Dear Terry,

Your reply seems to be an analysis of my motives and my personal psychology, rather than a response to my reply. I’m not taking umbrage — earlier, I answered your question, and in my latest response, I addressed the issues. In my three posts, I explained why these kinds of concerns are vital for nearly all professions that work with human beings.

While I agree that the theory of hand washing stands or falls independent of history, you are mistaken about the practice. Physicians who are aware of the history are more likely to understand in human terms why the practice is important. Absent that understanding, this is likely to be yet another piece of information. This is the case with many aspects of professional practice, and for this reason, many physicians grow lax with hand-washing and fail to wash their hands between every patient contact and the next.

The history that you seem to think is not important involves more than the history of Semmelweiss, Lister, and Pasteur. It also involves recent history and case studies that demonstrate the vital importance of routine hygienic measures in hospitals today — including the clear contemporary record of increasing iatrogenic illness spread by physicians who do not attend rigorously to hand washing. That is the kind of recent history in case studies that I mentioned, both the slightly surprising but significant comparison of germs spread by physicians who wear ties as against physicians who do not and the far more serious record of disease that grows dramatically in hospitals that fail to enforce uniform hand washing regimes.

Sound theory requires robust models. These models are often independent of context and subjectivity. The people who work with these nevertheless require context and subjective understanding to put sound theory to work. The fact that antiseptic hygiene reduces infection is independent of context and subjectivity. Getting the human beings who work in hospitals to wash their hands as they should do depends on context, on the subject awareness of how important this fact is, and the very human narrative that leads to emotional awareness, empathy, and action.

You’ve asked three new questions. 1) Would design education be better or worse for it in terms of producing innovative useful designs? 2) How would design education look if you removed all aspects of history from all the subjects in which it has any role? 3) What would a subject of Design Studies look like? Without answering new questions in full, I will sketch a quick outline of the answers. 

1) Would design education be better or worse for it in terms of producing innovative useful designs?  

Innovation theory explains why you cannot imagine serious innovation without a repertoire of contextual ideas and information that come from experience and history. The same holds true for design. One issue that distinguishes the mastery of expert designers from novices is a massive repertoire of personal experience, that is individual history; another is a massive repertoire of the understanding of what others have done, how, and why, and the degrees and ways in which their efforts involved success and failure. Much of the work of such engineers as Henry Petroski and Louis Bucciarelli involves analysing these issues to demonstrate what we can learn from this aspect of history. One requires context to innovate. History provides context.

2) How would design education look if you removed all aspects of history from all the subjects in which it has any role?

This puts me in mind of the character of Marvin the Martian in the old Warner Brothers’ Loony Tunes series created by animator Chuck Jones. For those who don’t remember the series, Marvin the Martian would appear from time to time co-starring with Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, or the other regulars. He was a kind of imaginary foil for hypertrophied ideas of science in a futuristic world that could probably never exist. Of course, Daffy and Bugs weren’t real either, but they were realistic and down-to-earth compared with Marvin the Martian. Design education from which all aspects of history were removed from any subject in which it has any role can only be imagined as a cartoon or a caricature. If you can imagine it, Terry, go ahead and tell us what it would look like. Describe the courses and the curriculum if you can.   

3) What would a subject of Design Studies look like?

You can simply use the table of contents of the Clark and Brady book that I posted yesterday. Read the chapter titles first — get the book if you have time. Then remove the design history chapters to focus on the chapters that deal with anthropology, sociology, psychology, social psychology, urban studies, architecture, education, design thinking, systems studies, knowledge management, economics, industrial ecology, design, design theory, and engineering. It would probably look a little like that.

But innovation theory and economics show us why it doesn’t work without history. 

In my view, however, there is no point answering your new questions. You haven’t taken the replies to your earlier question seriously — you’ve responded by flattering Stephen without responding, and you’ve offered an armchair analysis of my motives and what you assert to be my prejudices based on proprietary interests.

I have no “skin in the game” with respect to history. I am not an historian. I understand the value and uses of history in the rich context of a comprehensive design education.

It seems to me that you are interested in dealing with design problems that we can reduce to algorithms. You seem to suggest that we will design better and more effectively by avoiding or eliminating issues that involve ambiguity, experience, rhetoric, and emotion. These leaves out nearly anything that involves designing for human beings. 

While I understand that you mis-read something that you mistakenly took for an “over-arching assumption,” I responded to the mistake in my earlier posts. From here on, this would be a case of repetition. 

