Dear Terry,

You do not want to answer Tim’s request to, “show us, with citations to published work, how you have found Popper’s Three Incommensurate Worlds view to be useful in testing some theory of designing.”

Neither have you been able to show us specific examples of “design theories [that] arecontradicted by well-established theories in other disciplines.”

Before my response, I’ll restate the nature of a theory: A theory is an explanation that shows the operation of a system with respect to all its parts and the dynamic relation of those parts to one another. A theory is a model, and a theory generally describes the working parts of a dynamic system. This is what distinguishes theoretical propositions from simple statements, catalogues, or taxonomies. A theory is a model of a full system describing the dynamic relations of all parts of thesystem to all other parts of the system.

The examples in your reply were not “design theories [that] are contradicted by well-established theories in other disciplines.”

The Gray and Malins book was filled with problematic claims and assertions, but these were not theories. This was a textbook on design research. Gray and Malins did not deal with design theory, and I don’t recall that the book presented any theoretical propositions.

Neither did my article on theory construction in Design Studies present theories or theoretical propositions (Friedman 2003). This was an article on theory construction describing the nature of theory.

Every article contains mistakes or propositions that could be said better. The statements you critique are historical and contextual. I could have stated those ideas better, and I probably should have. If one of the referees had pointed to the issues at the time, I would have improved them. Nevertheless, these are not theoretical propositions. You’ve proposed historical and contextual improvements, not theoretical corrections or contradictions. While you suggest reasonable improvements, these statements are not theories and you don’t contradict them with “well-established theories in other disciplines.”

On a small issue, you read one statement wrong. I wrote: “The qualitative human sciences, along with thick description approaches to anthropology, much history, and most literature resist quantization.” The phrase “along with” separates the terms on one side of the phrase from the terms on the other. This statement does not elide “thick description approaches to anthropology, much history, and most literature” with “the qualitative human sciences,” nor does it imply that any of these three represents the whole of the qualitative human sciences. These are different to, and stand along with, the qualitative human sciences.

At this point, I will offer a quick response to the whole of your post.

It is inaccurate to suggest that I asked you to do my work. When I state a claim, it is my responsibility to provide evidence for my claim. In this case, you stated the claim. I asked you for evidence to support your claims. This is your work, not mine.

While you offered reasonable corrections and improvements to my article, you did not provide examples of theoretical statements, and you did not offer theoretical contradictions.

Tim asked you to “show us, with citations to published work, how you have found Popper’s Three Incommensurate Worlds view to be useful in testing some theory of designing.”

I asked for specific examples of “design theories [that] are contradicted by well-established theories in other disciplines.”

You declined to respond to Tim, and you did not point to theoretical problems in my article or any other. These may exist, but you haven’t located them or described them – and that, as I see it, is your work, not mine.

There is difference between theoretical propositions and propositions of other kinds. I defined the nature of theory and theoretical propositions in my posts in this thread, and in the paper and the article I noted (Friedman 2002, 2003).

In each of these debates, we reach a point at which you decline to support your statements with evidence. You skip aside or say that evidence is not needed while asserting the internal logic of the thread or implicit claims to expertise.

You describe those with whom you disagree as subject to illusions and mistaken while you believe yourself to be objective, logical, and apparently correct.

You recently wrote that your “body has a relatively automatic response to critically explore and remake theory models to fit evidence” while stating that my “body's response was to be grumpy and criticize.” When I offered a robust debate your position, you claimed the debate was “a personal and emotional critical attack.” Now you say I’m guilty of a rant.

It seems to me that you appeal to evidence when it suits you, and it seems that you claim there is no need for evidence when it doesn’t suit you to provide it.

You may be correct in these assertions, and I may be wrong.

Whether this is so or not, it doesn’t seem possible to engage in a robust debate on these issues. Since we have reached the point at which I am likely to be labeled a grumpy body on a rant, the time has come for me to withdraw from this thread.

Yours,

Ken

Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask] |Phone +61 3 9214 6102 | http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design

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References


Friedman, Ken. 2002. “Theory Construction in Design Research. Criteria, Approaches, and Methods.” In Common Ground. Proceedings of the Design Research Society International Conference at Brunel University, September 5-7, 2002. David Durling and John Shackleton, Editors. Stoke on Trent, UK: Staffordshire University Press, 388-414. Available at URL: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/41967

Friedman, Ken. 2003. “Theory construction in design research: criteria: approaches, and methods.” Design Studies, 24 (2003), 507–522. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0142-694X(03)00039-5




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