Metis: A Crib-Sheet

I’ve been thinking and talking more about metis lately. It’s not a terribly common term, and the way I’m using it isn’t necessarily standard. (It seems pretty in the ball park, but I’m not a Greek scholar so I won’t pretend to be certain.)

Below, I’ll collect some sources and quotes that guide how I think about metis, as a quick reference for anyone who feels called to it.

---

From Reality, by Peter Kingsley

Mêtis is the particular quality of intense alertness that can be effortlessly aware of everything at once.

Mêtis feels, listens, watches; can even be aware at the same time... of every thought drifting into and out of our consciousness. It misses nothing.

He also says that metis is "presence and continuous alertness," a way of being "always aware of the whole without excluding anything”

In his book Catafalque, Kingsley says

Metis is the ability to adapt, translate, shift shape; is the instinctive inner wisdom that can steer a consistent course for us across the constantly changing waters of existence; is the infinite subtlety and alertness that's needed to make the impossible transition successfully, faithfully, exactly from one level of reality to another; is the cunning of knowing how to keep concealed and disguised while revealing no more than is appropriate at any moment.

---

Peter Goodyear’s article on metis (my highlights here) has this to say:

Mètis can be translated narrowly as a form of “wily intelligence”, archetypally displayed in hunting and fishing. It is strongly associated with Odysseus/Ulysses and the skills of the seafarer that are needed and tested in turbulent waters: mètis allows the sailor to outwit a malevolent storm and avoid disaster. Detienne & Vernant (1974/1991) make a bolder claim: that mètis is foundational. It is needed to engage with epistêmê, téchnê and phrónêsis.

He quotes Mentz as saying

Metis [is] “skilled, tool-driven work … in which human actors modify and engage with a threatening and dynamic environment”

To finish, Goodyear says

In sum, we can understand mètis as embodied intelligence in action: fit for uncertain times, ambiguous spaces and unequal competitions.

---

In Seeing Like a State, James C. Scott describes metis.

The term metis… descends from classical Greek and denotes the knowledge that can come only from practical experience.

And then

Usually translated, inadequately, as "cunning," metis is better understood as the kind of knowledge that can be acquired only by long practice at similar but rarely identical tasks, which requires constant adaptation to changing circumstances. It is to this kind of knowledge that Luxemburg appealed when she characterized the building of socialism as "new territory" demanding "improvisation" and "creativity."

He lists some common activities that require casual metis: “skills that require adapting to a capricious physical environment, the acquired knowledge of how to sail, fly a kite, fish, shear sheep, drive a car, or ride a bicycle.” From this list, gives us a great heuristic for metis “One powerful indication that they all require metis is that they are exceptionally difficult to teach apart from engaging in the activity itself.”

Additionally,

Those specialists who deal with emergencies and disasters are also exemplary of metis. Firefighters, rescue squads, paramedics, mine disaster teams, doctors in hospital emergency rooms, crews that repair downed electrical lines, teams that extinguish fires in oil fields, and, as we shall see, farmers and pastoralists in precarious environments must respond quickly and decisively to limit damage and save lives. Although there are rules of thumb that can be and are taught, each fire or accident is unique, and half the battle is knowing which rules of thumb to apply in which order and when to throw the book away and improvise.

Finally,

Metis lies in that large space between the realm of genius, to which no formula can apply, and the realm of codified knowledge, which can be learned by rote.

Metis is a dynamic fusion of knowledge, intuition, and action — driven by particular states of mind that lend themselves to the dynamic weave between them demanded by the situation.

---

Metis & the Hemispheres

I also want to note — and this is getting further into my own interpretation, less tied to any scholarship of the actual Greek term — that descriptions of metis seem to me like a near-perfect description of what Iain McGilchrist calls Right Hemisphere dominance.

Without insisting too hard on the overlaps, and without positing a neuroanatomical basis for metis, I’d just like to note that a very similar cluster of traits show up over and over again, not just in McGilchrist, Kingsley, and Goodyear, but in sources as diverse as John Keats’ letters, Federico Campagna’s philosophy, and random meditators stumbling on the territory. The same pattern showing up from many sources in many times from many angles — including my own personal experience with this territory — suggests to me that there’s a there there.

Some of the biggest overlaps between metis and right hemisphere dominance are

• The right hemisphere focuses on wholes more than parts. (Remember above: Metis is “always aware of the whole without excluding anything.”)

• The right hemisphere attends to experience with open awareness, always ready for the unexpected – as opposed to the left, which blocks out anything it deems irrelevant so it can maintain narrow focus. (Remember Kingsley’s description, “Metis feels, listens, watches; can even be aware at the same time… of every thought drifting into and out of our consciousness. It misses nothing”)

• “Only the right hemisphere has a whole body image…for the right hemisphere, we live the body; whereas for the left, we live in it, rather as we drive a car” [McGilchrist]. (Remember above: Metis is “embodied intelligence in action”)

• “The right hemisphere [is] aware of its own limitations, and always seeks partnership with the left hemisphere.” The left hemisphere attends to experience with intense focus and an eye towards controlling things. When the two cooperate, it might look like, as Kingsley said above, “a particular quality of intense alertness that can be effortlessly aware of everything at once.” A fluid combination of broad multisensory awareness and intense focus.

• While the narrowly focused left hemisphere prefers to deal with unmoving things, so it can focus on a reduced and abstracted set of information, the right hemisphere defaults to perceiving things in motion and in practice. (Compare with Goodyear above, where metis is best to “modify and engage with a threatening, dynamic environment.”)

Additionally, as a softer point of overlap I see — the descriptions of metis above all note some kind of tension or danger as a key ingredient, whether it’s sailing on a powerful and indifferent sea, or being a firefighter cast into a wildfire. This matches up with another of McGilchrist’s pointers: in just about every species with a split brain (which is most of us that have anything worth calling a brain), the right hemisphere is associated with keeping an eye out for threats. It approaches the world with an open, spacious intensity appropriate for noticing the unknown and unexpected, and responding to it quickly.

---

That’s about where things stand at the moment.

One more source that’s worth looking at: E. Richard Sorenson’s essay on “Preconquest Consciousness.” Although he never uses the term “metis” or talks about the hemispheres at all, the descriptions of hunting and day to day life among the people he observed bear the same energy signature to me, an unmistakable fusion of open dynamic responsiveness and intense focus in moment to moment experience, all in service to a kind of raw competence that feels almost miraculous.

If you have any other sources or leads that look promising to you, let me know. Also, if you’re interested in all this, it’s probably worth checking out my essay Solving McGilchrist's Big Problem.