In one cartoon, Marvin the Martian imagines that human beings are a new kind of insect. You seem to imagine that you are like the pseudonymous author of Søren Kierkegaard’s book, Repetition. He says that he has “trained [himself] every day for years to have only an objective theoretical interest in people” (Kierkegaard 1983 [1843]: 180)

This is where we generally spiral off into an annoying exchange in which you explain to me why I am misguided due to biases and prejudices arising from the notion that I have “skin in the game” of whatever you imagine the game to be. In contrast, you are a disinterested observer who  comes to all debates with "only an objective theoretical interest.” In this case, you also explain that I am practicing a discourse “trick,” while you knows better … as an objective, theoretical observer.   

At this point, I will withdraw from the debate. Kierkegaard’s Constantin Constantius can do better than I can. Or perhaps Jones’s Marvin the Martian is the best objective, theoretical character for the job. 

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Elsevier in Cooperation with Tongji University Press | Launching in 2015

Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia

—

References

Clark, Hazel, and David Brody. 2009. Design Studies. A Reader. London: Berg Publishers.

Kierkegaard, Søren. 1983 (1843). Fear and Trembling / Repetition. Kierkegaard’s Writing, Vol. VI. Edited and Translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. [Repetition was originally titled: Repetition: A Venture in Experimenting Psychology by Constantin Constantius.]

--

> On 2015Apr09, at 15:31, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

—snip—

> I think you are taking umbrage by mistake.  I understand the issue is one in which people have personal investment and subjective interests.  A role of research questions, however is to try to find out things that go beyond subjective interests.
> 
> I'm asking a simple question - perhaps not as well as I might have asked it  - and the question is reasonably radically challenging for design education (in the sense of focusing on its roots and asking whether they are correct).
> 
> Stephen's answer was beautifully phrased. I've admired Stephen's lucidity and eloquence elsewhere for example in his involvement in systems.
> 
> I look forward to read Stephen's comments on what I wrote. In the meantime, I'll try to respond to yours.
> 
> Perhaps I did not make it clear enough that what I was reading in Stephen's post was an over-arching assumption in almost all parts of the post that the way to teach design was in terms of history.
> 
> It occurs for example in:
> The use of the course title 'Modern Design Theory'  - That design theory is defined in historical terms (i.e  in terms of  the 'Modern' era)
> The idea that Modernism is an important part of design theory
> The idea that design and theory have to be described in terms of history of design activity.
> That half of a course on design theory is on historical context of a long time ago, and the other half is on issues that present a recent historical context.
> Stephen's  claim that design theory (as is regarded in terms of student's ability to understand and use design theory) is defined in terms of zeitgeist (' the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history')
> 
> (Note: A similar analysis also applies to your earlier post comments about the content of the Design Studies Reader)
> 
> This permeation through the discourse  in a small number of design fields of the assumption that teaching history of design is central to teaching design seems odd from the perspective of other design fields.
> 
> This pervasive and apparently almost overlooked focus on history in most or all aspects of some design fields seems especially odd when compared  to the idea that sound theory and the findings of research are as much as possible independent of subjective interpretation and historical context.  
> 
> I suggest yours and Stephen's posts also illustrate a discourse 'trick' that hides the pervasive investment in the historical lens in some fields of design. The approach is to overlook that most issues are viewed through a history lens and to divide the issues into two groups of which one (typically the smaller) is publically acknowledged to have a historical bent and labelled so as 'history issues' . The other group of items,  regardless of their fundamentally historical basis, are labelled something differently. This approach gives the illusion that only part is 'history issues'.  Some explanations of the underpinning reasons for this are described  by David Walsh in The Monthly as 'Skin in the Game' https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2015/february/1422709200/david-walsh/skin-game  (Worth a read perhaps)
> 
> On a different tack, to use your example: the finding that 'doctor's washing their hands saves lives' (and the theory underpinning it) is of value that is completely independent of any historical information. To teach professionals about how to wash their hands to avoid spread of disease or the theory of how microbes are transferred  requires no historical information and no reference to history. The finding and the theory stand by themselves - they either work or they don't. 
> 
> Design is a similar practical professional practice  to hand washing doctors  (at least for those who would argue for using 'clinical research' as a category of design research). Design theory and research findings can stand by themselves - independent of any historical information. 
> 
> So.... why are some design fields so obsessed with teaching design through lenses of history in the manner of Art? From this angle its looking like Design Studies isn't about the practical theories and research findings independent of history, rather it appears that the insistence on a pervasive use of a history  lens (for even very recent history) means that  design issues are always in effect design history issues.
> 
> Another collection of serious questions:
> 
> How would design education look if you removed all aspects of history from all the subjects in which it has any role?
> 
> Would design education be better or worse for it in terms of producing innovative useful designs?
> 
> What would a subject of Design Studies look like?

—snip—


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