Dear Ken, Victor and Terry,



Another go from the Lisbon Hermes (it remains to be said if Hermes refers to 
the god of thieves and liars, the messenger of the gods, a guy good in 
hermeneutics, or just a boy with winged helmet poking snakes with a stick, 
which by the way were originally white laces).

 A month ago or so, in a response to Terry, I quoted Tufan Orel and his 
paper "On the Science of Design or "Designology". I think that Victor 
summoned us to this thread as designologists. He didn't do it to designers.

Back to Orel's propositions, he wrote what designology should NOT be: [n]ot 
telling people how to design functional objects nor developing an 
epistemology of design activity. (.) [t]he most urgent task of "designology" 
is coordination ( Tufan Orel explains in a note that he means "coordination" 
in a sense of Karl Manheim's expressed for instance in Freedom, Power and 
Democratic Planning) and adjustment of the intellectual productions which 
have developed up to now in separate ways."

Later in the text he says, "The 'holistic' viewpoints of today, as William 
James would say if he were still alive, are in general though-minded, 
whereas the holistic approaches of tomorrow will most probably be 
'tender-minded' (Orel note to see W.J. Pragmatism first chapter) since they 
include the problems of the "esthetico-sphere" in the discussions of the 
biosphere and the technosphere."

So coordination seemed at that time something missing. Orel's first 
proposition of knowledge grouping was an optimistic 4: "1. Research on the 
theoretical or epistemological approaches to design." A meta research, I 
would say. "2. Research on the consensual approaches to design: Design 
according to industry administration and media". "3.  Research on 
"professional" approaches to design" and "4. Research on everyday life or 
"lived design".

I would say that the #1 hierarchy level is different from the following. I 
mean that the research proposed in number one can only emerge from the 
research done in the other three. I would risk to say that the only true 
designological research should be the first, always as a result of the 
combined analysis of later three.

At the first sight, Victor's intimation concerns the forth kind of grouping 
but, somehow, I sense that he is proposing, knowing or not knowing, an 
ultimate meta tool to bring sense to designology. Here I must bring to the 
basket the fall of the Critic Theory of Adorno among others and its 
attempted recuperation by Jurgen Habermas, as Clive Dilnot may testify, or 
did testified in his Wonderground paper. The question of consequences deals 
reflexively with knowledge and human interests. In this case design as 
knowledge or design knowledge and fatally the possibility of a designology 
based in a Critic Theory refurbished according to the essential democratic 
Peirce.

In this framework, Terry and Ken are offering valuable second level examples 
(not they are not able to offer first level examples) over which designology 
should be built. naturally.with no pain.

But, Alas, my favourite James was the Henry. From him and others, especially 
Proust, we may learn something incredible about objects and their social 
consequences: The shaping of human time through objects.

I think also that Victor's urge should have a motto. The main consequence of 
objects to be evaluated should be how they are shaping our time and how, by 
the use of objects, the differences between humans may come to an extent of 
almost separating species.

Well, I don't want to make this so big,

Cheers everybody,

Eduardo