Ways of making and knowing: the material culture of empirical knowledge
In: Cultural histories of the material world
Making" and "knowing" have generally been viewed as belonging to different types and orders of knowledge. "Craft" and "making" have been associated with how-to information, oriented to a particular situation or product, often informal and tacit, while "knowing" has been related to theoretical, propositional, and abstract knowledge including natural science. Although craftspeople and artists have worked with natural materials and sometimes have been viewed as experts in the behavior of matter, the notion that making art can constitute a means of knowing nature is a novel one. This book explores the circumstances under which making constituted knowing, and, more specifically, it examines the relationship between making objects and knowing nature in Europe from about 1450 to 1850