Note - this started out as a reply to Chris in the "Training Log" thread, but it ended up being enough of a digression that I thought it should go in its own thread.
I don't have any problem with the definitions you choose to apply. I understand where they're coming from and it certainly helps communication when we understand what definitions are being used.
On the other hand, I will say (based on this and a number of previous conversations), that we have a fundamentally different outlook regarding the meaning of "a martial art."
You (based on this and previous conversations) regard a martial art as a discrete individual thing that exists in and of itself with clear boundaries. It has a founder or founders, it has a specific list of underlying principles, it has a particular curriculum and set of training methods It has a specific context and purpose. It fits into a certain number of binary categories ("Japanese", "Korean", "traditional", "modern") and not into others.
I would argue that martial arts (like much of the rest of the world), are not necessarily confined to sets with such rigid boundaries.
I'll use another analogy and compare the concept of "martial art" to the concept of "species" in biology.
Most laypeople consider a species to be a binary category. An animal is or is not a bald eagle, a grey wolf, a house cat, or whatever. Those who have taken high school biology classes may be familiar with the definition of species as a population where any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring. (For example, horses and donkeys are different species because even though they can interbreed and produce offspring, those offspring are not fertile.)
Biologists, however, are familiar with ring species. A ring species is a connected series of neighboring populations, each of which interbreeds with closely sited related populations, but for which there exist at least two "end" populations in the series, which are too distantly related to interbreed, though there is a potential gene flow between each "linked" population. In other words, you can have one group of sea gulls (group A, with their own latin taxonomy) which can interbreed with another groups of sea gulls (group B). So groups A and B, by the definition above, are the same species. Group B can interbreed with group C. So B and C must be the same species. Group C can interbreed with group D. So C and D must be the same species. However, it turns out that group A cannot interbreed with group D. So A and D are not the same species. What??!! A and B are the same species. B and C are the same species. C and D are the same species. But A and D are not the same species? What happened to our clear, binary boundaries?
BTW - this also reflects a confusion some people have with the fundamental concept of evolution. Evolution follows the same pattern as we saw for ring species, but across time rather than space. Modern horses might be descended from Eohippus (with intermediate stages such as Mesohippus), however there was no point during those millions of years of evolution where a member of a species gave birth to an offspring which could be considered a different species from its parent. The changes in each generation were miniscule. Species is a continuum, not a binary category. It just happens to be convenient for most day-to-day practical work to treat them as discrete categories.
I regard martial arts in the same way. Just as a "species" does not exist apart from the individual organisms which are lumped into that category, a martial art does not exist as a separate entity from the community of individual people who practice that art. In my opinion, the art is really defined by that community rather than on any official rules handed down by the founder of the art (assuming the art even had a singular founder). And the nature of individuals within that community can make the nature and boundaries of the art to be fuzzier than what you might expect.
Depending on the art, there may be considerable variation in how individuals in that community carry out that practice. Training methods, techniques, concepts, principles, philosophies, cultural rituals, reasons for training, contexts the arts is applied in, can all vary. Sometimes you can find individuals from two "different" arts whose training is much more similar than some other individuals within the same art. This could happen because of convergent evolution and cross-pollination between separate arts. This could happen because the two arts are essentially the same art (by descent), but instructors along the way decided to split off and declare themselves the founders of a new art for political or other reasons. It could be because individuals within the separate arts each decided to follow a certain approach to their development and ended up in a similar place.
We had a discussion a while back where you commented that BJJ as an art is primarily best suited for competing against other BJJ practitioners in tournaments under BJJ rules. There is an element of truth in that when you look at the many schools and individuals out there in the BJJ community who are training specifically for that purpose and have it as their primary goal. However I took issue with the generalization, looking at my own BJJ training as an example. I am mediocre at best in BJJ tournament competition. However my BJJ training also encompasses sparring practitioners of many different arts under many different rulesets. I've used my BJJ in sparring outdoors, in cars, on furniture, with sticks, with knives, with hair pulling, with biting, with all sorts of variables which are not present in BJJ tournaments. I've taught aspects of my BJJ to law enforcement and to pro MMA fighters. I've taught aspects of my BJJ to practitioners of striking arts who just want to know how to safely get back to their feet if they are taken down. (Per @yak sao everything I showed him fit well within the principles of his Wing Tsun.)
So is "my" BJJ best suited for competing against other BJJ practitioners in BJJ tournaments? Not really. Is "my" BJJ a different art from the art trained by the people who are winning BJJ championships but aren't doing the other kinds of training that I do? I suppose you could argue it either way, but I'm inclined to say no. My definition of the art is broad enough to include us all.
Another interesting question is whether I am training the same art as practitioners of Judo, Sambo, Catch Wrestling, Combat Submission Wrestling and other related grappling arts. Technically, the answer is no. My rank doesn't apply to those arts. The terminology is often different. Competition rulesets are different. The overall allocation of training time to different aspects of training is different. However I can (and have) take a class in any of those arts and seamlessly integrate whatever I learn into my BJJ. I can teach a class to practitioners of those arts and they can understand the material and apply it to their own training. Personally I think it's reasonable to regard each of these arts as just different aspects or areas of focus within a larger, art which doesn't have an official name.
Hmm.... to be completely transparent, I wouldn't say that I "insist on very rigid categorisation", more that I would tend to apply accurate descriptions... there's really no "fuzzy boundary" that can be applied, as it's quite a binary status... either an art is Japanese, or it's not.
