Dear Kari-Hans and All,

As this thread unfolds, I’ve been reading the contributions with great interest.

Without dipping into the full conversation, I’m going to point to two problems.

The first problem came up at the very start. In calling for a discussion of design as a noun, you gave several examples. While the authors you quote speak of “design” they do not use the noun design in a way that allows us to restate the noun in such forms as “a design,” or “many designs.”

Rather, these authors write about the noun “design” in the sense of the design process. It is a noun that describes a process. I don’t know the technical linguistic term for this kind of noun, but it is not a noun in the sense of an object or artifact. Rather, it is a noun related to the verb form of the word.

The second, and greater, problem is summarized in your last post. The phenomenon of evolved things that have some kind of structure can be mapped as a plan or structure is quite real. In this sense, we can speak of evolutionary information embodied in artifacts, processes, and thing of all kinds.

The fact that we can map this information as a plan does not mean that any agency or entity planned the information that appears in our map.

To shift the word design from a verb to a noun, and then to say that the noun allows us to consider all things that can be mapped as “plans” of this kind seems to me a problematic usage. To speak of “a design” in this sense has several implications – if we speak in metaphor or as the opening to reflection, this is potentially fruitful. To use this metaphor as a way to learn from evolution in kinds of design that engage with biomimicry, behavioral economics, different forms of informatics, or other evolutionary models has clearly been useful in different design fields.

To speak of this as a description of states or phenomena in which evolution itself or non-intentional entities create [special usage noun] “designs” without [ordinary usage verb] “designing” them seems to me a problematic scheme.

This leads to inadequate ideas about the nature of evolution and evolutionary processes. People already misunderstand evolution. Evolution is a random process. Evolution is contingent and path-dependent. Within the wide range of contingent events, evolutionary processes open niches. Multiple natural causes lead to random genetic mutations to prior life forms. These forms become candidates for success in available niches. Those life forms that fit new niches survive while others do not. On one hand, this is a successful process that leads to life as we see it today. On the other hand, the process is intensely wasteful. Billions of distinctly different life forms have emerged, evolved, and vanished since organic life first emerged on our planet. Nature has no intention, and therefore no concern for massive continued development and disappearance of species.

When we discuss cultural and social evolution, different kinds of processes come into play.

The thread raises the question, “What can designers learn from natural, biological, and cultural evolution?”  To ask this question, designers must know more about natural science, biology, anthropology, sociology, and psychology than they generally know. This involves both background knowledge and specific facts. As I have often done, I’ll refer to Don Norman’s Core77 blog contribution “Why Design Education Must Change.” If we are going to get into these issues, we’ve got to develop an appropriate level of background knowledge and an appropriate level of field specific knowledge.

My view is that once we know enough about these issues to discuss them in a responsible way, the topics will remain useful – but we won’t describe them using the word “design”. The issues are important. Designers can learn a great deal from these issues. What we learn may help us to improve design processes and design outcomes. My one objection is simple – there is no need to label the outcomes of these processes and phenomena [special usage noun] “designs” to learn from them.

The comments on being and doing open onto a conversation that I don’t think we can sort through here, though I have enjoyed reading them.

There are states of being that do not recount their being through any telling. It is up to creatures that give accounts to say – or write – something about those beings. In that sense, there are many cases in which “being” is not a post-factum account of doing. Many things that are have states of being that the things themselves do not recount – this is the case of all inanimate objects, and it is the case of many living entities that do not account for themselves.

Unlike design, a process that requires intentionality – at least as I see it – being does not require intentionality. Some forms of doing may require intentionality while others may not – here it depends on what one means by the verb “to do.” We can say that a star explodes without claim that it intends to do so. Is the verb “to explode” in a form of a general verb “to do” in this sense? Fascinating lines of thought here, but then we’re back to some puzzling issues that I won’t take on here.

I will close with the memory of a lovely graffito I read once in New York:

“To be is to do.” – Socrates
“To do is to be.” – Sartre
“Shoo-be-do-be-do.” – Sinatra

Or, as Groucho Marx said,

“Hello, I must be going.
I cannot stay,
I came to say
I must be going.
I’m glad I came
but just the same
I must be going.”

Groucho sings it better than I do, and you can find him here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6yLRmo7CjU

Yours,

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830 462 | Home Page http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/people/Professor-Ken-Friedman-ID22.html<http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design>    Academia Page http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman About Me Page http://about.me/ken_friedman

Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China



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