Bengt Molander (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

The most dominant modern epistemologies focus on human beliefs and theories about the world and take texts as the ultimate expressions of knowledge. I will sketch an alternative epistemological framework, suited for understanding skill and insight (“knowledge”) in human creative practices. In this framework human actions and made (produced?) objects are seen as basic expression of knowledge, not reducible to or inferior to linguistic expressions. Skill and insight in human practices, I will argue, are to be understood as forms of attentiveness in practice, and “good knowledge” is what leads to the best for human beings. Attentiveness lives by differences, seeing differences and producing differences, for example in the form of art or craft objects. I will explore this as an epistemological tool for understanding both creativity in a (pre)historic setting and contemporary creative “answers” to or continuations of old practices.