guy was publishing a paper where he argued for a certain phenomenon in order to result in that kind of rock type because we see that a lot in the Cambrian all over the world, a very similar kind of rock type. Sometimes these people call it a ribbon limestone where you have thin beds of limestone, sometimes undulating thin beds of limestone, and then dolomitic interbeds and so from a distance it looks like ribbons. Although I had worked on that in Newfoundland, I felt that I understood it quite well. I knew this guy was publishing his paper or he published it and so I decided to tackle a response rather than just let it ride, sort of take up arms and say, "Okay, so and so . . . ." So I wrote a discussion paper. That happens now and again with controversial things and people will write a discussion paper and really present a disagreement, air their disagreement. The process is called a discussion-reply. So you write a paper that discusses their theory, usually because you don"t agree with it or you think there are some major mistakes, and you want to make sure everybody knows that rather than just letting it ride and then responding to it down the road with just an alternative view that is kind of buried in another paper. Then that person gets a copy of your discussion paper and they prepare a reply and say, "No I didn"t make this mistake," or sometimes they do admit they have made a mistake. So they [the discussion paper and the reply] are printed back-to-back. It is potentially quite a good thing; except, they have to be monitored carefully by the editors, so that somebody doesn"t weasel out of something which is generally what people try to do. I don"t weasel around and say, "Well, you know, the reason why we overlooked that particular thing was because of the following reasons and really it"s that guy"s fault." Anyway, this thing was published and I was contemplating a reply because I felt that I did understand those rocks much better, at least well enough to know that the proposal was simply wrong, ya know, simply wrong and that we have got to keep working at it. I felt that maybe, I really do understand them better than he did or in a different way, at least enough to know that guy was wrong. From a sensemaking perspective, in the discussion paper the researcher gives what he believes to be a plausible account of the phenomenon under consideration, and presents it to the community via a professional journal for confirmation or rejection. In Paul"s case, the reply paper rejects the ideas presented in the discussion paper thus keeping the search for cues, which may clarify the phenomenon, ongoing. Another example of the confirmation/rejection process, discussed throughout the six-day field trip, is the ongoing controversy regarding the classification of Burgess Shale fossils. Charles Walcott, first to classify the strange new specimens from the Burgess Shale, classified them all within modern phyla. Nearly eighty years after Walcott, Stephen J. Gould published Wonderful Life in which he argued for revision of Walcott"s classification of the "Burgess oddities" based on the work of Harry Whittington, Simon Conway Morris and others.14 And more recently according to Carl, "Simon Conway Morris wrote a book that attacked Stephen Gould and his views in Wonderful Life." In discussions of this topic, most of the field trip participants agreed that while Walcott"s classification is inadequate based on what we know today, few agree that Gould has found the correct answer. Carl: A lot of people are quite critical of Stephen Gould"s ideas involved in his book. Certainly the scientific community hasn"t sided with him too well. The following responses are typical of how field trip participants generally make sense of controversies within their field of science: Janet: You can hear the different stories, but it"s not your research area. And without going out and actually seeing that rock, that cathedral sitting in the middle of Mount Stephen, you don"t know what the relationship is between those, so you hear the different pieces and you say, "Okay, these are the different stories that are being debated right now and maybe eventually in three years - ten years from now - one of them will be the dominant one." A lot of times you hear two stories, and they"re incompatible. You have no a priori knowledge - both sets of arguments sound possible. You don"t necessarily favor anything, and how can you if you don"t go out there and actually see it for yourself. Peter: [On a field trip] you are on the same spot of ground arguing over what"s happening. You might say, "This is clearly just like what I saw on a field trip I was on in Nova Scotia." Or, "I"ve seen the same sort of thing up north of Toronto in cottage country four years ago. Or someone will say, "It"s exactly what we see in Western Australia," while someone else is going to say, "I"ve seen this exact same thing in South Africa." Everyone"s got a different answer. It exactly matches whatever they worked on previously. So the story you create is always an additional chapter to the stories you"ve already written. But when you"re trying to put it all together it really is just a matter of you"ve got your certain character traits, certain rocks, you know them. You know that they"ve got characteristics that go with them. Whereas to a first year student basalt is just this black rock, to the geologist basalt means that you"re in an ocean basin, that you"re by a volcanic vent - all the stuff that comes with it. This comes with each of the pieces that you find. They"ve already got the story that"s bound to them. Now you"ve got to take the story that each little piece is telling you and