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Ingold, Conneller, and the Materials of Creation

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If there is one foundational argument in all of Ingold’s Making, it would be the one presented in Chapter 2: Materials of Life. The book explores our relationship with the act of “making” through many mediums, but in this chapter, he focuses on the materials themselves, centered around the idea that it is not a project’s surrounding idea that creates it, but rather, the engagement with both materials and consciousness. In order to solidify this argument further, he cites the work of Chantal Conneller, whose 2011 book An Archaeology of Materials: Substantial Transformations in Early Prehistoric Europe prescribes concepts to Ingold that elevate his argument to a higher level of understanding- namely, the return of alchemy.

Project v. Growth

Before we begin to characterize Conneller, however, we must recap Ingold first. And this chapter can be best illustrated by a graph he provides. Two vertical lines parallel each other- one stands for a flow of consciousness, the other is a flow of materials. Then, the flow of consciousness stops to form an image, while the flow of materials stops to form an object. But instead of letting these stoppages occur and resolve naturally, we have instead formed a new connection, one where ideas and objects feed off the flows of consciousness and materials, instead of letting the natural movement of both create on their own accord. (Ingold, 20)

The diagram of consciousness, image, materials, objects. (Ingold, 20)

This is a view that Ingold and many others characterize as hylomorphism, a theory by Aristotle that creates an object from start to finish with a predetermined purpose, function, and amount of raw material. It is this to which, Ingold states, we are accustomed to- the concept of making as a project. But rather, he proposes a new way of thinking; that is, viewing making as a process of growth, an interaction with the world of materials, an intervention in worldly processes. Instead of having an ouroboros of images and objects reign supreme without paying mind to the matter that constitues them, they should be formed as natural interventions within both- not wanting to know what will occur when consciousness and materials collide, but waiting in anticipation for the result of them doing so. (Ingold, 20) And in order to do that, we need to stop viewing materials through the lens of chemistry, and instead through the lens of alchemy.

About Chantal Conneller

This perspective of alchemy is one that Conneller has focused on for quite some time, in her position as an archaeologist and a professor of early prehistory at the University of Newcastle. With a focus on the mesolithic period, her book An Archaeology of Materials: Substantial Transformations in Early Prehistoric Europe helps to shift the view of materials away from one that fuels an image or its object, but as a unique form of matter with its own qualities and manifestation. Within this book, she argues that materials cannot be understood by one singular, all-encompassing, rigid definition, but rather through the social, cultural, and technical practices in which they are appropriated. (Conneller) And this perspective is one best understood by one who works with materials for a living, one who studies the art of alchemy.

One key example by Conneller is the differences in the characterization of gold- for a chemist, gold is a periodic element and has a form different from its physical manifestation. But for the alchemist, gold is a yellow, shining matter that glows brighter under water and can have its shape transformed- and the definition of gold is applicable to anything that fits the subject criteria. (Ingold, 29) This difference is key to Conneller’s main argument- “different understandings of materials are not simply “concepts” set apart from “real” properties; they are realised in terms of different practices that themselves have material effects.” Just because one material has a specific composition does not mean it is limited to it- instead, the alchemist views the material by “what it does, specifically when mixed with other materials, treated in particular ways, or placed in particular situations.” (Ingold, 29)

Chemical Ignorance

When comparing Ingold and Conneller to one another, parallels start to form- where Ingold expresses skepticism against the loop of image and object feeding into one another, Conneller directly warns against using one context of a material as a universal definition for all others. It is the same point- one conclusion on an idea or material cannot be used as a basis of knowledge for other forms of matter. Both consciousness and materials are vast in their complexity, difference, and position in space and time- no two forms of matter are ever the same. 

And where Conneller proposes a shift to view materials as not singular categories, but amorphous forms that shift with the winds of time and context, Ingold uses this logic as a platform to propose his own shift; a shift that begins to view the act of making as a multifaceted processes that observes and intervenes in the world around us, specific to time and place. One practice, as Conneller observes, is not a basis on which one can interpret and make conclusions upon another. Instead these practices differ immensely in their purpose, their interaction with the world around it, and the final artifact they happen to create. (Ingold, 29) Everything in the act of creation, according to Ingold, is relative to the world around it- Conneller just so happens to agree.

Conclusions

To summarize, ideas and objects cannot blindly survive on their own- an awareness and a centering of creation must be shifted back to consciousness and materials. In doing so, we are giving these materials sentience and life, gifting them a wide-varying, complex definition that shifts with the practice and purpose they are used for. Conneller encourages creators to, instead of viewing materials solely through their form, view them through their process, intervene in their evolution, create with them in the forefront of their mind. Both ideas, like the diagram of creation theorized by Ingold, work in tandem to produce one another- where consciousness and materials collide and swirl to create images and objects, Conneller’s theory of material context supports and validates Ingold’s rally to indeed, shift our thinking by a quarter term- view the act of creation not as a project to be completed, but as an interaction to be mediated and observed.

Sources

Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge, 12 Apr. 2013.

Conneller, Chantal. An Archaeology of Materials: Substantial Transformations in Early Prehistoric Europe. Routledge, 28 Mar. 2012.

