Kinesiology’s Passport to Success: Transcending Parallel Trenches, Nurturing Active Open-Mindedness, and Learning From the Octopus

Abstract

This essay is based on the premise that kinesiology has evolved into a field made up of disparate subdisciplinary areas contributing to fragmentation and lack of common goals and objectives since the publication of Franklin M. Henry’s famous 1964 essay “Physical Education: An Academic Discipline.” As it now stands, there is much evidence of significant disparity between kinesiology’s creed and its practice, with the field failing to fulfill its promise of an integrationist approach to the study of human movement. In order to rectify this situation, steps should be taken to encourage individuals in the field to cross subdisciplinary boundaries, practice what psychologist Jonathan Baron has referred to as “active open-mindedness,” and take seriously the cues provided in the books by Rafe Sagarin, Learning from the Octopus: How Secrets from Nature Can Help Us Fight Terrorist Attacks, Natural Disasters, and Diseases, and Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration Into the Wonders of Consciousness. One specific recommendation is for academicians in kinesiology to prepare students to become polymaths, a term describing individuals with a thorough knowledge of one subject and broad understanding of many others.