Dear Terry,
Having just replied, I will treat this as a footnote to my two earlier replies.
You made an empirical truth claim. Empirical truth claims require evidence from the world outside your own mind. You cannot resolve empirical truth claims with analysis and reasoning alone. You often talk about how things are “in reality” — how things are in the world. You’ve used the phrase in 134 posts to this list, and similar phrases on other occasions. This means that you are reasoning about something other than your own thoughts. You are reasoning about a state of affairs in the world — in reality.
Your recollections of undergraduate work may be mistaken. The argument that your claims are commonplace in other fields is equally troubling. If these issues are common in other fields, show us. Your truth claims involve physics, optics, psychology, and psychophysics. You don’t do research in those fields. You don’t even teach physics, optics, psychology, or psychophysics. What, then, is the basis for your truth claims?
Without evidence, it is difficult therefore to assess the implications of your claims for graphic design, communication design, interaction design, and human-computer interaction, or for design theory or practice.
A theory may derive from other theories. Nevertheless, any theory that says something about the world requires a foundation in empirical evidence. If not, all we have is imaginary theories of angels dancing on their pins. These theories can make theoretical sense, but they say nothing about reality.
If you can draw sound conclusions about reality based on analysis and reasoning alone, do it. Show us. You don’t need to publish your work in a design journal. Publish it in a peer-reviewed journal for physics, optics, psychology, psychophysics, or engineering. I’d accept a serious peer-reviewed article as evidence of serious work. Right now, you are dancing with the angels.
It may be that you can develop a coherent, self-sufficient hypothetico-deductive theory system that doesn’t intersect with the world of empirical facts. If so, it will be the equivalent of a proof that hell is exothermic. It will have no bearing on the world of design theory and it can make no contribution to the world of design practice. Physicists and psychologists develop and use theories of their own for optics, psychophysics, and colour.
Rather than become grumpy, I prefer to withdraw from this thread.
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
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
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Terry Love wrote:
—snip—
I suggest it doesn't require ANY empirical work. Rather it involves careful analysis and reasoning about the nature of particular theory types and their predictive behaviours and limitations.
The territory is well travelled - but not yet in Design.
The issues I raised that you refer to below are background, setting the scene rather than items to be proven or not. They are already well established issues.
—snip—
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