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Leon Battista Alberti: A Case Against the Hylomorphic Model of Architecture

Introduction

In Making, Ingold emphasizes the importance of creation and our relationship with materials. This idea becomes clearer when he discusses the process of building in the chapter ‘On building a House’. By drawing on Leon Battista Alberti’s texts and theories, Ingold deepens our understanding of the process of building and what it really means to make something. Ingold uses Alberti’s work, primarily his text ‘On the Art of Building’ (1450) to support his central argument: that the process of making ought to be understood as a process of working with the materials for creation, rather than using them to create.

About Leon Battista Alberti

Leon Battista Alberti was a true Renaissance figure, humanist, theorist, and architect. In Ingold’s book, the focus is on Alberti’s architectural work and how it shapes our understanding of the creative process (Kelly-Gadol, 2019). Before connecting the two thinkers, however, it’s important to understand Alberti himself. He was known for his precision and for creating structures that stood apart for their balance, harmony, and attention to detail (Kelly-Gadol, 2019). This dedication to process and form is likely what drew Ingold to Alberti’s ideas, as they align with his own belief that making is a way of thinking and engaging with the world.

Ingold’s Case Against Hylomorphism

Across the length of the book, Ingold builds a case against the hylomorphic model of creation. The overarching argument across the text is to prove that designing and making is one and the same, or at the very least, should be considered as the same thing. This is exemplified in his analysis of Alberti’s writings on architecture. Based on a Vitruvian model, Alberti seeks to elevate the Renaissance architect to a higher standing than the carpenter-masons of the time (2013, 49). In a perfect illustration of the hylomorphic model, Alberti claims that the architect is the true mastermind who designs a building, while the carpenter is a mere ‘instrument’ who marries the preconceived form to the material (Ingold, 2013, 49). Though the carpenter is the one working with the materials, it is only by virtue of the architect’s design that the structure comes to life. Not only does this argument subordinate the carpenter-mason, but it also reduces the material to something that holds the form devised by the architect. This is in complete opposition to Ingold’s idea of creation, which places materials and creators on an equal standing and argues creation is a process of correspondence between the two, rather than an imposition of form on the materials. 

Alberti’s Model of Architecture—The perfection of the Hylomorphic model?

Traditionally, the study of architecture is considered to be concerned with designing blueprints which serve as the basis for building structures. The creativity rests on the shoulders of the architect, while the construction of the structure is nothing more than bringing the architect’s ideas to life. This is also reflected in the real world, seeing the vast economic and social disparity between architects and construction workers.  This is in line with what Ingold describes as the conventional idea of making, writing “…in the case of the artefact, to draw a line between making and using means marking a point in the career of a thing at which it can be said to be finished, and moreover that this point of completion can only be determined in relation to a totality that already exists.” (Ingold,  2013, 47). Alberti’s approach towards architecture follows this same idea, emphasizing the architect’s ability ‘to project whole forms in mind without any recourse to the material’. This is the traditional process of making, which takes place with the final form in mind. However, Ingold argues against it, claiming that the actual process of creation is just as important rather than only the finished result. 

Ingold describes hylomorphism as the imposition of a practitioner’s ideas on the materials extraneous to their body (2013, 21). Alberti’s writings on architecture seem to be based on the Vitruvian and Platonic ideals, which emphasize the need for an architect to be a learned scholar, and a ‘ruler’ who directs the workman (Ingold, 2013, 50). In similar fashion, Alberti seeks to raise the architect from the position of a mere craftsman, drawing a clear distinction between the two by describing the carpenter as an ‘instrument in the hands of the architect’ (Ingold, 2013, 49). Ingold also comments on the contradicting ideas expressed in Alberti’s treatise, in how he emphasizes the importance of gathering local and practical knowledge while also endorsing a hylomorphic model of creation, and how even though he acknowledges that the ‘hand of the skilled workman’ is indispensable in enjoining the form to the material, it is evident that he considers the architect’s design, informed by his intellect and scholarship, to be far more important in the hierarchy of the process of building.

Design and Geometry

Ingold also talks about design through an examination of geometry, particularly, Alberti’s lineaments. While Alberti’s lineaments are abstract, geometric projections on paper, the carpenter-mason’s geometry is informed through experience and is tactile (Ingold, 2013, 51). Alberti’s idea of geometry was shaped by Euclidean principles, whereas the carpenter’s geometry was learned ‘on the job’. The carpenter-mason’s lineaments emerge through correspondence with material, their drawings a ‘craft of weaving with lines ’ (Ingold, 2013, 55).

In ‘Drawing the Line’, Ingold further explores how Alberti’s idea of architectural drawings, meant to specify the form of a structure that is to be built, is a form of technical drawing (Ingold, 2013, 125). He also comments on how the architect’s drawings can become an end in themselves, to the point where builders find it difficult to implement these designs in the actual materials (2013, 126). Here, we can clearly see the effects of architecture as a practice being divorced from the process of creation. The architect’s drawings become designs for the sake of designing, as they are unable to imagine the practical realities their designs must contend with.

This is exemplified in how architectural designs deal with rainwater. Most architects do not design with rainwater in mind, which often ends up resulting in leaks (Ingold, 2013, 48). Interestingly, Alberti himself emphasizes the importance of accounting for rainwater when designing roofs, introducing another contradiction in his ideas (Ingold, 2013, 49). The recurring theme of incongruent ideas of creation in Alberti’s ‘On the Art of Building in Ten Books’ is suggestive of the fact that perhaps Alberti had not anticipated how this split between architect and material realities of building would evolve, to the point where what was considered to be basic knowledge for an architect back then is now often overlooked.

