Dear Eduardo, I think I get the source of your confusion. yes I see. I can see, now, why you though the way you did. It is very misleading. What is important to realise is that Simon uses the word design and engineering synonymously, as was the apparent convention during his time. You'll notice James March use these two words interchangeably. So by a engineer he meant a designer. They both brought into existence the school call decision or behaviour engineering. Now Engiineers don't engineer decisions. Would one go to Engineering school to engineer decisions?! But of course he meant the Design of decisions, the shaping of decisions. Engineering and Designing are for them interchangeable, and this is no prejudice against either.
The other thing is that the 2nd and the 3rd edition differs significantly, and you need to use the 1996 3rd edition to get a full picture. I would not say his ideas are simplisitic at all; remember the won a nobel prize for talking about decision logic, introducing as he did the idea of choosing for a good enough, to satisfice, rather than to optimise, and that appears interweavingly in the 3rd edition, talking even of designing as a kind of activity without a fixed goal. There's even some talk of intuition, but his Administrative Behavior has more of that. Again, use the latest edition, to which he has added commentaries (to his own work!!) and additional supplementary notes. You see here a chap whose ideas keep evolving. I strongly believe James March had a major part to play in the later evolution of his ideas, and there are various footnotes acknowledgeing that. Notice how in the end, for Simon, design is not even about desigm, but design can be an enterprise which opens up the human to new, previously unforseen preferences, and is, as he says, like wine-tasting: the broadeining of our own liberal horizons. So though you made little of his discussion of wine tasting, the latter actually had something very important to say to us, designers and non-designers allike, and most of all, to educators. If I am right your reference to te kind of thinking that is differently applied when playing soduko and reading Proust is a reference to deductive/inductive thinking and abductive thinking respectively. Two things need to be said about this. You will notice that once Simon admits that design can be witout final goals, and also that in satisficing, esp in radical forms where ends are incommensurable (this is nto in Science of teh Artifiicial but in a collection of his later journal papers published by MIT) one encounters new consequences that are not clearly worse off (because incommensirable) with the solutions one already has thought of, and then adopts these to send the design into new directions, you will grasp that this is no more mere inductive/deductive thinking at work, but abductive, in which one welcomes new connections creatively, accidentally discovered. Secondly abductive logic is a rather new area of research and the term coined by CS Peirce is still being unpacked as we speak! Some of those working in this area at the cutting edge, trying to unpack that using relational concepts in semiotics, as we speak, for instance I am in communication with Susan Petrilli the 7th Sebeok Fellow no less and there is still so much work to be done to develop the very notion of abduction, which is called a logic of gifting, of love, agapastic logic etc, but as you can see this does not get us too far, and there is so much more to be done...So if Simon in 1996 did not develop this sufficiently, I think he can be forgiven. Have you seen any substantive work on abduction? Pointng out that certain designers do abduction, and listing them in references (as you believe he shoudl have done) will do ABSOLUTELY nothing for a work on the science of design unless and until it is accompanied by the analysis of this form of logic which is so typicaly and central to design thinking. IT's like telling us ARistotle and who scholastic tradition from Aquinas down to Occam were very good in deduction, but without giving us the syllogistic forms, would do nothing for us. So in the case of this omission, if it is to be elevated to a sin, I think it is venial.
J
________________________________________
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Eduardo Corte-Real [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Saturday, August 31, 2013 4:07 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Design Thinking Unique to Design?
Hi Jude, Ken,
Thanks for your notes. I had prefered that you would address the second part of my post and not the first, but let's do it.
I do not travel with my copy of Sciences of the Artificial but I think that HS "definition" of design starts with the sentence: " Not only engineers design". By saying this and not saying for instance "not only designers design" and by not including schools of design in the list in the end of the paragraph, puts Simon argumentation on a side that not engulfs Design. If you read the whole book you will find that the sciences of the artificial are really the sciences of the artificial which in a simplistic way I will simply designate as scientific methods to project stuff.
The distintction between hard sciences and professional training and the prevalence of the first in university that HS complaints about is never confronted with Design as discipline of Art in a broad sense except in the riesling and cigar episode. Plus, I think that what HS calls "intellectual activity" is the kind of processes that we use to play sudoku and not the activity of reading Proust or watching Visconti. If you care to take a look at the authors he refers to we could hardly say that the sciences of the artificial is a book on Design. But yet it is a book on a human capacity that English speakers also call design. Although Francisco d' Hollanda in 1540's put in Michelangelo's mouth that desegno is the source of all sciences, it would be ridiculous to say in Portugese: "um medico faz design" or "as escolas de arquitectura, educacao, gestao, direito e medicina estao na sua essencia dedicadas ao processo do design". I'm only saying this to stress that the word Design that become global is the same that you (in English) use to designate specific professions ( that isolated normally means either graphic or product Design) or some attributes in some objects.
