Dear Jeffrey and Tao,
Thanks for your notes on Freeman Dyson. Dyson's speech and your notes
got me thinking.
My view is in tune with Tao and Dyson both. Dyson has always been a
provocateur, and his commencement speeches are true to his style. I
am more bothered by Dyson's comments on global warming and
biotechnology than his disagreement with the concept of the PhD.
Dyson argues against the PhD degree, or, better said, against the way
that people earn a PhD and what doctoral education does to their
perspectives and abilities. What is he really saying?
Freeman Dyson is a well-educated polymath. He is much like
Buckminster Fuller, another genius who had no PhD. Fuller, like
Dyson, had a talent for rigorous intellectual work and great skill in
applying his work to the larger world. While Dyson has little regard
for degrees, he has high regard for rigorous research.
The point of doctoral education in design is to create a culture of
research where none existed until recently. This requires an
appreciation for rigorous thinking. We work in a field where some
argue that rigorous thinking and rigorous research are meaningless or
even counterproductive. The alternatives range from pure intuition to
artistic ability to something called designerly thinking.
The argument against rigor is a genuine issue to those who make it. A
few years back, one of the design journals published an article that
argued AGAINST rigor as a foundation for design research. The
argument was based on several dozen incorrect facts. Many of the
inaccurate claims involved myths about research common in the kinds
of studio programs that have no research training. Nevertheless,
these mythological arguments against rigor managed to convince the
journal and its reviewers to publish the article, including those
several dozen mistakes.
This is anecdotal, to be sure, but the anecdote plays out repeatedly
at conferences and in faculty tearooms. The main difference here is
publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
The argument itself involves a position quite opposite to Dyson's views.
Some people in the design field argue AGAINST rigor while arguing FOR
a PhD award to designers. Dyson takes the opposite position. Dyson
argues against bothering with the PhD degree while arguing FOR
rigorous research.
Most of us have no argument with people who undertake rigorous and
valuable research without a PhD. Chris
Rust at Sheffield-Hallam University and Sharon Poggenpohl at Hong
Kong Polytechnic University are outstanding professors who do solid
work without a PhD. The problem that bothers me is people who want a
PhD without doing the work or research based on special pleading and
argument by assertion rather than reasoned argument from evidence.
Most designers begin in studio programs. Research education is
necessary if they are to conduct useful research. PhD programs offer
the training they need.
Dyson made his argument against the PhD while picking up one of his
20 or 30 honorary doctorates. Even though Dyson seems to disagree
with doctoral education, he makes the argument while collecting his
doctorates. That is OK. Dyson has earned the privilege. It
nevertheless flavors my view on whether he means what he says.
A few key facts place this in a different context. Dyson did not just
wake up one morning to cook up contributions that some believe should
have won a Nobel Prize. He spent years of work and study in different
physics programs, mostly at the doctoral level. After taking his
bachelor's degree in theoretical mathematics at Cambridge, he won
fellowships at Trinity College, Cambridge, at Cornell, at the
University of Birmingham, and at the Institute for Advanced Studies
in Princeton. He did graduate study at Cornell with Hans Bethe and
Richard Feynman, and the equivalent of post-doctoral study at the
Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Those two dozen honorary
doctorates suggest that Dyson could have earned a PhD.
Then there is the story behind the story. Dyson is a well-educated
Briton from a highly successful upper-class family. His father was
Sir George Dyson, composer, conductor, and director of the Royal
College of Music. His mother was a lawyer, an unusual career for a
woman in early twentieth-century England. The Astronomer Royal, Sir
Frank Dyson - no relative - took young Freeman under his wing. He
attended Cambridge at a time when there were few universities in the
UK. Those few universities were open to very few people indeed
compared with the UK today.
Dyson could afford his maverick approach in a way that nearly no one
else could do, then or now. No one doubts - nor ever doubted - that
he could have completed a PhD had he wished to do so. In Dyson's
case, the combination of genius, wealth, connections, and good luck
were a fine substitute for a PhD.
Anyone who does the work that Dyson did - or its equivalent - ought
to be a professor without a PhD. This is not always the case in
design. Those who take charge of research programs without the proper
training are often responsible for an avalanche of problems.
A typical case comes to mind involving a design professor who failed
to complete his PhD. His committee found problems in his thesis and
refused to accept it. He had collected many good images for the
project, though, and he got a good picture book out of it for a good
publisher. He was a furniture designer, and his book led to a
professorial appointment at a pure studio school where no one on the
faculty had ever published a book. They did not see the difference
between his book and a research monograph, and there was no
requirement for a doctorate in any case.
Once chaired as professor, this fellow was able to return to his
original school as a professor. This was the school where he failed
his own doctoral work. Despite his frequent boast that all he had to
do to get his PhD was to walk over to the chancellery to pick the
degree up, he never completed his thesis and he lacked the ability to
do so. The problems began here, more for the school than for the
professor.
As professor, however, he was responsible for doctoral education. In
20 years, he was able to graduate only three doctors -- one who had
completed her work when he took the post, and two whom others
advised. He did have a long roll of uncompleted doctors who were
unable to finish because they had no help or advising from the
professor. As the school began to build its program in design
research, with other crises also under way, he finally had to leave
the job. When he did, he left the entire research program in
disarray. It has taken others several years to straighten out the
problems he left behind.
The point of our discussions on PhD design is not to argue that
everyone should get a PhD, but to discuss HOW to make doctoral
education productive and valuable. This also means arguing for good
PhD work by those who do earn a degree and good conditions for
doctoral study for those who wish to earn one.
Two last facts about Freeman Dyson. Dyson may believe that there is
no point to doctoral education, but he DOES believe in research
education and in the kinds of programs that deliver it. The political
fact is that we have organized universities in such a way that PhD
training coincides with research training. While I sympathize with
Dyson's argument against the narrow structure of PhD programs, I have
not found a good substitute for the PhD program as a structure for
organizing research education.
The second fact is the special nature of the Institute for Advanced
Studies. There are no PhD students at the Institute. The institute is
not a school. Even though it has a faculty, it has no students. This
is a place with rules of its own, and that is partly why Dyson was
offered a position there and partly why he prospered there. Richard
Feynman turned down offers of a professorship at the Institute
because they have no students. He believed that research works best
where you have many good PhD students working with professors.
I am not sure which is best. Nevertheless, I DO think we should
improve our PhD programs while we wait for a benevolent
multimillionaire to fund our Institute for Advanced Study with an
Abraham Flexner to build it. (For more information on Abraham
Flexner, see the book review in the August 2003 issue of Design
Research News. Flexner was the fellow who put 120 doctoral programs
out of business in the early 1900s in his work to reform medical
education in North America - that's 120 programs of what was then
155.)
Once we do have our own Institute, of course, I will be happy to
accept a professorship. Who knows what I will have to say about PhD
programs once I no longer need to worry about students?
Yours,
Ken
--
Ken Friedman
Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Institute for Communication, Culture, and Language
Norwegian School of Management
Center for Design Research
Denmark's Design School
+47 46.41.06.76 Tlf NSM
+47 33.40.10.95 Tlf Privat
email: [log in to unmask]
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