Conclusion

Thus, by examining Alberti’s theories, Ingold challenges the separation between designing and making. During Alberti’s time, most craftsmen were not formally educated, yet this allowed them to think beyond established norms (Ingold,  2013, 52). Their creativity relied on practical knowledge passed down through generations, as well as a deep, hands-on relationship with their tools axes, chisels, trowels, plumb lines, strings, and especially templates, straight edges, and squares (Ingold,  2013, 52). This connection between maker and material supports Ingold’s argument that creativity and understanding emerge when the creator considers themselves and the materials to be an equal participant in the process of creation. 

Ingold, T. (2013). Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203559055

Kelly-Gadol, Joan. “Leon Battista Alberti Paintings, Bio, Ideas.” The Art Story. Accessed October 19, 2025. https://www.theartstory.org/artist/alberti-leon-battista/. 

Insha and Anati

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Paley: Natural Theology in Ingold’s Making

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Who is Paley?

William Paley was an 18th century British philosopher and Anglican priest. A former student and professor at Cambridge University, his works on natural theology and utilitarianism made him well known within the scholarly community in Europe at the time. In his last book before his death in 1805, entitled Natural Theology: Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature, Paley constructed the teleological argument for which he is most famous today. 

Preview to The Watchmaker Argument

As we will explore in depth later on, Paley’s argument for the existence of God uses analogies and inductive reasoning to support a primary claim that there is a divine designer who created all living things. According to Paley, contrivances of the world (such as the complex machinery of eyes and ears) were purposely developed in order to teach intelligence and complex reasoning to humanity. People, made in God’s image, could then carry on the process of design with which they were gifted. Influenced heavily by Paley’s work was the young Charles Darwin, whose studies on the Galapagos Islands ended up leading him to develop his theory of natural selection. This work– the keystone for our modern theory of evolution– tore big holes into Paley’s argument from Natural Theology; and yet the work remains remarkably relevant to scholars and theorists of today.

On Natural Theology 

In Making, Tim Ingold cites natural theologist William Paley’s work many times throughout chapter five, entitled The Sighted Watchmaker. Paley’s book, Natural Theology for short, is famous for its arguments which attempt to prove that, by design, living beings were created by a god to move and reproduce– and to the select few, to think and create. 

Paley begins his book, Natural Theology, with his state of the argument: 

“In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there: I might possibly answer, that, for any thing I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that, for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there […]. This mechanism being observed, the inference, we think, is inevitable; that the watch must have had a maker.” (Paley, 1-3). 

Paley explains that the watch has many parts (cogs, gears, springs), each arranged particularly for the purpose of keeping time. All these parts work together in coordination, therefore proving that the watch could not have just appeared as a rock had. From this concept Paley infers that just as a watch implies the existence of a watchmaker, the complex, orderly world implies the existence of a world maker– God.

Continuing the explanation of Paley’s argument, Ingold cites extensions made by Paley which ask the audience to imagine a watch that can self replicate. Upon first thought, one might think that this implies no need for a designer/watchmaker, as the watch can now make itself. Paley believes the opposite: “There cannot be a design without a designer; contrivance without a contriver; order without choice; arrangement without anything capable of arranging…” (Paley, 12). For Paley, each generation of watches is made by its predecessor, but the first watch, ‘Watch Zero’, must have been designed. The whole chain of replication ultimately depends on an original, intelligent design. 

Take special consideration too of things that can reproduce themselves; despite the continuity of living things, the capacity to reproduce must have been integrated into the original design, and the structure, order, and purpose of nature is therefore evidence of divine intelligence. The first watch was “made” in an entirely different way from that in which the first watch “makes” the second, third, etc. The former is intelligent design, and the latter is mechanical execution. Humans in the “image of God”, may only replicate that which God has ultimately designed first.

Ingold’s usage of Natural Theology 

The next natural question to ask now is “so what?”. Why should we care about a long-debunked paper on how God is real because our eyes are weird? And what is it doing in the book about weaving baskets? Ingold suggests that while the religious aspects of Natural Theology have been refuted, Paley’s assumptions about the nature of design and designer that underwrite these arguments have not. His arguments about function, design, and intent are still relevant, and we can apply them critically in our modern lives regardless of our faith. Whether the responsibility for the design is attributed to God or natural selection does not affect the logic of Paley’s “there is no design without a designer”, argues Ingold. 

Paley’s arguments also allow us to think about where design is. First, Ingold argues the answer will differ depending on whether the designed is an artifact (e.g. a watch) or a living being (e.g. a bat). If you happen to see a bat, you are not looking at a design for a bat, but the bat itself, right? An artifact’s design tends to be in the mind of the creator who, looking forward, thought thoroughly about said design. Working off what Paley argued and how other scholars like Dawkins responded, Ingold then suggests that our understanding of a bat’s design is dependent on the eyes of those observing it, and in the bat’s own behaviours:  


“Without design engineers, there would certainly be no missiles. Bats, on the other hand, would be around and would have evolved, without any scientists to observe them. Designs for bats, however, would not.” (Ingold, 67)

Ingold encourages us to re-invent our understanding of what a designer’s task is yet again; a designer is not only a trickster, but also an assembler. A watchmaker designing a clock to tell time, in a way, is the same as a bird designing a nest to lay their eggs, bringing pieces together to make them correspond to one another purposefully in a single creation. Next time you design a Canva website or an Insta photodump, you can relate yourself to a bird carefully assembling their nest– each decision is vitally different.

