Dear Ken and All

Thanks for these very informative posts

Speaking of English definitions, Gunther Kress uses "Design" with a capital D, to refer to the child's act of applying words, shaping (designing) them in ways that matter to him, against grammatical convention: the child spoke of a "heavy hill" rather than a steep one.  One could ask if he's using the word design correctly, but the other interesting thing to ask is if Kress is himself designing "design", and transforming it into "Design" with the meaning he applies to it.  And he does not cite the major theorists in design (not that I know of I think or at least not much). But he's designing the word/meaning "Design".  Whether one agrees with Kress' larger body of work, I've found it interesting to ask if designers amongst others have the responsibility or perhaps competency to design "design".  I've never come across Flusser until now, but it seems that he's doing a kind of designing of the word "design", like Kress.  But then how can we design "design", what guides such desigining, and should we even bother?  I think we should.  I remember keenly a piece by Clive Dilnot who speaks about design as a criticality.  Ironically he argues in that piece that most designers design eschewing criticality, and I think if that's true, then we should say that design is not a criticality, but Dilnot presses for the notion of design as a criticality in that piece.  That's a kind of designing of "design", so the very concept is not a mere sociological report of what people think, but an uncovering of the notion that should matter, perhaps critically.  But of course, I agree with Ken that this is not respectable etymology.  But this could be very interesting (infinite) semiosis, or etho-semiosis (Petrilli, Ponzio).  These are mostly abductive connections (rather than deductive one). 





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Ken: Flusser’s view of the word design is an interesting philosophical excursion. As etymology, however, it is inadequate. Flusser shows his use of words, but he shows no sources, no path of descent, and no exemplars. This is a kind of folk etymology raised to the level of interesting reflection by Villem Flusser’s genius.



Many etymological mistakes arise from the fact that similar or seemingly similar words have no etymological relationship one to the other. They may resemble one another as homonyms share spelling or pronunciation while being different in meaning and in etymology. Despite the resemblance, they are different words. This is the case when amateur etymologists draw on superficially similar words.



Robust etymology requires good sources and exemplars. The Oxford English Dictionary is a good place to start. To go deeper, one must seek out an etymologist or a source based on serious etymology rather than on myth and invention.



Yours,



Ken



National Institute of Education (Singapore) http://www.nie.edu.sg

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