Dear list members,

  I am a student of PhD programme at Department of Design, Indian Institute
of Technology and had been reading the postings for over a year now,
understanding some and searching for pointers in many others.... I am
thankful to the list for many insights.

  The role of interdisciplinarity in design discourse and subsequently on
the intended aim of "making it better" has perplexed us at Undergraduate
level (we have a bachelor degree program at DOD) as well as at doctoral
level, more due to lack of an EVOLUTIONARY perspective of knowledge rather
than absense of clear definitions of disciplines.

    Do disciplines constrain the set of activities through definitions and
terminologies?
    or facilitate to focus on the intended/ propounded aim by consolidating
the idea through terminologies?

    In 'Design Science' the intent being "making it better" ( it =
artefacts; tangible, intangible) the SYNTHETIC activities become more
pronounced, which is reflected in academics as well as profession. Can we
constrain the synthetic activity which is not a product of casual
discoveries for it's sources to a certain predefined domain of knowledge/
disciplines or allow the activity itself to create and define domains.

    In Indian Philosophical treatises, we face this problem of
inseparability of ideas depicted in modern noesis as 'spirituality',
'medicine', 'philosophy', 'cookery', 'architecture' etc. They are so well
stuck together that attempt to separate them for analysis/ study reduces the
meaning and intent of the treatise to degree unacceptable to many
traditional scholars of Vedic Sect.

    The notion of interdesciplinarity if applied as a method to enrich the
discourse in/for design by assuming different positions (due to different
perspectives/ world views/ intent/ concern etc.) belonging to different
disciplines should be welcomed as it contributes to the design discourse as
a body of knowledge in general and design activity in particular. And thus
also leads to an Evolutionary perspective of the knowledge domain, defining
disciplines as it happens.. may be one like design science, recognising and
contributing to it.
   But if the notion interdisciplinarity in context of design means
segregating the activities, claiming it's chunks of contributions to the
whole body of knowledge, may be it will hamper the synthetic process of
design, which creates 'something else/more' by bringing many pieces of
'something others' and thus how design as a discipline and profession has
continued to exist from very begining of knowlege/ intelligent life itself.

as this was my first posting, apologies for inconsistencies/ trivialities of
arguments in light of prior discussions and looking forward to reading
more...

with regards,
Jyoti

On 8/10/07, Ken Friedman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Deaar Klaus,
>
> The definition of interdisciplinarity that you propose -- "territory
> between established disciplines" -- is based on a conception of
> knowledge quite foreign to those who pursue interdisciplinary work.
>
> Most of us use the term as the Oxford English Dictionary does: "Of or
> pertaining to two or more disciplines or branches of learning;
> contributing to or benefiting from two or more disciplines." "Add:
> Hence interdisciplinarity n., the quality, fact, or condition of
> being interdisciplinary." Merriam-Webster's usage exemplars make the
> same point while including artistic practices in the term
> "discipline": "involving two or more academic, scientific, or
> artistic disciplines."
>
> Descriptive lexicography states means ("definitions") in terms of the
> way people actually use the word in daily life and in published
> exemplars. For a scholar who takes a strong stand on the power of
> language as the way we construct our world, you do not seem to accept
> the way that interdisciplinary scholars conceive and language the
> world. It is quite different to the way that you describe it. The
> concept of interdisciplinarity based on partitioned knowledge and the
> spaces between partitions suggests a barren no-man's-land where
> nothing happens.
>
> The metaphor I prefer is a wetlands, a tidal zone where rich life
> bubbles up and interacts between different kinds of knowledge
> ecologies. Any taxonomy of fruitful disciplines is generally
> temporary -- mathematics as it was in Leibniz's day is not the
> mathematics of Hilbert's time nor yet mathematics as we use it today.
> The fields, focal points, purposes and linkages to applied
> mathematics are each different, and out understanding of the
> philosophy underlying mathematics is also different -- with a much
> greater recognition of roles that social construction and metaphor
> play in mathematical thinking. Shaping a taxonomy of the discipline
> or disciplines of mathematics would give you a different picture in
> each era. That's how it is with all disciplines.
>
> It is difficult to intervene _successfully_ "into what presently
> exists and create futures that are in some arguable way better than
> what exists" without drawing at different points of the information,
> knowledge, and practical skills of colleagues from many fields. Few
> of us know enough to design more than a simple artifact. Most
> successful designers work of anything more complex than a simple
> artifact work in an interdisciplinary way. This is not done by
> working in empty spaces between disciplines, but by drawing on and
> working with information, knowledge, and skills from "two or more
> academic, scientific, or artistic disciplines."
>
> For some kinds of projects, that might even involve learning from
> homiletics. Preaching is an art that involves intervening in what
> presently exists to conceive and create potentially different
> futures. "Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new
> heavens and a new earth..." (2 Peter 3:13)
>
> Most everyone who learns anything new or useful does so by borrowing
> concepts and methods from different fields. There are, of course,
> many forms of research and application that work with OLD, useful
> things. To design or work with old and useful things, we can draw on
> settled knowledge, commonplace heuristics, and professional or guild
> traditions. They work quite well, and we'd hardly survive if we had
> to invent the entire world every day.
>
> Once we need to know or understanding something we don't yet know,
> however, we can't simply imagine it. Imagination plays a key role in
> design, the teleological role. Once we envision the purpose or goal
> we seek, we need some kinds of tools or ways forward. These generally
> proceed through different forms of analogy and metaphor, as well as
> by trying different tools. Some may be absolutely new -- but this
> happens very infrequently in human evolution. It is far more common
> that human beings make progress by drawing on and applying existing
> repertoires of tools and ideas in news ways -- seeing what many have
> looked at without seeing other uses or possibilities than those of
> the past.
>
> A vast amount of genuine innovation and design, as well as
> significant invention, involves working at the ecological zone
> located between and sharing the properties and attributes of two --
> or more -- disciplines.
>
> I don't know about plumbing or automobile repair, but surgeons design
> surgical procedures and they often design and plan a specific
> operation carefully. Some surgeons also work with other kinds of
> designers to design the actual instruments they use for the
> procedures they create. Preachers design the sermons they give, and
> they design the worship services within which they give them. These
> and other professions are design professions in the sense that
> Herbert Simon defined design. So I'd have to say that SOME
> professional designers do practice surgery and preaching.
>
> Yours,
>
> Ken
>
>
>
> Klaus Krippendorff wrote:
>
> --snip--
>
> Designers use their discourse to intervene into what presently exist
> and create futures that is in some arguable way better than what
> exists and this must include the expectations of those who might come
> to live in that future. it does not matter whether those who come to
> live in that future are sociologists, psychologists, physicists or
> medical professionals, who each have their own discourse and do their
> own thing. the latter may well borrow from design discourse, for
> example to gather data, design experiments, or invent a life saving
> device. designers too need to work with engineers, economists,
> environmentalists who each pursue their discursively defined and
> constructed objects.
>
> design is interdisciplinary only if you see knowledge in terms of
> partitioned territories and find that design does not seem to have a
> territory of its own. the emphasis on design discourse does not need
> this territory (although some discourses may position themselves in
> such). it is just a way of being clear as to what designers do and
> what they as professional designers do not do, such as plumbing,
> automobile repair, surgery, and preaching the gospel.
>
> --snip--
>



--
Jyoti Kumar
Reaearch Scholar,
Department of Design,
Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati