Ways we are connected to the world: Craft and/or science?

Abstract

Craft research is becoming an established, but sometimes also controversial, part of the international academic community. Consequently, it is a science in the socially accepted sense. However, as the experience from Sweden shows, there are also doubts about whether craft research is yet to be considered as a full-blown science, because it has not yet reached a ‘theoretical level’. In this article, I focus on the notion of science in order to find meeting points between the methodological and the epistemological aspects of the sciences and the crafts, that is the human aspects of the sciences and the crafts. In particular, I want to throw light on the human aspects of theories, with reference to Thomas Kuhn’s ideas of normal science. A main point is that ‘theories’ may be expressed in and by practices, not only by words, but that we should not ask if a theory is expressed in words or practices or in other ways. I argue that the most important entrance to the understanding of the notions of science, craft and theory is through the notion of communities of mutual learning, which cannot grow and develop without both agreements and disagreements, sometimes perhaps unsolvable disagreements. However, ‘unsolvable’ is not a final stop, but rather a point of departure for further, or other, questions.