Dear Keith,
I don't really doubt the possibility of emergent meaning through discourse
or dialogue. The problem as I see it is that people take away only what they
comprehend based on how they interpret what they hear based on their own
background (or rhetorical background if you want). However, finding a common
framework of understanding seems to require collective agreement on the
outcome of such events. This rarely seems to happen. We don't go home with
facts but with what we accept as meaningful. This still isn't codified
enough to function either as theory or language. I am interested in how
people come to accept and elaborate a convention (read theory).
What names for those who form the science of theory as community do you have
in mind? More particularly, what do you mean by the science of theory as
community? Are those who form it members of a cult of believers in what each
other says? Or is there really some science involved?
Curiously,
Chuck
On 5/19/05 7:41 PM, "Keith Russell" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear Chuck
>
> You raise, for me, one of the key issues in terms of Design Theory as a
> Practice. You ask: "How can theory be institutionalized to function more
> like language?" (I've quoted the paragraph below)
>
> I think the example you take from Klau's article illustrates one way
> that theory is already determined as a language. Those of us from
> rhetorical backgrounds know what talk is for, we know how to listen, we
> know how to form various discourse "rules" and we know how to look for
> larger patterns in the drift of things. This means that at con-ferences,
> the con-ventions of different groups come to the fore. We are often
> looking for things to emerge and we provoke and pose and wait in hope
> that the community will emerge in language as a language. When this
> works the conference is magic - when it doesn't then we have to go home
> with facts.
>
> There are names, in some cultures, for the various plays and players
> that go to form the science of theory as community.
>
> keith russell
> OZ Newcastle
>
>
>>>>>>>>>>>>
> [log in to unmask]
> Charles Burnette <[log in to unmask]
> Date: Friday - May 20, 2005 4:24 AM
> Subject: Theory as affordance
>
> How can theory be institutionalized to function more like language? (I
> assume you will accept that language becomes institutionalized to
> support
> dialogue wihin a culture.) You wrote "I see bricolages (..a relatively
> loose
> ecology of artifacts, produced or at hand, whose uses are guided by
> conceptions that its many participants bring to it...) as being lin
> guistically coordinated,assembled, disassembled, or reconstructed with
> novel
> artifacts, collectively supporting institutions that in turn nourishes
> artifacts selectively." Maybe a theory (or a word) is a momentary
> artifact
> or maybe it is an institution like a language that can evolve and
> transform
> within the constraints imposed on it by its users (and itself).
> Collaborative design thinking can create a coherent mental or physical
> artifact. How does or could "bricolagees" do so?
>
> I'd be really interested to "see" where you take this artifact of our
> conversation.
>
> Thanks again,
>
> Chuck
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