Makers think through materials. Knowledge grows from following what the material does, not from imposing a plan on it.
- +Fits Phenomenology, New Materialism, Pragmatism
- –Tension with Social Constructionism
The longer story
Tim Ingold is an anthropologist who writes about making. In Making (2013) and related work he argues against the idea that a maker has a finished form in mind and imposes it on passive material. Instead, making is a correspondence: the maker follows the grain of the wood, the flow of the clay, the behaviour of the line, and form grows out of that exchange.
He also distinguishes learning about something from learning with it, knowing from the inside. That makes him a favourite of craft, design, architecture and drawing researchers. He sits between phenomenology and new materialism while keeping some distance from both.