try to make the bigger story where all the characters fit in. Both Janet"s and Peter"s comments suggest that knowledge is dependent upon the knowledge maker. That is to say, knowledge is not simply about what geologists see, but rather about how geologists interpret what they see based on what they have previously seen. Peter in particular is suggesting that knowledge evolves from the context of our personal experience. The implication of this is that from the accumulation of all our previous experiences we are able to draw out the similarities and differences between what we have experienced and what we are experiencing and thus make new interpretations. This supports Humberto Maturana"s contention that our explanations of the external world are dependent upon the distinctions we are able to make in the moment which in turn are based on our ongoing history of structural coupling with both our social and physical environments.15 Thus as Karl Weick maintains, "to talk about sensemaking is to talk about reality as an ongoing accomplishment that takes form when people [individuals or a community of knowers] make retrospective sense of the situations in which they find themselves and their creations."16 In other words, stories are about sensemaking which is more about plausibility, coherence and reasonableness than about accuracy.17 This is apparent in Paul"s remark relating to knowledge claims based on little data: Paul: The elegance of a story is more important than the reality. Robert Fulford contends that stories are our connection to history past and present.18 They are the thread that binds together a community"s lived experience. Fulford goes on to say that historically, stories began as gossip as a process for "compressing events and exploring their meaning."19 In one way or another, participants of the field trip view themselves as storytellers and their work as storytelling: Paul: We"re gossipers. Janet: Everybody tells stories. Historical geology is stories. It"s part of what we do. Whether the fact that we tell stories about field experiences or a person that fell into a creek or whatever - basically our field is telling a story. . . . [We are] trying to reconstruct the past. Historians do the same thing in a different manner I imagine. You don"t want just dry facts. Dry facts are "The quarry is x meters high and this is where we found fossils A, B, and C." You want to know what that means. That"s the story. Carl: I think story telling is an important part of the trip. I mean certainly when you go on geological field trips you almost always get around to bear stories at some stage or other at least if you work in Canada. I guess if you work in Texas it"s probably snake stories or something else. Maybe rattlesnake stories. Who knows? But they"re an important part of the culture and I think it"s a way of people sort of interacting and relaxing. We come to know who we are and how to be through the stories we are told and the stories we tell.20 During the field trip, stories helped to establish the identity of individuals as paleontologists. One morning over coffee, Andy attributed his interest in paleontology to family outings throughout the British countryside during his childhood. At boarding school he realized that most of his classmates were interested in birds and that he "wouldn"t ever be an expert in that," so he looked for something different. Several times during the field trip Levi talked at length about his evolving status as an amateur paleontologist. On one occasion he commented that in general, though not necessarily with our field trip group, he felt "tolerated more than accepted." Another time he stated that he "wasn"t rejected by the professionals," but neither was he in the inner circle. He attributes this to his habit of constantly asking questions which is his way of learning, his way of becoming a paleontologist. As he explains, "It gets irritating after a while for people, but I can"t help myself. I want to know what the hell the words mean! Geology is an arcane language and I want to know what it means." As a group he found geologists to be "friendly people to be with. On other occasions Patrick described his motivation to switch careers from being a sailor to becoming a paleontologist, and Kildong explained the challenges of being a paleontologist in Korea. Throughout the field trip others told similar stories. Not only were there stories regarding personal identity, there were also stories that spoke to the identity of paleontologists as a group. Stories about Andrews, Cope, Marsh, and Walcott, the historical icons of paleontology, were heard regularly, as were stories about more contemporary figures such as Stephen J. Gould, and others. On the climb to the Stephen Formation, Peter, who was particularly familiar with the local history, related the story of how Walcott came to Field in 1909 based on a story he had heard about a railroad worker who had found a fossil while working on a railway cutaway. Later, on the way to the Burgess Shale quarries, Peter described Walcott"s discovery of the first Burgess Shale fossil. There were also the adventure stories told by the more experienced members of our group: Hans and Phelim"s travels in Siberia, Paul"s experiences of the Rockies, and Carl with his tales from around the world. For the field trip participants, these stories served to make sense out of who they are and what they do individually as well as collectively. Hans: Stories of field adventures are essentially the moments when you prove to have escaped from the normal life and the ordinary job. We like to tell these stories because they indicate the moments that a normal tourist