In conclusion, Ingold mainly uses Paley’s original arguments about design to tie back to his ideas of transduction and perdurance: designers, just like any makers, interact with the material flow with the use of a transducer, be it a pottery wheel or a set of watchmaker’s lenses and tweezers. These interactions shape us and our environments – a cycle of evolution, in a way. Whether Paley intended it or not, his paper on the naturalistic view of theology would be used to support Ingold’s argument almost two hundred years after it was written, and it won’t have to do anything with God, but everything to do with the act of Making. 

“It is precisely where the reach of the imagination meets the friction of materials, or where the forces of ambition rub up against the rough edges of the world, that human life is lived.” (Ingold, 73)

Works Cited

Ingold, Tim. Making. Routledge, 2013. 

Moore, Randy. “William Paley, 1743-1805.” NCSE (National Center for Science Education), 2009, ncse.ngo/william-paley-1743-1805. 

Paley, William. Natural Theology; or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity. Cambridge University Press, 2009. Digital scan of first-edition, published in 1805 by R. Faulder in London

Written by Allie, Bara, Celeste, and Naomi

Cover art by Celeste

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Learning to Learn: Bateson Through Ingold’s Making

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Image of Gregory Bateson

Contributors: Adela Lynge, Eira Nguyen, Maryam Abusamak

Gregory Bateson: The Mind in Everything

If Tim Ingold’s Making is a conversation between hands, minds, and materials, then Gregory Bateson is one of the most intriguing voices echoing through it. Bateson (1904–1980) was a British anthropologist and systems theorist whose curiosity ranged from communication and psychology to dolphin research and cybernetics. His big question was simple but radical: how do living systems learn and know?

Bateson’s most influential work, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1973), gathers essays that link culture, biology, and communication into one vision. He argued that the mind is not really locked inside a human skull but distributed across relationships between people, tools, and environments. This idea formed his “ecology of mind,” which essentially is a living system of thought that includes the world itself. 

One of his key concepts, deutero-learning or “learning to learn,” describes how organisms adapt not just by gaining information but by tuning into patterns of interaction. It’s the skill of learning from experience, of letting the world teach you. 

Bateson’s influence stretches far beyond anthropology; he inspired thinkers in systems theory, ecology, and even digital design. (Fun fact: he was once married to anthropologist Margaret Mead, and their joint fieldwork in Bali transformed how both understood culture and communication.) 

For Ingold, Bateson provides the perfect foundation. Making takes up Bateson’s call to think relationally: knowing and making are not separate from the world but arise within it. Bateson’s insight that “everything is connected” becomes Ingold’s guiding thread, the sense that to know is to correspond with the materials and forces that shape life itself.

Tim Ingold: Embodying the Ecology of Mind

We kept circling back to that opening scene in Making, where Ingold recalls the Saami people telling him, “Know for yourself!” (p. 1). At first, it sounds like tough love. But by the next page, it becomes the seed of his entire method. He realizes that “the only way one can really know things… is through a process of self-discovery” that knowing is movement (pp. 1–2). Bateson’s idea of learning within an ecology of mind (1973) suddenly becomes embodied. The world, Ingold says, “becomes a place of study… [we] learn from those with whom we study” (p. 2).

That insight, learning with rather than about, is the engine that drives the book — every chapter is a variation on it.

Bateson imagined learning as recursive feedback within an “ecology of mind” (1973): perception and action constantly reshape one another. Ingold keeps this loop but breathes life into it. He argues that anthropology itself must be a process of engagement rather than extraction. Participant observation, he insists, is “absolutely not a technique of data collection … it is enshrined in an ontological commitment … a way of knowing from the inside” (p. 5). To cut the loop into “data” is, he warns, to “turn the relation between knowing and being inside out” (p. 5).

Bateson’s deutero-learning describes how we acquire habits of response, learning to perceive and adjust to patterns across contexts. Ingold builds directly on this by introducing the concept of correspondence, which is essentially the mutual shaping that happens between the maker, the materials, and the environment. “The conduct of thought,” he writes, “goes along with the fluxes and flows of the materials with which we work. These materials think in us, as we think through them” (p. 6). To know from the inside is to inhabit that flux, to move and be moved, to think as life thinks.

Bateson’s theories become especially relevant in Making’s seventh chapter: Bodies on the Run. To Ingold, a body is alive when it leaks, exuding itself into its environment and engaging in a constant exchange of material between surroundings and self. Ingold once again relates this to the concept of correspondence, arguing that we are our bodies and experience ourselves moving in ongoing response to the materials surrounding us. Bateson’s concept of deutero-learning is referenced when Ingold expresses that the body, as a site of unfolding activity, is something to think from rather than about (p. 94). 

