Lost Art Press

For Those with a Good Library

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Jennie Alexander has asked for help getting a full cite on a quotation that gets thrown out a lot in the world of hand-tool woodworking.

Here’s the quote: “Because people are dead, it does not follow that they were stupid.”

This is often attributed to David Pye and is said to be from his book “The Nature and Art of Workmanship” (Cambridge University Press, 1968). I don’t have this book (shame on me, I know).

If you own this book, could you check the above quote to make sure it’s accurate and report back the page number?

Your help is much appreciated.

— Christopher Schwarz

16 thoughts on “For Those with a Good Library”

  3. I skimmed my copy (the paperback re-issue) and then looked in places where I’d guess that quote might come from. No dice. Without a full re-read I can’t be sure obviously.

    Are there any places using that quote that indicate where it might occur in the book? Even in a broad sense?

  4. In “Green Woodwork: Working with Wood the Natural Way” by Mark Abbott (1989) there is this:

    ” ‘Because people are dead, it does not follow that they were stupid,’ or so David Pye used to remind his students.”

    Perhaps it’s a line that Pye never put in print?

    1. Oops, should be Mike Abbot, don’t know how I typed Mark.

      Anyway, lew60 has some additional info below.

  5. For what it’s worth, I just re-read Pye last week and I don’t recall ever hearing that phrase before today. It’s possible it’s buried in some of the captioning which I don’t read as closely as the text, but I’d tend to think the explanation above – from Abbot – is the most likely.

  8. Maybe you should ask Peter Follansbee. Please see quote below and link source.

    “To quote Peter Follansbee, himself quoting David Pye, “Because people are dead, it does not follow that they were stupid.””

    From: http://nonbovine-ruminations.blogspot.com/2007/06/may-not-be-so-crude-after-all.html

    Speaking of quotations, I ran across this webpage from Popular Woodworking that may be of interest to someone.

    http://www.popularwoodworking.com/woodworking-blogs/editors-blog/woodworking-quotations-quips-aphorisms-and-more

    1. to quote Yogi Berra – “I never said all the things I said,” Or something like that…
      the above link is mis-attributing the DP alleged quote to me, when it is Alexander to begin with. I can’t stand all the David Pye stuff. It makes me nuts.

  10. Hello Christopher,
    I contacted Mike Abbott about the quote and here is his response:

    “This was written by Richard La Trobe Bateman in the Foreword of my book
Green Woodwork (due back with a new edition Sept 2014). I assume David was Richard’s teacher but I don’t know if it was ever in print.”

  12. After I skimmed The Nature and Art of Workmanship (all of it), I moved on to The Nature and Art of Design. I already knew this quote (I’ve handed it out to Art/3D Design students for years) and now I think it might be what you’re looking for, paraphrased as it may have been (the bold is my emphasis):

    “If you want to enable someone to sit, it will be idiotic to proceed in the way that students of design are sometimes advised to do, and think out the whole problem from first principles, as though all the people who for the last four thousand years have been making and using chairs were half-wits. Where the problem is old, the old solutions will nearly always do best (unless a new technique has been introduced) because it is inconceivable that all the designers of ten or twenty generations will have been fools.”

    It appears on page 59 of The Nature and Art of Design, by David Pye. Cambium press, 1978.

    If it is the right quote, it’s amusing how much like that parlor game we used to call “gossip” the result is. If it’s not the exact one, it means something very similar.

    I recommend both of David Pye’s books. I’ve read all of The Workmanship one (lots more photos) and much of the Design one (much heavier going, since I’m a maker more than a scholar), and find myself referring to the workmanship of risk and certainty often.

    Hope this helps,

    Wayne Hall

    Wayne Hall, artist, woodworker studio@waynehall.net http://www.waynehall.net

    When the flower arranger arranges the flowers, he also arranges his mind and the mind of the person who looks at the flowers.

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