Chris, Terry, Victor and listers
My pennyworth after some very thoughtful contributions. If we ultimately acknowledge that many design disciplines and fields engage in forms of practice-based research that typically produce material outputs (projects etc) and report these processes and practices in ways deemed characteristic of the field (a community/communities decision) and distinctive from - in rhetorical form and content the PhD in the Sciences and Humanities - a possibility I think many people are working towards (and which those working in teaching, nursing, social work, others ... have envisaged) then other things will follow including the value of peer reviewed journal articles employing the empiricist and technical rhetorics and language of other more established fields. Many things follow from the desire or need to establish an alternative discourse and practice for design fields. This is not to deny that those in some design fields will prefer - because of their existing allegiance and desires to remain within the fold of engineering, computer science, whatever - to reproduce the discourse and practice of their disciplinary elders (and there will be other pragmatic reasons also). Pragmatism (Dewey's, Rorty's) here again offers a better option regarding making these decisions based on what we want to achieve, who we want to influence, what is appropriate given our ends, etc., that the critical rationalism and objective truth of say Popper and others. This desire to create a distinctive discourse apporpriate to the design fields and our ends is not an agitated and fearful turn away from the impeccable truth of empiricism but rather a decision to not let a mythical objective Truth get in the way of other ways of communicating knowledge and achieving better individual and social ends.
Cheers
Gavin Melles
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Swinburne University of Technology
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