Abstract
Taking, Learning, Understanding. Hands and materials among divers. This article is based on an ethnographic study of professional divers of the area of public works, who operate in very frequently unlit environments (water treatment plants, rivers, seas) with specific material cultures, and proposes a reflection on material cultures at the intersection between of psychology, neuroscience and anthropology. We argue for the value of multidisciplinarity in analyzing what Sigaut (2012) described as the « hand-object system », thus continuing the work of the “Matière à Penser” research group. The concept of "prise" in French or "grip" in English (in the sense both of taking/seizing an object and of a sauce that "takes") shows that the hand in motion, considered from Mauss’s « triple viewpoint », that of the « total man » (Mauss, 1950 : 369), enables us to access various modalities of learning and understanding.