Dear Terry,
'ultimate particular' (in '') is a term Harold uses in his book 'The design way'. Someone can help me here, it is also the term (in English translation) that Aristotle used when he was speaking of practical wisdom (phronesis). For Aristotle, practical wisdom is concerned with ultimate particulars.
my engineering knowledge is zero as my friend often tells me, but I guess when you are designing a little mechanical linkage to operate a switch, you might consider where the switch will be used, or how it fits to the rest of the product, or what kind of budget you have, what kind of material is available, what your deadline is, what others projects you have to accomplish in the meantime etc, etc, and all these are ultimate particulars, meaning the context of design is never exactly the same, though perhaps similar. An experienced engineer like you, probably won't even notice the difference because you have a grasp of the situation holistically and tacitly.
When Harold was talking about case study, he suggested that when doing case study research, it is more useful to lay out the details of the case than to create prescription from the case. The issue I have wanted to raise is that people acquire expert knowledge (Dreyfuss' thesis) through having experienced and learned from encountering a whole variety of particular situations. The expertise cannot be acquired by reading. I have been wondering whether reading detailed account is necessarily better than reading middle range theory.
Make sense?
Rosan
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Hi Rosan,
You wrote, <snip>'design deals with the 'ultimate particular'. But reading
the description of the particulars is not the same as experiencing the
particulars and learning from them. ' <end>
What do you mean? If I design a little mechanical linkage to operate a
switch, or my colleagues design a new recording process for use in
apprehension of criminals, or design a strategy for improving the
distribution of power in an organisation, which bits are the 'ultimate
particular' and why?
Best wishes,
Terry
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