Artistic Praxis

Here’s a nice sentence template:

“This mechanism is called Z and Z is a pivotal driver of Y.  See W for an approachable introduction to the theory of Z. But be forewarned that there is a lot of artistic praxis involved as well.”

I’ve always liked the word praxis, or “practice or exercise of a technical subject”.  It also has a common usage in political theory naming the puzzling part: how to connect your grand theory of the world to practical application, or “that through which theory or philosophy is transformed into practical social activity.”

The original of sentence which I distilled that template was about financial futures.  It is a nice example of the two meanings playing off each other.  The practitioners of a craft are all about praxis, and are likely to scoff at contents of W; while readers of W are likely to find that they can’t quite make actionable the lovely theory found there in.

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