would hardly experience or, even better, "survive" (if you take this meaning not too rigidly). Falling down a cliff in southeastern Siberia is not remarkable because you survive it somehow without too much damage and show up as a tough guy, but because your neighbour would never make it to this cliff. And if he really would, he would never be able to meet the people again, who joined him, and fully reiterate this situation. Telling stories is exciting, but telling these stories to people who know the actors in this drama, has the charm that makes James Bond, Flash Gordon, or Quincy as a serial hero more attractive than as a single event. Henry: I"m not too sure what these stories [about historical paleontological figures] "mean". There is a sense of shared history. . . . I guess that although these stories are not examples of stellar behavior or examples of a higher ideal they do provide a history. I think that many field scientists are, and know they are, a bit eccentric and they tend to enjoy it. I enjoy working in the field and I do funny things with the students some times that surprise them but it also stimulates them to think about things differently. Several times along our field trip Carl and Paul did funny things - laying down next to a "no fossil collecting" sign for a photo, ranting on in exaggerated accents while collecting in the field. . . . We are all characters and so were Cope, Marsh and Andrews. I think these stories help establish/bind the "community." As Hans suggests, stories of field adventures are told to express the uniqueness of field experiences common to field geologists and paleontologists. This is in keeping with Max van Manen"s belief that such stories not only bring forth but also clarify shared meanings for those who have experienced similar field situations. In being told to others within the community, these stories reinforce a sense of individual and collective uniqueness and hence a sense of identity separate, as Hans says, from "your neighbour [who] would never make it to this cliff." Along with identity, stories are about membership within a community. As well as serving to communicate core values, model appropriate behaviors, and invent the community"s history,21 stories establish a sense of membership. Or to paraphrase Henry, it is okay to be "a bit eccentric" and to do "funny things" as "we are all characters, and as such "these stories help establish/bind the 'community."" Robert Fulford argues that a good story is essential to a healthy sense of self-worth.22 While this appeared to be the case for others during the field trip, it was certainly the case for me. In my mind, and as is implied in Hans" statement above and Carl"s statement below, a good story meant having a story to tell that related directly to members of the community, not anonymous outsiders. Until I had such a story of my own to tell, I felt like an outsider. My purchase of Ben Gadd"s Handbook of the Canadian Rockies during our visit to the Frank Slide (see chapter 3, p. 119) became the story that made me feel like a bonafide member of the group. Carl: [Storytelling is] one way you get to interact with people about mutual friends or people you both know or that you haven"t seen for a while. I think that the worst part is where you get people who talk about people that the other person doesn"t know. I mean, aren"t interested in. I"ve occasionally had interaction with strangers who have spent their entire time talking about somebody that you"re never going to meet and have no academic or any other interest with you. Their sole reason for being in the conversation is that they"re known to the person you"re talking to. That I always find rather annoying. But when you"re talking about somebody that you know of or you work in a similar field or you both know, then I think that"s an important way of reaching out to each other as well as finding out about somebody you"re interested in. Storytelling was integral to nearly every activity we engaged in during the field trip. In addition to the social contexts of storytelling described above, storytelling was the primary way of explaining the geology and paleontology of the sites visited. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, each time we took a "look at some geology" Carl and Paul would relate to us the story of the geology and paleontology as they knew it. For example, at Athabasca falls Paul described the geology of Mount Kerkeslin that is situated across the valley from the falls. Among other points of interest he directed our attention to the Shaly limestone of the Middle Cambrian and the red bands of Petyo limestone. Carl added that trilobites were present in the Mural limestone of the lower portion of the mountain. Others would also contribute to the story by adding what they knew thus expanding the story. Similar sharing occurred among all the participants throughout the field trip during long van rides, on the trail, at meals, or whenever there was an opportunity to have a conversation. This exchanging of knowledge via story included historical, cultural and personal concerns as well as scientific concerns. Thus, the storytelling engaged in by the field trip participants can be regarded as a significant sensemaking factor in the development of shared meanings. Given that "narrative as opposed to analysis, has the power to mimic the unfolding of reality"23 - be it the reality of geological and paleontological phenomena or the reality of social-cultural phenomena, the field trip participants came to know more about the world around them and about each other through the ongoing, social mechanism of storytelling in the context of living together.
