ABSTRACT
Art is in itself neither mere activity nor mere knowledge, but is rather an activity completely permeated by knowledge, or in reverse fashion knowledge that has completely become activity. Artifacts are the unit of knowledge, the primary instance, where knowledge first begins to exist. Artifacts focus knowledge—they record it, test it, translate it, demonstrate and apply it. Artifacts are centers of gravity for knowledge; they concentrate it, make it tangible, instrumental, effective. A history of knowledge would be a history of artifactual culture, which is to say a history of culture in its effective form. Without artifacts, culture would make no difference. Human "knowledge" is a cultivated capacity for eliciting, creating, and amplifying superlative performance in artifacts. The chapter explains the concepts of artifact and superlative performance and their place in a theory of knowledge and explores what knowledge so understood implies for philosophical ideas of truth and reality.
