Not many years ago I began to play the cello. Most people would say that what I am doing is
“learning to play” the cello. But these
words carry into our minds the strange idea that there exists two very
different processes:
- learning
to play the cello; and
- playing
the cello.
They imply that I will do the first until I have
completed it, at which point I will stop the first process and begin the
second. In short, I will go on “learning
to play” until I have “learnt to play” and then I will begin to play. Of course, this is nonsense.
There are not two processes, but one. We learn to do
something by doing it. There is no other way.