So in that sense saying tha t all professions design is not helping to answer the question is design thinking unique to Design ? because do not inquires about the nature of design thinking that only designers use. In a sense is similar to say that all professions think.
As for the confusion with Europeans i'll re write Ford's sentence adapted to the situation:
> "Some of us on this List, of course, especially Z and X, have always considered imaginative designers to be intellectuals (something self-proclaimed design scientists find puzzling, sometimes intimidating). The route to Design greatness with some large exceptions still nominally requires erudition, a familiarity with history and the achievements of the ancients".
Best,
eduardo
Iade-u, lisboa
Enviado via iPad
Em 30/08/2013, ās 15:16, "CHUA Soo Meng Jude (PLS)" <[log in to unmask]> escreveu:
> This is most definitely what Simon was not saying, Eduardo. He says that the core of all professional activity is design, not that designers are not professionals who design. Of course designers design and is according to Simon,s bifurcation between the anslytic sciences and the professions, a pofesional activity centrally. But not just professional designers or engineers design, instead, professionals in other fields typically not called designers, or enginners also design. If hving defined design in the way he did, hiw would your European designers be excluded? And the Sciiences of the artifical was an exploration into the common thing , if there be such a thing, called design across all these professional fields. I think we need to discard not Simon,s definition, but your wrong attributions to him.
> J
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Eduardo Corte-Real [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Friday, August 30, 2013 4:40 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Design Thinking Unique to Design?
>
> Hi, from the sunny hills of eastern algarve far away from my office, i will give a very limited contribution for the ongoing debate.
> Let's get back to Simon's definition of design which, i think, is one of the causes of all these problems. He writes: (i'm quoting from heart or maybe from another gut) "not only engineers design. Everyone, etc courses of action bla, bla and then lists a few professions that use design from which Design is excluded. So, in HS' s Sciences of the Artificial, this is a issue (design thinking) between engineers and the rest of all professions with one exception: designers. The text is still the same in the fourth edition so it seems that Simon deliberatly forgot to include designers among the professionals that design even in the late 20th century. Having in his live passed through Chicago, one would expect that HS would at least give some credit to the New Bauhaus but the only mention to Design by designers (apart from urban planning) in the book, is an interesting conversation with Mies Van der Rohe about cigars and riesling wine...
> So I would discard HS definition, it comes from someone that is either ignorant of what design is socially and historicaly or deliberatly choses to ignore it.
> Also because of this:
> "Europeans, of course, especially Germans and French, have always considered imaginative writers to be intellectuals (something we Americans find puzzling, sometimes intimidating). The route to European literary greatness with some large exceptions still nominally requires erudition, a familiarity with history and the achievements of the ancients".
> Richard Ford's introduction to "the granta book of the american long story", 1998.
> Why to I find pertinent this quotation?
> First because that's the book I'm reading. Secondly. Because someone compared writting with design. thirdly because if you substitute European for Some of us, and Germans and French for this person and that person, and writers for designers, european literary greatness by Design uniqueness, you will have a very good depiction of this discussions.
> One of the reasons higher education on design is important is that you have to READ Design for a few years. By reading Design, I mean to acknowledge its history and its intellectual dimension during the period of your live when you are suposed to learn things in a socially organised manner.
> Thus, a designer educated as such is someone not only tchnically prepared to be responsible for some projects by also someone who has been prepared to be part of a genealogy of social ontology discrete from others that was legitimated by time.
> Part of this discretion runs on Drawing but discussing this will make this post longer than the Lord of Vcations will allow.
> Also from Literature, for the ones interested in academia, i sugest the reading of "Stoner" by John williams.
> Cheers from vacations time
> Eduardo
>
> eduardo corte-real
> IADE - U , lisbon, portugal
>
>
> Someone compared
>
> Enviado via iPad
>
> Em 23/08/2013, ās 08:28, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> escreveu:
>
>> Hi Gavin,
>> How about one stage further? How about a presentation to the Pope to create
>> a religious order of designers? Vows and all...
>> The colour of the vestments should be ok :-)
>> All the best,
>> Terry
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
>> research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Gavin
>> O'Brien
>> Sent: Friday, 23 August 2013 2:05 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Design Thinking Unique to Design?
>>
>> Wow!
>> Lets extend that a little further and separate the grain from the chaff.
>> A profession of Epistemologically Valid Designers.
>> Over to you Terry,
>> best wishes,
>> Gavin
>>
>>
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