Yeah... look, to be honest, this is a strawman argument. It's really quite removed from the actual concept itself, which is the cultural, structural, and pedagogical make-up of a Japanese martial art.
we're talking about new arts being created
the reality is that a Japanese art is of Japanese origin... not just geographically, but culturally. And this is devoid of that very cultural grounding.
The problem is that, when such lines are considered "fuzzy", we end up with people confused about what exactly they're doing... and passing down the idea that what they're doing is one thing that it's not.
That, of course, doesn't change the reality... no matter how many people think something is a Japanese art, or how much a system describes itself as such, if it isn't one, it isn't one. Very binary.
I don't have any problem with the definitions you choose to apply. I understand where they're coming from and it certainly helps communication when we understand what definitions are being used.
On the other hand, I will say (based on this and a number of previous conversations), that we have a fundamentally different outlook regarding the meaning of "a martial art."
You (based on this and previous conversations) regard a martial art as a discrete individual thing that exists in and of itself with clear boundaries. It has a founder or founders, it has a specific list of underlying principles, it has a particular curriculum and set of training methods It has a specific context and purpose. It fits into a certain number of binary categories ("Japanese", "Korean", "traditional", "modern") and not into others.
I would argue that martial arts (like much of the rest of the world), are not necessarily confined to sets with such rigid boundaries.
I'll use another analogy and compare the concept of "martial art" to the concept of "species" in biology.
Most laypeople consider a species to be a binary category. An animal is or is not a bald eagle, a grey wolf, a house cat, or whatever. Those who have taken high school biology classes may be familiar with the definition of species as a population where any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring. (For example, horses and donkeys are different species because even though they can interbreed and produce offspring, those offspring are not fertile.)
Biologists, however, are familiar with ring species. A ring species is a connected series of neighboring populations, each of which interbreeds with closely sited related populations, but for which there exist at least two "end" populations in the series, which are too distantly related to interbreed, though there is a potential gene flow between each "linked" population. In other words, you can have one group of sea gulls (group A, with their own latin taxonomy) which can interbreed with another groups of sea gulls (group B). So groups A and B, by the definition above, are the same species. Group B can interbreed with group C. So B and C must be the same species. Group C can interbreed with group D. So C and D must be the same species. However, it turns out that group A cannot interbreed with group D. So A and D are not the same species. What??!! A and B are the same species. B and C are the same species. C and D are the same species. But A and D are not the same species? What happened to our clear, binary boundaries?
BTW - this also reflects a confusion some people have with the fundamental concept of evolution. Evolution follows the same pattern as we saw for ring species, but across time rather than space. Modern horses might be descended from Eohippus (with intermediate stages such as Mesohippus), however there was no point during those millions of years of evolution where a member of a species gave birth to an offspring which could be considered a different species from its parent. The changes in each generation were miniscule. Species is a continuum, not a binary category. It just happens to be convenient for most day-to-day practical work to treat them as discrete categories.
I regard martial arts in the same way. Just as a "species" does not exist apart from the individual organisms which are lumped into that category, a martial art does not exist as a separate entity from the community of individual people who practice that art. In my opinion, the art is really defined by that community rather than on any official rules handed down by the founder of the art (assuming the art even had a singular founder). And the nature of individuals within that community can make the nature and boundaries of the art to be fuzzier than what you might expect.
Depending on the art, there may be considerable variation in how individuals in that community carry out that practice. Training methods, techniques, concepts, principles, philosophies, cultural rituals, reasons for training, contexts the arts is applied in, can all vary. Sometimes you can find individuals from two "different" arts whose training is much more similar than some other individuals within the same art. This could happen because of convergent evolution and cross-pollination between separate arts. This could happen because the two arts are essentially the same art (by descent), but instructors along the way decided to split off and declare themselves the founders of a new art for political or other reasons. It could be because individuals within the separate arts each decided to follow a certain approach to their development and ended up in a similar place.
We had a discussion a while back where you commented that BJJ as an art is primarily best suited for competing against other BJJ practitioners in tournaments under BJJ rules. There is an element of truth in that when you look at the many schools and individuals out there in the BJJ community who are training specifically for that purpose and have it as their primary goal. However I took issue with the generalization, looking at my own BJJ training as an example. I am mediocre at best in BJJ tournament competition. However my BJJ training also encompasses sparring practitioners of many different arts under many different rulesets. I've used my BJJ in sparring outdoors, in cars, on furniture, with sticks, with knives, with hair pulling, with biting, with all sorts of variables which are not present in BJJ tournaments. I've taught aspects of my BJJ to law enforcement and to pro MMA fighters. I've taught aspects of my BJJ to practitioners of striking arts who just want to know how to safely get back to their feet if they are taken down. (Per @yak sao everything I showed him fit well within the principles of his Wing Tsun.)
So is "my" BJJ best suited for competing against other BJJ practitioners in BJJ tournaments? Not really. Is "my" BJJ a different art from the art trained by the people who are winning BJJ championships but aren't doing the other kinds of training that I do? I suppose you could argue it either way, but I'm inclined to say no. My definition of the art is broad enough to include us all.
Another interesting question is whether I am training the same art as practitioners of Judo, Sambo, Catch Wrestling, Combat Submission Wrestling and other related grappling arts. Technically, the answer is no. My rank doesn't apply to those arts. The terminology is often different. Competition rulesets are different. The overall allocation of training time to different aspects of training is different. However I can (and have) take a class in any of those arts and seamlessly integrate whatever I learn into my BJJ. I can teach a class to practitioners of those arts and they can understand the material and apply it to their own training. Personally I think it's reasonable to regard each of these arts as just different aspects or areas of focus within a larger, art which doesn't have an official name.
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