Bateson’s voice holds strong in Making when placed in conversation with other theorists. As Ingold ponders the mind’s role in the flow of materials, Bateson’s concept of the ecology of mind is used as an argument against Chris Gosden’s beliefs (p. 97). While Gosden is against studying the concept of the mind altogether, Bateson argues for our ability to retain an ecology of mind that complements an ecology of substance, the first dealing with information and the second with the exchange of energy and materials. Bateson’s legacy also ripples through later thinkers that Ingold references, such as Andy Clark, whose influential theory of the “extended mind” argues that cognition spreads across brain, body, and environment (p. 97).  

Tim Ingold, Lecture: “Telling by Hand: Weaving, Drawing, Writing Photography” at Text and Textiles Conference, University of Aberdeen, 2012. Photography by: Patricia Pires Boulhosa.

As a group, we were intrigued by how Ingold’s argument keeps circling back to the body in motion, particularly the hand. Ingold writes that, “Hands, in a word, can tell, both in their attentiveness to the conditions of a task as it unfolds, and in their gestural movements and the inscriptions they yield” (p. 116). Here, the hand becomes a site of knowing. He writes that its intelligence, “arises as an emergent property of the entire ‘form-creating system’… comprising the gestural synergy of human being, tool and material.” Ingold earlier in the book describes this as “a correspondence between mindful attention and lively materials conducted by skilled hands “at the trowel’s edge” (p. 11). 

This again echoes Bateson’s idea of learning as a continuous adjustment to patterns and relations, but Ingold grounds it in body practice. The hand learns by feeling its way forward, guided by touch, rhythm, and resistance. It knows through kinesthesia, the awareness of movements that connects body and world. In this way, Ingold transforms Bateson’s theoretical circuit of learning into a living, embodied correspondence, showing that knowing is not something the mind possesses but something the body performs in motion.

Ingold brings his argument full circle by linking the movement of the hand to that of the entire body, drawing a beautiful connection between dance, writing, and kinesthesia. The quality of movement when writing by hand shares the rhythm and tempo of one’s bodily gestures, and “extends into the lines that appear on the paper,” with these lines arising from experiences and in turn carrying us through life. Rejecting the idea of movement as the mere connection between points, Ingold argues that there is no singular end goal to learning as new opportunities are constantly emerging, and that one must wander the world at their own pace in a constant act of curious self-discovery (pp. 140, 141)

In this final sentiment that concludes Making, Ingold reiterates Bateson’s idea of learning as an ongoing process of adaptation within a living system, an ecology of mind where every gesture, like every thought, grows through its connections to what came before and what is yet to come.

Tracing the Source: Learning to Read Critically

As a group, we wanted to go beyond simply accepting Ingold’s use of Bateson at face value and instead ask: what happens when we go to Bateson himself? What steps does Steps to an Ecology of Mind actually give us that Ingold selectively uses for his own argument-making purpose? 

Ingold takes Bateson’s cybernetic loops and transforms them into lines of correspondence, which are less mechanical and simpler. Where Bateson spoke of systems and information exchange, Ingold speaks of walking, waving, and touching. As he says, “We owe our very being to the world we seek to know” (p. 5). So while Ingold emphasizes harmony through openness, Bateson was more cautious. Bateson’s notion of double bind also shows how communication can entrap rather than enlighten, which is something that Ingold barely acknowledges. 

We realized that maybe Ingold chooses the generative side of Bateson’s ideas, the more optimistic ones, sustaining growth. Still, this selective use of Bateson’s theory gives Ingold’s research a more distinctive perspective. He does not simply borrow Bateson’s idea, but as a companion to think with and bring his theory to life. 

This assignment really made us think about how theory travels, how one thinker borrows from another, reshapes their ideas, and sometimes leaves important pieces behind. Going back to Bateson’s theory helped us see that Ingold is rather reinterpreting it, molding it to fit his vision of anthropology as a living, embodied practice.

We learned that while authors may present strong and convincing arguments, the way theories are chosen, interpreted, and explained is often shaped by their own biases, purposes, and perspectives. This is natural. We are not neutral beings. It doesn’t mean that we should doubt everything we read, but we should stay aware of how knowledge is constructed and framed. 

As media studies students, we think maintaining a critical mindset allows us to engage more deeply with theory, to see not only what an author is saying, but also why and how they are saying it. It’s about reading with curiosity and care, recognizing that every interpretation is a creative act that both reveals and reshapes the ideas it draws from.

References

Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art, and Architecture. Routledge, 2013. 

“Gregory Bateson.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.,https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gregory-Bateson

Image credits: 

Haftner, Keeley. “Keeley Haftner.” Bad at Sports, 30 Jan. 2018, badatsports.com/2018/thinks-tim-ingold/

Vincent van, Vliet. “Gregory Bateson Biography, Quotes and Books.” Toolshero, 27 Aug. 2024, www.toolshero.com/toolsheroes/gregory-bateson


Contributors: Adela Lynge, Eira Nguyen, Maryam Abusamak

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Tim Ingold and Four French Philosophers Walk Into a Bar: The Fight Against Hylomorphism 

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Illustration by Bridghet Wood / Image by Edgar Chaparro

Gilles Deleuze, a philosopher, and Félix Guattari, a psychoanalyst and political activist were notable figures in French political thought following the Second World War. Deleuze believed much of philosophy consisted of bureaucracy, while Guattari sought to demolish “the hierarchy between doctor and patient” to achieve “collective critique of…power relations” (pp. iv-v). In collaboration with each other, they authored a series titled Capitalism and Schizophrenia, with the first book, Anti-Oedipus, being published in 1972, and the sequel, A Thousand Plateaus, in 1980. By quoting their arguments from the second book, A Thousand Plateaus, Tim Ingold demonstrates the correspondence between form and matter. This correspondence is exemplified by dichotomies of state and nomad science and machine and thing. 

