Some 20 years ago, I was at a social function with my wife, where we were seated at different tables. She reported to me that a discussion took on at her table on the subject of US Football and Everybody Else Football (which the US calls soccer). One of her fellow diners made the statement that soccer was uninteresting because it was all about tactics, not strategy, whereas US Football, obviously a superior product for that person, was about strategy as well as tactics. I have mumbled on that statement ever since.
The fundamentals finally downed upon me reading an Austin American Statesman article today about the 2011 Women's World Cup raise to team parity, which prompted in me the following thought:
If you don't understand the strategy, everything looks like tactics.
Actually, that maps very well with the model we developed with Yi Mao in Generics and Metaphors Unified under a Four-Layer Semantic Theory of Concepts. In technical terms, strategy is related to intensions (with an "s"), and tactic is related to extensions; variations in intensions modulate extensions by building on generics (the situation at hand) to expand metaphors (the situation in the making). In layman's terms, strategy is close to conception, tactic is close to action. I am ready to venture that this also maps the two paths of the brain to action. Tactic is the short loop that leads rapidly from perception in the (hypo)thalamus to action in the motor cortex ("jump when you see a snake"), and strategy is the long loop that adds another step, cognition, to that. In the long loop, perception goes to the (hypo)thalamus then to the pre-frontal cortex (cognition) and then only to the motor cortex ("calm down; the snake is not dangerous after all"). Naturally, both loops occur at the same time, with a delay for the long loop. Get out of a dangerous situation, but ponder whether it's the right move.
Well, football, whatever its incarnation, is the same thing. Create the situation (strategy) to profit from (tactic).
Bertrand du Castel
The fundamentals finally downed upon me reading an Austin American Statesman article today about the 2011 Women's World Cup raise to team parity, which prompted in me the following thought:
If you don't understand the strategy, everything looks like tactics.
Actually, that maps very well with the model we developed with Yi Mao in Generics and Metaphors Unified under a Four-Layer Semantic Theory of Concepts. In technical terms, strategy is related to intensions (with an "s"), and tactic is related to extensions; variations in intensions modulate extensions by building on generics (the situation at hand) to expand metaphors (the situation in the making). In layman's terms, strategy is close to conception, tactic is close to action. I am ready to venture that this also maps the two paths of the brain to action. Tactic is the short loop that leads rapidly from perception in the (hypo)thalamus to action in the motor cortex ("jump when you see a snake"), and strategy is the long loop that adds another step, cognition, to that. In the long loop, perception goes to the (hypo)thalamus then to the pre-frontal cortex (cognition) and then only to the motor cortex ("calm down; the snake is not dangerous after all"). Naturally, both loops occur at the same time, with a delay for the long loop. Get out of a dangerous situation, but ponder whether it's the right move.
Well, football, whatever its incarnation, is the same thing. Create the situation (strategy) to profit from (tactic).
Bertrand du Castel
0 comments:
Post a Comment