Although sensemaking was accomplished during the field trip through ongoing interactions with the physical world as discussed under the theme being there, it was also a product of ongoing interactions of the cultural and social world experienced through living together. As Humberto Maturana explains, sensemaking results from the structural coupling occurring between an organism (or community of organisms) and the environment, or between organisms (or communities of organisms).24 In applying this notion of structural coupling to the social interactions occurring during the pre-conference field trip, it follows that through the recurrent social interactions individual "knowing" and community "knowing" co-evolved. That is to say, through the process of living together in the context of the six-day field trip individual stories blend into and subsequently shape the stories of the community. Likewise through shared lived experience the stories of a community blend into and shape the stories told by its members. Hence, living together provides the forum in which the individual as sensemaker within a community undergoes "continual redefinition, coincident with presenting some self to others and trying to decide which self is appropriate."25 From this perspective, the pre-conference field trip, besides being seen as a scientific event (an injunction) which provided direct experience with the environment (illumination), can also be viewed as a social event that served to build and maintain a community of sensemakers. This community building occurred throughout the field trip as members new to the community, had the opportunity to get to know established members of the community. At the same time, established community members had the opportunity to renew existing friendships as well as build new ones with other established members they had yet to meet. This was particularly true for individuals like Kildong and Phelim who were geographically quite isolated from the rest of the community. While there are numerous ways in which scientific communities are maintained, living together, twenty-four hours a day for six days in relative isolation from regular work and home environments provided an opportunity for field trip participants to come to know each other in a manner not typically possible at conferences, or in institutional workplaces, or through professional journals. The primary difference between this experience of living together and the other types of experiences is that not only does the field trip engage people at a cognitive level as do the others, but it also engages people at a visceral level. Hence, mind and body are unified in knowing. This is the underlying message of Carl"s comment quoted earlier: Carl: You certainly remember the things you see, feel, and touch. . . . You actually pick up a specimen and you talk to people and you remember the day and the weather and everything else. Although, all communities by their very nature are maintained via social and cultural activities, the field experience demands and provides a categorically different experience than what occurs at conferences and in institutional settings. Negotiating the physical environment together bonds people at a visceral level as well as a social level. Slowly limping back from Tanglefoot Creek with Patrick and Levi, each of us suffering our own aches and pains acquired from three arduous days of hiking, provided a shared experience not soon forgotten. Physically demanding challenges as encounter during the field trip bring out aspects of personality not normally experienced in other settings. This is affirmed in the following comments by Carl and Sam: Carl: I think in the field too you see people under different circumstances. And I know if you go on a very small field trip and spend weeks with people, you very quickly learn who"s grumpy in the morning and who pulls their share of the weight and who"s lazy and who can limp through the day if necessary and so on. And who doesn"t. So you do develop a level of trust that you won"t have necessarily just from an interaction at a conference. One thing I learned from that trip is if I went collecting with somebody and I wanted them to collect a lot of specimens I would take Hans along. In the time we were up in the Cranbrook locality he collected 137 complete trilobite specimens. We didn"t have very much time up there with the long walk and so on, but I think he collected probably ten times as many specimens as most. I know some people only collected two or three in the time that he collected 137. And he identified them all and sent me a list after the thing by e-mail - He didn"t find any new types, but he was very effective and conscientious. Sam: I walked with Carl for a while and we talked about things besides paleontology, like mushrooms and stuff like that other than just what he is actually studying. I enjoyed talking to and sitting down drinking with the paleontologists on the trip. I found it interesting to see how these people who are completely immersed in their field talk about other paleontologists in an informal way (and by first name most of the time) and how they verbally critique other people"s work - I remember when one of the others was talking to Carl about something in Australia about worms or something and trying to convince him of his view and he was really adamant about it. Carl received it really well. They seem to be free to argue about other paleontologist"s views without showing much negativity toward the individuals as scientists. I was happy to see this as I believe it is essential for the advancement of science. Through the extended time spent together over the duration of the field trip participants were able to "develop a level of trust" not commonly achievable in other professional contexts. Both Carl"s and Sam"s comments suggest that identity is not only established from one"s own point of view, a "Who am I?" perspective, but also from the point of view of others, a "Who is he or she?" perspective. Sam"s comments illustrate this point. Who Carl is, as seen through Sam"s eyes, changes over the series of interactions between the two of them. No longer is Carl simply a paleontology professor; he is also a person with other interests. Because of these kinds of interactions both individual and community evolve. Thus, the extended time of being together during the pre-conference field trip afforded people a powerful context for communicating and negotiating who they were as individuals within the community of paleontologists to