In Chapter 2, Ingold (2013) quotes the “Treatise on Nomadology–The War Machine”, the twelfth chapter of A Thousand Plateaus, in which Deleuze and Guattari extend “Simondon’s crusade against hylomorphism” (p. 25). According to Ingold, Deleuze and Guattari critique the hylomorphic model which illustrates form as static and matter as “homogenous’” (p. 25). Ingold extracts excerpts of this chapter to demonstrate the living, evergrowing state of materials. While doing so, however, he excluded Deleuze and Guattari’s (1980/1987) greater discussion of “the war machine”–a nebulous opponent that questions superiority and “impedes the formation of the State” (pp. 358, 422). Many attribute the destructive war machine to nonhylomorphic “nomad science”, which seeks to ‘follow…the “singularities” of a matter’, rather than “a form” (p. 372). While Deleuze and Guattari believe that nomadism produces the “smooth”, open space for the war machine’s “vortical…movement”, they also claim it enables radical change (pp. 381, 423). Its dichotomous other, “State science”, is derived from a separated structure of “governors and the governed” and “intellectuals and manual labourers” (p. 369). It remains inseparable to hylomorphism, as it assigns “matter…to content” and “form” to “expression”, keeping the two categories separate (p. 369). Furthermore, it creates a fixed society, grounded in a “constant form” of “reproduction, iteration and reiteration” (p. 372). Conversely, nomad science connects “content and expression”, with both categories combining “form and matter” ; unlike hylomorphism, nomad science produces a spontaneous “intuition in action” (pp. 369, 409). Ingold argues its “artisans” use matter for evolutionary rather than reproductive means (p. 25). Altogether, Deleuze and Guattari (1980/1987) demonstrate the importance of nonhylomorphic, nomad science; despite its catalysis of State-opposed war machines, its undisciplined, deterritorial nature can lead “to a new earth” (p. 423). 

Illustration by Bridghet Wood / Image by Andrea Castro

In the beginning chapters of Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari (1972/1983) introduce the concept of desiring-production as a process of making that is the “production of production, just as every machine is a machine connected to another machine” (p. 6). Desiring-production is material, social, and political all at once, it continuously creates and connects flows of life, matter, and meaning. To them, desire produces reality itself rather than expressing a lack of, which pertains to Ingold’s view of making as growth and correspondence as forms can arise through interactions between maker and material. Additionally, Deleuze and Guattari also introduce an anti-production concept of the body without organs, which describes the unformed plane of potential that resists organization and structure. However, this concept is not “proof of an original nothingness, nor is it what remains of a lost totality” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1972/1983, p. 8). Deleuze and Guattari argue that the body without organs is not nostalgia for a pure origin, but rather a positive and productive field for potential new connections and forms to emerge. These ideas are echoed throughout Tim Ingold’s Making through the rejection of hylomorphism and his emphasis on form as correspondence as an ongoing negotiation between maker and material. The body without organs is reflective of Ingold’s materials holding their own agency and potential, shaping outcomes through interaction instead of obedience. While both thinkers resist dualisms of form and matter, they also share an ethical stance on care, attentiveness, and openness toward the world through what Foucault promotes as a non-fascist life and what Ingold calls non-instrumental making. Ultimately, Deleuze and Guattari’s theories are effectively embedded in Ingold’s Making, imagining creativity not as domination nor mastery but as a continuous production of worlds through collaboration, responsiveness, and becoming. 

Deleuze and Guattari’s objections of hylomorphism could be compared to Descartes’ concept of mind-body dualism. Similarly to Ingold’s rationalization against objectifying things instead of understanding the entirety of the thing, Descartes separates the functions of the body by looking at comprehensive processing. 

“For example, when I imagine a triangle, not only do I understand it to be a shape enclosed by three lines, but at the same time, with the eye of the mind, I contemplate the three lines as present, and this is what I call imagining” (Descartes, 1641, p. 51)

The mind and body are separate entities. The mind is differentiated from the body by establishing that the mind is a soul which is a “thinking thing” (Descartes, 1641, p. 52). Descartes emphasizes Ingold’s point that humans are not the only “things” (Ingold, 2013, p. 17) that have a soul, yet differentiates that things such as plants and animals have a different kind of soul from humans (Descartes, 1641, xxviii). Humans have an immortal soul that satiates desires outside of basic necessities or nutrients. The body is a vessel of our mind, and even though the two cannot live without the other, there are functions that both entities can do that the other cannot. For example, the mind can think and the body cannot. Though the mind and body are different things, they work in synchronicity. Therefore, they are different but not separate.This concept is contrary to Aristotle’s theory, that form is the correspondence of matter (Metaphysics), without the idea of a soul. Thus, matter is what things are made of, which is contrary to the distinction that Ingold is making, where objects are not only made of matter but have their own metaphysical processes. According to Descartes, hylomorphism’s argument is not applicable to reality because it does not recognize the metaphysical elements of the world. 

