Giambattista Vico’s notion of Maker’s Knowledge, also referred to as Verum Factum, explains why the better we get at something the more we are attracted to how things are made.
“How something is done is what has always interested me most, and strangely, I hardly ever cared what was said there.” –Thomas Bernhard, Do You Enjoy Being Evil?
Vico’s Notion of Maker’s Knowledge is, simply said, the philosophical belief, that we only truly know what we make. Turned on its head it also means that we can only think straight if we use our hands. Both views will only be fully comprehensible to those who both like to think and make things.
Verum Factum
We only truly know what we make
The more free handed we become in our craft, the more we care about how something was done. We care why it was done in the way it was done, what its makers thought and how they put it together. It’s increasingly interesting to look at things through the glasses of Maker’s Knowledge. From Vico’s point of view, understanding an object means knowing how it was made.
Unfortunately, Maker’s Knowledge is a somewhat unknown philosophical sidetrack. But luckily, in everyday life we are all familiar with it’s core idea: Most of use prefer learning by doing over reading the manual first. Naturally, we use your hands to understand a new product. We all agree that we do better if use our minds before, while and after we act.
School is Crazy
Now, how come that we separate school and business, work and fun, theory and practice, code and design, UX and analytics, learning and doing? Hard to say, but separating theory and practice to a point where we tell our kids to sit still for twenty years to listen and repeat theory before using their own hands.. seems nothing short of utterly insane.
Separating theory and practice seems as common as the opposing experience that again and again confirms that we learn better by doing. If school were more practical, likely, kids would be less inclined to skip class physically and mentally.
The Arbitrary Separation of Theory and Practice
If you also spent decades of studying classic philosophy and designing apps, Websites, fonts, posters and books, you’ll likely agree that the separation of theory and practice becomes more and more arbitrary.
There is no design without thought.[^dt] Thought without action is meaningless. Every time we try to separate making and thinking we fail at either. Matter and structure — in design, philosophy, and science — take shape when we move back and forth between thought and action.
[6dt]: The pleonastic term Design Thinking suggests that there’s thought without design and design without thought. There isn’t.
Marry the Departement of Philosophy with Artschool
Looking back, the practice of philosophy created, defined and shaped what we made as designers. At the same time, using our hands simplified some of the more intricate philosophical concepts that were hard to grasp for a young student.
With the risk of sounding very personal, philosophy is a great school for designers. If designers studied philosophy they’d do a better job. Studying philosophy means learning to think systematically from different perspectives. What could be better to create useful products than learning to “think different”?
Maker’s Knowledge implies that that we can only do well what we understand. Indeed, I wish that the department of philosophy were a bit more like art school. If philosophers learned to make fonts, draw, paint and print, they would take much better care of what they say and make sure that they work and rework their ideas until they are so artfully crafted and clear, that others get more curious about how they were done than what they say.