which they already belonged or to which they sought membership. According to Charlotte Linde of Stanford University, we "communicate our sense of self to others and negotiate it with others."26 Hence, one of the outcomes of people participating in the field trip as expressed by various participants was connecting at a deep level with others who share common interests: Mongryong: I had great experience in Canada. In particular, meeting and conversing with many friends from other countries. Carl: My own personal view of such trips is that they are most useful for scientists getting to know each other. They certainly learn some field geology, and improve their field experience, which will assist them in their own work elsewhere. But the reason I go on these kind of field trips is to meet people. The contacts made on field trips are usually much stronger than those made at a meeting where people mainly attend talks. Tolsoe: I think all of us [Kildong and Mongryong] are here to meet trilobite people. We can"t get any information in Korea. There"s written information on paper, but there"s the personal thing, you know - the political things. Also we are here to meet trilobite people, hear trilobite people and to get useful information, because the trilobite research in Korea is in an infant stage. After the field trip it was certain to me I know more people in the trilobite field. That makes it easy to communicate with them, to get some information, advice, and suggestions for my research. I feel like I"m in the trilobite field. All the people were talking about trilobites and that was good. Sam: I was the youngest. I didn"t feel like I was disrespected or anything. They realized I did have an understanding of what was going on. I did a lot of listening, especially with all the driving. I think I talked mostly to Henry. He was a bit younger. I ended up sitting with him in the van. It just happened by chance. I think the field trip influenced my confidence quite a lot because you realize how you can talk to them [the other participants] and you do have things to contribute. I think it does make a big difference. Spending six days traveling with these kind of guys is definitely a good thing. These comments are examples of how living together provided opportunities to "meet" and "hear" people talk which made it "easier to communicate" and thus to acquire "information, advice and suggestions." Over the course of the six-day field trip, this along with building one"s own confidence - "because you realize how you can talk to them and you have things to contribute" - allowed for the development of stronger relationships than might normally be made as a result of sitting and listening to a classroom lecture or a conference presentation. Not only did people have the opportunity to converse with each other while standing together looking at the same piece of geology or hiking to a fossil locality, there was also the possibility to converse while riding in the vans, eating meals, and sharing accommodations (see Appendices D, E, and F for details of each of these arrangements). While not all incidents of these activities were recorded, the data collected does provide an indication of who people intermingled with during these times. An analysis of the summary of this data (see Appendix G for summary of Appendices D, E, and F), shows that Andy, Hans, Phelim and I each connected in at least one of these three ways with fourteen other individuals, and that everyone else either shared a seat in the van, ate a meal with or shared a room, on at least one occasion, with seven different people during the field trip. On average people had at least one of these types of opportunities for conversation with at least ten other people during the field trip. But more importantly, the data shows an intermingling of individuals regardless of their student, amateur, or professional status. Whereas the quantity of contacts between individuals does not speak to the quality of the interactions, the ongoing relationships after the field trip do. This is evident in the following two comments: Carl: Most of the people that were on that field trip, at least half of them, I"ve had some sort of connection with since. For instance, Jerry sent me a couple of reprints, one on digital photography, which may assist a NSERC minor equipment grant proposal, and the other on how to go downhill without damaging yourself - clearly of some use to myself. I lost both of my big toe nails coming down that wretched hill [from the Burgess Shale]. It taught me to have tight boots in the future. You"d think somebody with my level of field experience would know better. Andy invited me down to San Diego to give a talk at his university. To meet his group and spend a few days with him, which I did. That was very successful and one of my graduate students is going to go down to do a Ph. D. with him in California. So these things lead to other interchanges which involve exchange of information and so on. Without my seeing Andy again, I had met Andy several times before that trip, and then going down to see him and his wife and that group in California, I might have been more reluctant to encourage my graduate student to go there rather than go to Oklahoma which is another place she had an opportunity to do a Ph. D. I"ve had some interaction with Hans since then. I"ve received reprints from him, e-mails. I"ve sent him reprints. So there"s been more interaction between us than there had been before certainly. I"ve had some interaction with Phelim, the Chinese worker. In fact, he"s provided materials for some research we"re doing in Argentina, so there"s been some important interaction there. I"ve reviewed other people"s grants. I have a better knowledge of them as an individual and what they are interested in and what they are doing from meeting them and talking to them on the trail. I think seeing people is really important. Even if you don"t agree with them, it"s a way of understanding them and them understanding you. I get along reasonably well with Connor Moore, though I"m critical of him at times. And meeting him on trips like this is good. We get to know each other better. I think it was important for Tolsoe to have his colleagues [Kildong and Mongryong] there and to show them around and be with them on that trip. It may ultimately have some influence on whether he gets a job and career. I know that there is a position opening up in September and he"s madly trying to get his Ph. D. ready so he can apply for it. I think they have a rather tight