Illustration by Bridghet Wood / Image from Canva

Simondon’s original brick-making example in Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information (2005/2020) was one of the first to establish the developing cracks in Aristotle’s original hylomorphic schema in terms of individuation, which he defines as the process in which a thing becomes distinct from other things, thus influencing Deleuze and Guattari’s later arguments. He states that, in practice, it never truly works as notions of matter and form create a generalization that ignores the constant formation, genesis, and recomposition that occurs in the living world. With brick, the clay–its original form–undergoes changes through the process of pressing, moulding, and firing, which creates instances in which “the form is not united with the material” (Ingold, 2013, p. 25). The difficulty that emerges in the hylomorphic schema is that “it grants [form and matter] an existence prior to the relation that joins them” therefore it cannot indicate “the principle of individuation of the living being”–and hence “the manner in which the form informs the matter is not sufficiently specified” (Simondon, 2005/2020, p. 31). Individuation is an ever-emergent process that cannot be defined in advance, which “the form-receiving passivity posited by hylomorphism” does (Ingold, 2013, p. 25). Here, one sees how Simondon’s original argument begins to influence Deleuze and Guattari and thus Ingold in how hylomorphism is insufficient in comprehending the correspondence between beings, but also things and processes. 

According to Ingold (2013), Deleuze and Guattari further refute the hylomorphic model through the field of metallurgy (p. 25). This is true, as Deleuze and Guattari (1980/1987) illustrate metallurgic flows as “confluent with nomadism”; metal continuously changes, thus demonstrating the “vital state of matter” that is universally concealed by hylomorphism (p. 404). Furthermore, metallurgy rejects hylomorphism, as it does not consist of distinct chronological stages of growth, but a “deformation or transformation” that “overspills…form” (p. 410).  As a result, Ingold borrows Deleuze and Guattari’s belief that metal changes continuously as it is fired, forged, and quenched (p. 410). Through promoting Deleuze and Guattari’s example, Ingold demonstrates the correspondence of matter and form. Thus, the idea of form and matter as separate from each other is only one side of the coin.

by Bridghet Wood, Emily Shin, Kim Chi Tran, and Xelena Ilon

References

Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1983). Anti-Oedipus. (Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Vol. 1). (R. Hurley, M. Seem, & H. R. Lane, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1972).

Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus (Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Vol.1) (B. Massumi, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1980) https://files.libcom.org/files/A%20Thousand%20Plateaus.pdf 

Descartes, R. (1641). Meditations on first philosophy. Cambridge University Press. 

Ingold, T. (2013). Making: Anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. Taylor & Francis Group. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203559055 
Simondon, G. (2020). Individuation in light of forms and information (T. Adkins, Trans.) University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 2005)

Other

Dwelling: Roots of Life in Ingold’s Making

Growing Downward

A plant never rushes. It waits for the right moment — sunlight shifting through the air, a brief touch of rain — and then begins, quietly, to grow. Its roots grow downward, not to dominate the soil, but to become part of it. Above the ground, its leaves unfold to meet the wind, trembling but certain, aware that to stand upright one must first hold fast below. Observing a plant’s growth made us question what it really means to exist. Perhaps living isn’t about striving to move forward or reach higher, but learning how to maintain—with the ground, with others, and with the conditions that make life possible. 

A plant doesn’t stand apart from the world—it lives through it, shaped by what it touches and what touches it. Heidegger might call this “dwelling”: living in care and attention to what sustained us, being between earth and sky rather than above them. Ingold builds on this idea—he turns Heidegger’s notion of dwelling into something lived and practiced. In Making, Ingold writes about how knowing and creating are not detached acts of control but ongoing relationships with materials. We learn and make from the space between the earth and sky, where we actually live. Instead of being distant observers, we are part of the world’s unfolding. As he describes, when the traveller’s body merges with the “shimmering luminosity of the sky” and the “embrace of the damp earth,” earth and sky are no longer divided by the horizon but unified at the very center of being (Ingold 137). To “grow downward” is to understand this form of relationship—to see that we exist not by hovering above, but by rooting ourselves within.

Sorge: Turning Towards the World

Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher whose work reshaped how we think about being itself. Raised in a Catholic family in Messkrich, he began studying theology before turning to philosophy under the influence of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology (Wrathall). Yet Heidegger soon moved beyond Husserl’s focus on consciousness. His work “Being and Time” marked this shift: rather than asking what beings are, Heidegger asked what it means to be.

At the center of Heidegger’s “Being and Time” lies the idea of the term “Dasein”, which is his preliminary explanation of human existence as constituted by our relationships to the practical and social contexts that give meaning to our actions (Wrathall). Yet this is never purely individual. Most of the time, we exist as part of the one, absorbed in everyday routines and social habits that pull us away from authentic awareness of our existence. Heidegger calls this withdrawal not an absence, but a reminder that being is never fully available; it always withholds itself, keeping us in a state of searching and care. From this tension comes sorge, or care—a way of being that turns us toward the world and others, responding to what continually reveals itself and then slips away.

