Sport scientistsin-becoming: from fulfilling one’s potential to finding our way along

Abstract

It is common to encourage people to envision life as a process of fulfilling their potential. But what exactly does this mean? Traditionally, this question has been addressed by way of 'complementarity'; dividing the human into biological and cultural components. Fulfilment is placed on the side of the cultural; an acquisition of encoded secondary information, transmitted from predecessors, that represents what it means 'to know'. Potential has been defined from the biological, as a suite of innate capacities localised to the mind and body, passed on through a mechanism of genetic inheritance.Founded upon a metaphor of inter-generational transmission, this perspective leads to a conceptualisation of life as a progressive closure, 'filling up' the biologically innate with the culturally acquired. Despite its prominence, this static view leads to a troubling question: with one's potential fulfilled, where is one to go next? In this theoretical commentary, we offer an alternate, dynamical account of potential and fulfilment by leaning on Ingold's notion of wayfaring. From this perspective, life is not a process of filling up with knowledge, but opening up; corresponding with varied experiences cast forward by others, as they to ours, situated within a continually unfolding field of relations. Ontologically, this view is of 'us', not as beings, but as becomings, finding their way along generative paths inhabited alongside others. Knowledge is not transmitted inter-generationally, but is developed by primarily experiencing the coming-into-being of things we enter into correspondence with. Initiated through a prologue, these ideas are exemplified in sharing our storied journey as sport scientists in-becoming, following not objects of convention, but corresponding with things of curiosity.

On a Corresponsive Sport Science

“…In a network, life is lived at the points connected up by straight lines of transport. Think, for example, of one sitting on a train travelling across a landscape in order to arrive at a station determined prior to departure [5].…”

“…In this dynamical perspective, knowing would involve going along with these lines as closely as one wishes, following up all the interesting things encountered along the way. By default, this means that 'being' a sport scientist would have no end; it would be an ever-unfolding journey in-becoming [5].…”

“…In a similar vein, the forthcoming collective pronouns "we", "us" and "our" do not refer to a conformed view of humankind; a homogenised universal. They appreciate a profoundly diverse and uneven multiplicity of human (and nonhuman) becomings in the sport sciences and beyond [2][3][4][5]. 2 Gifts would often take on varying temporalities and materialities, and were not anthropocentric.…”

“…Occupying a representational space above, guised under the (false) premise of objectivity, it is all too easy for us to wash our hands of what is actually going on; to blame those on the ground (i.e., coaches, athletes, practitioners) for not applying and complying with what we have authoritatively told them. Perhaps this hierarchical occupancy is one of the reasons why the integration of research has been questioned within our discipline 5 ? Like experienced in the communal garden all those years ago, joining with may just be what helps us move toward a more corresponsive future; a future where we are bound together in difference, not by it.…”

Holding open spaces to explore beyond: Toward a different conceptualization of specialization in high-performance sport

“…To us, sport -even at the highest levels -is more than winning medals. It can be an immensely rich environment replete with opportunities for athletes to carry on in various directions, pursuing things that spark their interest as they go (Woods and Davids, 2023).…”