and interacting community of Korean paleontologists so it"s important for him to stay in contact with them. I think one of the reasons they [Kildong and Mongryong] came on the field trip was because Tolsoe was here and they could go with him. They were probably also interested in the Burgess Shale. One of the Koreans [Mongryong] applied to do a post Doc with me - asked if I had money to support him in a post Doc and I wish I did. And maybe that wouldn"t have happened if they hadn"t been here on that trip. Tolsoe: I think meeting people is pretty important - making more connections with different people who have the same interest as I have. I talked to Jerry a couple of times about some projects he and I are both interested in. I contacted Andy to borrow some specimens from the museum where he worked before going to California. The loan process went pretty well because of him. If I do post doctoral research, I"m going to California to work with him. His interest is the same as mine - how trilobites develop. I"m thinking of having him as my external examiner. I contacted Paul because he has a lot of old publications. I only have fourth generation photocopies. I needed original copies so I contacted him. I also talked to Janet to borrow some specimens - middle Cambrian limestone containing baby trilobites. I needed them for my thesis, so she sent a chunk of limestone to me. I processed it in hydrochloric acid. It turned out pretty good. Those materials were extra for her, so she shared them with me. I sent Henry a couple of e-mails because he asked me to get information about a book on evolution, so I sent an e-mail back giving information about that book. He"s a nice guy. He told me when I ever go to New York to call him and he will give me a place to stay. Mongryong was in Saskatoon to do his post-doctoral research [with Paul]. He went back in February after a one-year program. Actually, we went on a field trip together last summer in Utah. We spent about 15 days in the Rocky Mountains, just the two of us. It was excellent. As these comments imply, not only do the relationships developed through living together during the field trip involve the exchange of scientific information, that is, data, articles and specimens, they also include placement of graduate students and employment opportunities both of which relate to the interchange of people within the community. Furthermore, these relationships play an important role in building the community of scientists within which an individual operates. As Martin Rudwick points out, an individual"s scientific community includes not only those he or she has trained under and the literature he or she reads, but also the teachers and colleagues with whom he or she engages in scientific discussions.27 The following comments by Carl and Peter show how connections made during a field trip influence the building of community: Carl: In some cases it"s just simply because you know the person [from the field experience] that you mention it to somebody else, and you may facilitate an interaction [between the two of them] that the person you met on the field school may never know about. Simply because you say when you"re thinking about "Should X co-operate with Y or Z?" You say, "Y because I met Y on the field trip and I like him." So then "Why don"t you go and talk to Y about it?" The implication of Carl"s remarks is that the quality or depth of a collegial relationship is not simply based on objective criteria relating to the individual as a scientist, but also on one"s perception of the individual as a human being - "I like him." How the nature of collegial relationships influences the sensemaking process can be seen in Peter"s comments regarding how his interactions with Paul during the field trip affected his reading of journal articles as well as his thinking: Peter: Some of the things he [Paul] said about certain personalities - now those personalities have since written papers and now I read them with a filter of what Paul said. "Oh, ya, ya." And where it might not be my specialty, he"s put a filter on the way I"m going to look at that paper from now on. And also again, talking with him and seeing the way his mind works, and liking the way his mind works and seeing some sort of similarity between the way I do research and the way I interact with a group of researchers. Again, when he puts something out, I"m usually more favorable. Even at times "Ooo. That"s kind of whacked out." I"ll still give it more consideration than I would if it was from somebody else, a complete unknown. Because at least I"ve got some sort of basis. I think, "Okay, I can trust him, so far." Then I"ll evaluate after that. At least he"s got the first steps of confidence so I"m more likely to take his work and integrate it into my mind frame than I would just anybody else's. Also, because I know the name now and associate it with a face and a personality, I"m more likely just to pick up his stuff if I just kind of glance through it in the libraries. When I"m looking through a journal and notice an article by Paul, I"ll probably pick up on "What"s he saying now? What trouble is he getting in?" So I"m more likely to be aware of what he"s doing than just about any other paleontologist in Canada. Peter"s comments illustrate Karl Weick"s contention that sensemaking evolves within the context of social interactions.28 Weick points out that sensemaking is an "intertwining of the cognitive and the social."29 In other words, one"s thinking is influenced by the social interactions one experiences. Given that Peter"s remarks were made over eighteen months after the field trip, it is also clear that the influence of his interactions with Paul are not limited to the moment of the interaction but extend over time beyond the initial interaction. Hence, from this and other comments made by the field trip participants it is apparent that living together is an important component not only of the sensemaking process but also in creating a community of knowers from which sensemaking is generated. Not only did living together, in the context of the field experience, provide people with a shared experience of the physical world, it also provided a setting where stories and histories could emerge and evolve. As such living together fostered the development of ongoing relationships that are an integral to the development of a sense of community. Seen from the various participant comments, living together was an integral part of the sensemaking process both during and after the field trip.