The Mound

Ingold extensively utilizes the mound as a metaphor for his concept of the continuation of life. He resists the idea that life, like edifices, is built from the ground up. Instead, like the fluid accumulation of the mound, matter does not have a clear boundary of beginning and end—its very process of becoming is its reason for becoming. And human life, even though one may argue, ends at the decay of flesh, does not truly end as it transforms into layering, sedimentation, and decay (Ingold 77). Humans, as a “thing” and not an “object”, adhere to this principle. Ingold directly cites Heidgger to distinguish between “things” and “objects”, thus as to why “things” require unique interventions: “The object, he argued, is complete in itself, define by its confrontational ‘over-againstness’ -face to face or surface to surface- in relation to the setting in which it is placed” (85). Participation is key to the ongoing process of “things” on earth’s surface. Similar to the nature of the mound, Ingold’s experiment with the village houses demonstrated how dwelling required involvement and movement. Heidegger’s presumption enhances Ingold’s idea of dwelling as performance, “The spaces of dwelling are not already given, in the layout of the building, but are created in movement” (85). The moment of movement is the moment of gathering, and is the act of joining the mound rather than terminating the worlding of things.

The Thing 

In “The Thing”, Heidegger describes a “thing” not as a functional object but an instrument of gathering the fourfolds—a place where earth, sky, divinities, and mortals come into relation. A “thing”, for him, is not merely a tool or container. Instead it holds the world together through this act of gathering. Ingold picks on the earth and mortal aspects of this idea by inviting instances of lived experience. In his critique of the monument versus the the mound, Ingold claims that, “A cairn, for example, is just a pile of stones that grows as every traveller, passing by a particular place, adds a stone picked up along the way as a memento of the trip” (83). Essentially, the cairn embodies the earth (stones) and the mortal (humans adding stones), justifying Ingold’s belief that a “thing” exists beyond to be looked at. It exists by being in the moment of contact between movement and matter. It emerges in the very act of relation, in the meeting of weight, texture, and gesture.

Heidegger’s concept of the “thing” is vital because it shapes our understanding of Ingold’s theory of correspondence. Ingold doesn’t merely cite Heidegger–he reworks Heidegger’s thinking of the “thing” to a more sensory and material appraoch. He frames gathering into a process of mutual formation in which he coined as correspondence. As Ingold writes, “To touch it, or to observe it, is to bring the movements of our own being into close and affective correspondence with those of its constituent materials” (85). In this reimagining, correspondence is all established on the basis of the material and our movement, forming a dynamic flow of transduction–a continual exchange of forces that mutually transforms the maker and the material. In this sense, Ingold preserves Heidegger’s insight that being is relational but makes it tangible, where life itself is sustained through the harmony of making and response.

From Thought to Touch

Heidegger’s concept of dwelling is largely metaphysical, unlike the lived and sensory approach that Ingold pursued. Although Ingold inherits from Heidegger the belief that humans do not stand apart from the world but dwell within it (Heidegger 1971; Ingold 3), the poetics of the fourfolds cannot be fully defined but can only be evoked. Hence, to situate this Ingold turns dwelling into a lived process. For this reason, he doesn’t always cite Heidegger directly, and that absence is intentional. Ingold had already acknowledged Heidegger explicitly in earlier chapters, such as “The Materials of Life,” where he draws on The Thing to describe how touching and observing bring our being into correspondence with materials (21). Transitioning to the chapter “Round Mound and Earth Sky”, Heidegger’s influence has already been absorbed into the fabric of Ingold’s prose, as seen in his description of the earth as “not the solid and pre-existing substrate that the edifice builder takes it to be” but “rather the source of all life and growth” (77). That said, Ingold departs from Heidegger’s abstract meditation to ground dwelling in the immediacy of sensory experience. In the case where “buildings are part of the world, and the world will not stop still but ceaselessly unfolds along its innumerable paths of growth, decay and regeneration, regardless of the most concerted of human attempts to nail it down, or to cast it in fixed and final forms” (48), Heidegger would reflect the human impulse as an interruption of gathering, but Ingold would rather stress the ceaseless unfolding as the flow of material and life that is necessary of becoming.

Conclusion

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15) expresses a perennial truth about human life that it is rooted in care, not command. Modernity, however, teaches us that to live is to rise—to build higher, reach farther, and transcend. Cities embody this logic in glass and steel, lifting us above the very earth that sustains us. Ingold offers a resolute reversal: to live is to grow downward, to take root, to correspond. A plant’s growth is not an escape from the soil but a deepening within it, an act of grounding rather than ascent. He translates Heidegger’s metaphysics into lived experience: the sky is what allows things to breathe, and the earth is what lets them grow. To “grow downward,” then, is not to retreat but to recognize our place within the flow of life—to live with the world, not above it. Anthropology, in this sense, becomes the practice of rooting knowledge. To understand, then, is to return to the ground: not to possess it, but to dwell within it—to let thought take root where life already grows.

Works Cited

Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge, 2013. 

Wrathall, Mark. “Martin Heidegger.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 31 Jan. 2025, plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/#:~:text=Martin%20Heidegger%20was%20born%20on,at%20the%20University%20of%20Freiburg.

The Holy Bible: New International Version. Zondervan, 2011.

Cover art: “Antonio Mora on Instagram: ‘Plant Fashion’ En 2025: Arte, Estatuas, Disenos de Unas.” Pinterest, 8 Aug. 2025, www.pinterest.com/pin/26247610323734509/. 

By Gina Chang and Nicole Jiao