Dear Terry,
Your post to Klaus requires a correction with respect to my views.
In your note to Klaus, you wrote, “… Ken's position is positivist, as seen by his view on evidence.” Your note to me speaks of my "positivist way of seeing the world."
This is incorrect.
If you understood my sources, you would recognise the influence of symbolic interactionism and pragmatism in my approach, with a healthy dose of Polanyi and others.
Yes, I call for evidence. I also understand the role of interpretation and the theoretical presuppositions in shaping the way we understand evidence. There is a relationship between evidence, models, and robust theory. To call for evidence is not to be a positivist in the trivial sense that you seem to have adopted.
Do you seriously believe that the intellectual traditions of Mead, Dewey, Blumer, Berger and Luckmann, or Polanyi are positivist?
When I started my PhD in 1973, it was considered important to understand the philosophy of science. This was a decade and a half after the first edition of Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge and four decades after Mead’s Mind, Self, and Society. (I first read Mead a decade earlier.) While positivism did had not yet taken on the political spin that it acquired in some circles, I understood already that I was not a positivist. Understanding these words and what they mean is useful if you want to discuss positions in a meaningful way. Your description of my position on theory is mistaken. I have published my views on theory and how to build it. It’s easy enough to read what I have written.
The fact that I assert the value of evidence does not make me a positivist. It makes me someone who wants to see whether or not my ideas function in the real world of human affairs — the world where designers work.
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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