Military training shifted from copying whole actions to combining elementary gestures
Evidence
Organize these threads according to an analytical plan – successions of elements as simple as possible, combining according to increasing complexity. This presupposes that instruction should abandon the principle of analogical repetition. In the sixteenth century, military exercise consisted above all in copying all or part of the action, and of generally increasing the soldier’s skill or strength; in the eighteenth century, the instruction of the ‘manual’ followed the principle of the ‘elementary’ and not of the ‘exemplary’: simple gestures – the position of the fingers, the bend of the leg, the movement of the arms – basic elements for useful actions that also provide a general training in strength, skill, docility.
— Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 240
Categorization
XREF: The shift from ‘exemplary’ to ‘elementary’ instruction is the reverse of the apprenticeship model in the 1667 Gobelins edict — same structural opposition as initiatory vs. analytical time. — connects to: Discipline operates through uninterpreted signals demanding automatic response — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 250; Writing transitioned from mnemonic signs to phonetic symbols. — Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects, 264