I read Adam's post with appreciation.  re: Jerry's post about maths and philosophy I was actually about to say that sometimes, depending on which philosopher, maybe all you need is an eraser--think for instance of Descartes' methodological skepticism. I understand Derek's worry as well: I work with people in educational research and I get friendly chides quite often: evidence based research is what matters and that needs empirical evidence, clear and distinct (and usually they mean numbers)! But as a kind incomplete response, my own sense however is that design theory and research is a great opportunity to move forward afresh, and free from the paradigmatic dominance of positivism. In fact in social science one does not really speak of validity I suspect but rather of reliability (whereas philosophers are quite obsessed with validity: so that once invalidity is established one need not even bother with the falsehood of the premises) But my worry with the kind of positivism that so dominates much of social science research may not fully allow the phenomenon one is investigating to give fully of itself.  I like an idea by Jean Luc Marion, which is that sometimes phenomenon is anamorphic, that is, we need to stand in relation to it in a certain way to grasp it, and until we do that we can be blind to its truth (again contestable idea but nonetheless).  Think for instance of a Monet; if you stand too close to inspect, and try to grasp exactly each and every pixel, you might actually miss the picture, but if you stood back further at a distance, perhaps even take off your glasses, then the lilies emerge.  Sometimes, because of our paradigmatic biases, and conditions, or criteria, the phenomenon saturates our epistemic field without us even knowing, and in the end we say we dont see anything.  Yet in some theories of design or some forms of research in design which attempts to work out a design "science" (though not scientific in the positivist sense, but rather the reasoning that designers should employ), theorists acknowledge that design is to enables us to grasp and see and appreciate new things that our current epistemic lenses do not grasp or appreciate.  Most significantly in ethics, which is of course blind to positivists (arguably) design has this capacity to reveal what else is worth seeking and doing.  In some sense Herbert Simon (in his more philosophical moments, drawing on the theory of evolution) suggested this when he said that one can design not for some current goal, but precisely to explore what else is worth designing for, what new goals are worth welcoming.  I tell my colleagues this and they think it's crazy: how can you plan or design for something to emerge? Policy makers may be very concerned: you are experimenting with taxpayer's money.  But it may be something important to invest in if we are thinking of moving forward as a civilization, or culturally--design furthering our grasp of the things that are welcome, and that matter. So Simon's science of design is one which encourages pushing the frontiers of our ideas, and perhaps our ethics.   But if ethics, then why not our fundamental ontologies, and other paradigmatic constituents. Some of March's work goes in this direction I feel. Can design and the general theory of design (thus working out a design science, a theory of what the epistemology or logic of designing is) help emerge a new sense of who we are, etc? So while the kind of scientific (positivist) study of design is important, design research and theorizing's other contribution may precisely be to bracket or even challenge these paradigms, and to venture into what else could possibly be welcome, but not yet. And daringly detail some of these. So there's a danger, when design theory and research becomes institutionalized, that it looses this capacity to push us forward with new ways of seeing. This willingness is to my mind generally a philosophical tendency; philosophers in my experience are much more willing to tolerate and entertain some of these ideas outside the confines of positivism. Apologies if this confuses more than it clarifies.  These are really unsettled ideas.
Jude
National Institute of Education (Singapore) http://www.nie.edu.sg

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