Dear Terry – and Fellow List Members,

Thanks, Terry, for an interesting and profound set of questions. Fellow list members, this is a post about epistemology and a theory of knowledge. I believe these issues ultimately touch on many questions concerning research – and how we engage in research about, for, and within a field of professional practice such as design. At the end of the post I will provide two papers, one specific about design knowledge, the other about knowledge for and within professional practice as examples of my thoughts on these issues. Nevertheless, this specific reply to Terry is not specifically about design or about doctoral education.

Sorting these issues requires some time and thought. Give me a couple days and I will respond in depth. For now, I offer a very short preliminary reply in roughly 900 words.

My immediate response is to say that reading your questions immediately clarifies for me an issue that was partly implicit in my earlier notes.

As careful as I tried to be, I was nevertheless using the word knowledge in two different ways in speaking about “subjective knowledge” and “objective knowledge.”

Finding the right language for a responsible answer to your question will take me some time. I will try to describe my initial thoughts about an answer in a provisional way:

All knowledge is to some degree subjective in that all knowledge is a property of a knowing agent, and all knowledge is known from within the hermeneutical horizon and life world of the knowing agent. Knowledge is what knowing agents know. What I refer to as facts or data exist in the empirical world. Data structured, organized, and recorded for use by knowing agents is information. Books, computers, and other information systems contain information – they do not contain knowledge. When a knowing agent records what he or she knows, it ceases to be knowledge, and rather becomes information – structured data about what a knowing agent knows. Whatever the subject of that data may be, it is a representation of knowledge that is not knowledge in itself.

That which knowing agents know may in a sense be [subjective knowledge of things to be known that can and must be known through subjectivity] or [subjective knowledge of things to be known that may and should be known through information and data about objective matters].

These descriptions are not quite right, but they point in the directions I intend. I’ve struggled with these issues on and off over the years.

In responding to Terry’s post with respect to mathematical representations, I will probably say something along these lines:

Mathematics constitutes a state of abstract representations. Mathematics is conventional. Nearly all who use mathematics subscribe to a common set of conventions about mathematics and the properties of mathematical operations. When mathematicians propose new forms of mathematics, they explicitly state the properties of those new forms and those who use these new forms of mathematics agree to them by postulate. Historical examples of such forms of mathematics include non-Euclidean geometries or special forms of set theory.

By agreeing to common conventions and postulates, those who use mathematics reduce the interpretive and hermeneutical requirements of their lifeworld within the framework of that which they express. That is, neither personal experience nor personal expression plays a significant role in a mathematical abstraction, and personal experience and expression play an insignificant role in interpreting mathematical expressions.

It must be stated that personal experience is significant in learning to use and understand mathematics, and it is clear that personal experience and expression give some people a greater feel for mathematical expression than others may have.

In my view, however, there is a difference the fusion of hermeneutical horizons that we require in working with [subjective knowledge of things to be known that can and must be known through subjectivity] as against working with [subjective knowledge of things to be known that may and should be known through information and data about objective matters].

One kind of hermeneutical encounter takes place in such acts as understanding history, translating classical Greek tragedy into modern English, or interpreting the social world of a painting.

Another kind takes place in working with mathematical representations. I imagine this as a contact where two hermeneutical horizons meet at only one point to transact information. There is no need for greater communicative contact because each of the knowing agents has an internalized life world within which he or she has developed and learned to work with the systems and postulates represented in mathematical form.

What does this mathematical form say, and what does it mean? That is the deep issue of your three questions.

In other contexts, I’ve mentioned Reuben Hersh’s (1999) book, a book addressing the philosophy of mathematics. This particularly involves the question of whether we create mathematics or whether mathematics is a property of the universe we describe when we use mathematics. I will attempt to address these issues when I respond.

For now, let me think.

And for those who are interesting in my approach to writing on knowledge, I have posted two papers to my Academia page at:

http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman

These are

Friedman. 2000. Design Knowledge: Context, Content, Continuity.

Friedman & Olaisen. 1999. Knowledge Management.

While the knowledge management is not about design, Johan Olaisen and I specifically discuss forms of situated knowledge that apply to professional practices of all kinds.

You will find these papers at the bottom of the first section, “Papers.”

Yours,

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | University email [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Private email [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830 462 | Academia Page http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman

Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Adjunct Professor | School of Creative Arts | James Cook University | Townsville, Australia

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References

Hersh, Reuben. 1999. What is Mathematics, Really? New York: Oxford University Press.

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Terry Love wrote:

—snip—

Great post. Many thanks. I enjoyed reading your analysis and discussion of hermeneutics and the post before.

I would be interested in how you, or anyone else, sees that your explanation of subjective and objective knowledge and understanding extends, differs or is transformed when the language of representation and shared communication is mathematics rather than conventional spoken language.

Many of us see the world via the perspective of formal symbolic mathematical representation rather than spoken language.

Three interesting things that differ about when maths is used as language for understanding the world are: the use of formally exact representation (where necessary increasing the level of abstraction to ensure precision); focus on abstraction and meta-abstraction of characteristics of situations, experience and understanding; and, the ready ability of mathematical language to extend perception, knowledge and representation of that which is perceived beyond experiences (e.g. going beyond 4 dimensions).

—snip—




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