Don Norman wrote:
> Who or what is bourdieu, witthenartin, neopragmatists, Beerian, VSM ? What
> is a "reflexive system"?
I've thought for some time that we designers (in the art school
tradition) are caught uncomfortably between two practices and need to
resist both.
On the one hand artists like to spray philosophical references around
with no attempt to support their assertions by explaining what aspect of
these works (lifetimes of work?) they are actually referring to. We are
expected to be part of a coterie that recognise these enigmatic
citations and nod sagely when they are uttered, it's not the business of
the artist to be precise.
On the other hand a lot of design research adopts a scientistic tone
(Smith 2012) borrowing the practice of terse citations (Jones 2018)
forgetting that in many fields of the natural sciences such citations
refer to relatively unambiguous technical discoveries (Malarkey 2010).
In contrast almost everything we want to discuss in design is coloured
by context and highly nuanced. We cannot therefore avoid the
responsibility of explaining why any source is relevant, what it tells
us and how the author discovered what they have told us.
Michael Polanyi asserted that scientific knowledge is a matter of
passionate belief rather than dispassionate proof. By that I take him to
mean that we are all responsible for understanding the things we believe
and if you want me to believe something you had better give me some help
in seeing why I should (especially if I am examining your PhD :o)
best wishes from a springlike Sheffield evening, my son is playing David
Bowie in the next room, "Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing we can
do...."
Chris
...............................................................o^o
Professor Chris Rust FDRS
Head of Art and Design Research Centre
Sheffield Hallam University, S1 2NU, UK
+44 114 225 6772
[log in to unmask]
http://chrisrust.wordpress.com/
Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the
future of the human race. - H. G. Wells
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