Afterword: Craft and Design Practice from an Embodied Perspective

There is no better way to study how we think and know than by engaging directly with materials in the practice of a craft. In this volume, Nithikul Nimkulrat and Camilla Groth have assembled a formidable team of academic researchers, design professionals, and craft practitioners to address the questions such study throws up. Here, the crafting of materials and of the intellect meet on level terms, carrying equal weight as practices of discovery and scholarship. I found the masterly contributions that make up the book to be of such absorbing interest that they left me with more pages of notes than any other book I have read in a long while. Looking back through my notes, however, I realized that they were peppered not only with observations but with doubts and reservations, some marginal, others fundamental. These, indeed, are precisely what, for me, made the book so interesting. For surely, the most satisfying books are never ones that you completely agree with. It is boring to read a text, only to find your existing views confirmed in every particular. The most exciting texts are always ones that make you sit up and think, “no, that can’t be right”. Doubt creeps into my mind, “maybe they’re right and I’m wrong”. Is it not from the seeds of doubt that all knowledge grows?