In this chapter we have addressed the research question, "How does what occurs on a scientific field trip influence the evolution of knowledge within a community of scholars?", from the perspective of three sensemaking themes which reflect both the "what" and the "how" aspects of the question. The "what" which occurred on the field trip was direct experience with the environment (being there) in the presence of others (living together) with whom experiences were shared (storytelling). Embedded within these three themes is the "how" as heard through the voices of the field trip participants. The implication of the field trip participants" experiences is that being there, as an injunctive strand for obtaining valid knowledge, provided direct experience, the second strand for obtaining valid knowledge, and as such influenced the evolution of knowledge in that it made what people had previously heard and read more real. Being there, according to Peter, "puts everything into context." Or in Tolsoe"s words, "Seeing is believing." Using Ken Wilber"s terminology, being there is about coming to know the exterior of holons, the "It" domain of reality, through direct interaction with the physical world. From the participants" perspective the field experience engaged not only the cognitive aspects of their minds but also the full range of sensory perceptions thus making the experience more memorable as well as more available for incorporation into their thinking. Furthermore, Paul noted that artifacts collected during the field experiences served as stimuli for contemplation well after the field experience was over. Additionally, being there provided foundational material for evaluating other"s interpretations as well as generating or modifying field trip participants" own interpretations of scientific knowledge. The field experience also provided a basis for making comparisons between geological sites visited during the field trip and those visited elsewhere. As a source of insight into the complexities of the real world which sometimes get lost in theoretical models of the world, the field trip experience was an intense venue for learning. According to Sam, he "learned more [during the field trip] than in the entire year of classes." All these sensemaking experiences give credence to Karl Weick"s notion that "the concept of sensemaking keeps action [being there] and cognition together."30 This is apparent in Jerry"s reaction to the Rocky Mountains as "an incredibly complex environment." His comment suggests that being there was inspiring and left people with a sense of the wonder of it all. While being there is only one of many actions which constitute sensemaking, from Weick"s point of view, it is the one from which the others emanate.31 In other words, being there provided the raw experience, the raw material, from which sense was made through the telling of stories, i.e. illumination. Without experience there would be no stories to be told, and without stories, experience would have no meaning. To paraphrase Janet, stories give meaning to objective data. Storytelling is the process by which individual understandings of reality, the internal "I" domain of existence, are integrated with the collective understanding of reality, the "We" domain. In other words, storytelling is the interlinking of the subjective and intersubjective interior dimensions of experience. It is through this dialogical process that values and meanings are shared. Through this dialogical process "the action of saying makes it possible for people to then see what they think."32 Hence, storytelling gives shape to experience as well as shaping the storyteller. Throughout the field trip people shared explanations of particular phenomena with each other. This process of sharing explanations, as we have heard from the field trip participants themselves, is what paleontology is all about. In Janet"s words, "Historical geology is stories. It"s part of what we do. . . . Basically our field is telling a story. . . . [We are] trying to reconstruct the past." The implication of Janet"s assertion is that these stories are products of the social process of sensemaking, that they were alive and ever changing. Blending together one story with another, bigger and bigger stories are created in an endless ongoing process of generating and revising knowledge. As Ken Wilber and Humberto Maturana have argued, a further implication of this evolving nature of stories, the evolving nature of knowledge, is that objective knowledge (representational truth) is dependent upon the knowledge maker. Peter"s comments regarding the paleontologist"s task of giving coherence to "random pieces of information," to "make it [the information] cohesive, to fill in all the empty space - to make a picture, to make a story," are consistent with Wilber"s and Maturana"s arguments. Peter gives further support to this notion saying that making the story is based not only on the information available in the moment but "on everything that has come before." Hence, the goal of storytelling, as an explanation of phenomena, is not absolute truth but rather progressive clarification of relative truth. Or as Karl Weick proposes, sensemaking, while based on cues extracted from experience with the world, is as much about plausibility as it is about accuracy.33 In other words, storytelling is about truthfulness (the subjective and intersubjective domains of reality) as well as representational truth (the objective domain of reality). Not only do paleontologists make sense of the physical world through storying they also make sense of their social world by telling stories about previous field adventures and about the experiences and theories of other paleontologists past and present. From the stories they told, the field trip participants created a sense of identity both for themselves as individuals and as a community. Living together during the field trip provided a forum for participants to get to know each other not only through the stories told but also through ongoing social interactions. Through extended and recurrent interactions with each other, the field trip participants had opportunities to develop levels of trust