ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some closing thoughts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. In the book, the author wants to seed dissatisfaction with the academic, contemplative, rationalistic bias in Western theories of knowledge and bring knowledge back to art and practice. Knowledge begins in the artifacts of a practice that is originally material, supplemented by signs and symbol systems, themselves never entirely disembodied, remaining bound to material artifacts of recording, communication, pedagogy, and art. He presents knowledge as at once an artistic, artifactual, and cultural achievement, and neither the normal result of a normally functioning organ nor the normative result of rules and regulations. In that sense knowledge does not "grow on trees." It is a Promethean gift, a spandrel, chosen by preference, not imposed by necessity. The author considers knowledge not as a problem of "essence" (what is it?) but of existence: How is it, how can it be? What are the conditions of its existence?.