and understanding of one another that went beyond professional competencies and status. Students, amateurs and professionals intermingled with each other regardless of social position. This is reflected in Sam"s comment, "I was the youngest. I didn"t feel like I was disrespected or anything. They realized I did have an understanding of what was going on." Through diverse and sometimes difficult activities people learned about each other as people not just as paleontologists. In addition to sharing rooms and meals and long van rides, together they endured the rain and underwent long, arduous treks through the mountains, as well as explored fossil beds and delighted in the splendor of the mountains. Through these and other activities, field trip participants experienced the nuances of each other"s personalities normally unavailable in less adventurous and demanding environments. As Carl pointed out, "you very quickly learn who"s grumpy in the morning and who pulls their share of the weight and who"s lazy and who can limp through the day if necessary and so on. And who doesn"t." Observing how others responded to the trying situations of the field trip was an opportunity to learn what it meant to be a field geologist or paleontologist. For example, the lesson I learned was that field workers don"t complain even when they have to wait until ten o"clock at night before they have dinner as was the case upon our arrival in Cranbrook after our third day of rigorous hiking. The experience of living together was also a chance to renew old friendships - Hans and Phelim meeting again for the first time in several years - and to catch up on what people were doing in their day to day lives. It was also an opportunity to create new relationships. As Tolsoe pointed out, as a result of the field trip "I know more people in the trilobite field. . . . I feel like I"m in the trilobite field." Living together was also a time for building relationships which extended beyond the field trip and served as the foundation for mutual exploration of scientific understandings and the subsequent evolution of what counts as knowledge within the community. This is evident in both Carl"s and Tolsoe"s comments about the numerous exchanges they have had with various field trip participants. From all the interpersonal interactions during and after the field trip it is apparent that one of the primary values of the field trip was relationship building, community building. Or in Carl"s words, the value of "such trips is that they are most useful for scientists getting to know each other." Through six-days of being there, storytelling, and living together, sensemaking occurred and knowledge evolved not as a result of any one of these themes independent of the others but because all co-existed together as inseparable aspects of a given lived experience. To use Ken Wilber"s words, "Each is intimately related to the others, for the simple reason that you cannot have an inside without an outside, or a plural without a singular."34 Taken jointly being there, storytelling, and living together incorporate the seven characteristics of sensemaking outlined by Karl Weick,35 and thus demonstrate that the Rocky Mountain pre-conference field trip was indeed an instance of sensemaking. Being a researcher in the role of observer participant, I paid attention to the interactions between field trip participants and engaged them in conversations that provided data regarding their sensemaking experiences related to the field trip. In addition, I had my own lived experience of the trip. Hence, from these lived experiences and from my interpretation of the information collected from the other participants as well as from my history of previously accumulated experiences and associated mental constructs, I analyzed the data collected and gave it a structure which reflects meanings consistent with those of the field trip participants. While other events and interactions occurred during the field trip which in one way or another influenced the evolution of knowledge, being there, storytelling and living together emerged from the data collected as the most distinguishable patterns of sensemaking. Collectively these themes, reflecting the recurrent interactions in which the field trip participants engaged, serve as mental constructs for understanding the field trip experience as an occurrence of sensemaking. As such they represent one possible reality, one interpretation of the field trip experience as an instance of sensemaking. In analyzing what the field trip participants did, what they said, and what they thought, it has been possible to interpret and establish the field trip experience as a case of sensemaking. Yet, in the process of analyzing the data, it became progressively clear that, while this analytic process satisfied the demands of my rational mind in terms of making valid knowledge claims, it was incomplete. There was more to this field trip experience than met the eye. Somehow analysis alone had failed to capture the underlying essence of the field trip as a sensemaking experience. Looking at the results of the data, I thought, to use Ken Wilber"s words, "something else is going on."36 To discover that something else, I explored the field trip experience from a synthetic or integrative perspective in addition to the analytic approach already undertaken. In doing so I came to realize that this particular geological field trip was in the truest sense of the word, a pilgrimage. While some of the field trip participants had referred to our trek to the Burgess Shale as a pilgrimage, I took their meaning to be more metaphorical than literal. However, by reversing the analytic process and synthesizing the data collected, I realized that this field trip, in the way it was structured and eventually conducted, was in many ways parallel to religious pilgrimages. Hence, I began to see the field trip literally as a pilgrimage. The next chapter explores the six-day Rocky Mountain field trip as a pilgrimage.
Background Constructs
Being There
Storytelling
Living Together
Summary
Chapter 5: An Instance of Pilgrimage
May the FORCE be with you!
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