Theories of design?

Bruce Moon's rejoinder occasions a response on three issues. These issues are,

1) A matter of debating style
2) Naturwissenschaft and Geisteswissenschaft
3) Four topical notes.

Serious, compact questions occasion serious response. If one takes an issue
seriously enough to respond, it's generally interesting to respond
carefully. To the degree that we consider this a serious colloquium, our
responses can also serve as the core of material to be developed further.
Serous questions deserve serious answers. If these seem too long, scroll on
by.


1) A matter of debating style

The matter of style is simple. Bruce labels those with whom he doesn't
agree as positivists. This kind of unexplained label leads to the positions
without discourse that make so much design dialogue fruitless.

Bruce wrote a post packed with assertions. I unpacked them and responded.
Bruce's dislike for Herbert Simon was a matter of personal taste. However
misinformed his view of Simon's positions, taste is taste. I expected no
answer to the proposal that designers often misunderstand Simon.

The matters of theory and Kuhn's views had another meaning. Specifically,
Bruce asserted that my views on theory were laden with incorrect
assumptions. He offered the views of a renowned expert on the history and
philosophy of science to support the notion that my view of theory was
inappropriate. These assertions were not questions and may not have called
for an answer. I chose to answer. Call it professional pride.

My note used the term theory as it is used in English. There were no
assumptions, positivist or otherwise in the way the term was used. Kuhn
himself specifically contradicts Bruce's view of what Kuhn wrote. I didn't
want to leave the issue open.

Beyond this, Bruce asked seven specific questions. Some are important.
These questions were:

(1) "Is theory a true portrayal of the physical world, or the extension of
some (abstract) belief system?" (2) "While mental reflection is a set of
actions, how can one theorize about [good] mental reflection?" (3) "Is it
possible to be able to theorize about mental reflection? That is, can
something that cannot be empirically analyzed be the subject of theory?"
(4) "Is the term 'good' an objective reference point for evaluation? That
is Šcan 'good' be applied in some consistent manner such that a universal
theory can be developed?" (5) "This issue relates to what constitutes
theory. Is it a tool bound only to descriptions of actions undertaken in
the material world? Or does it also embrace descriptions of actions
undertaken in the social world?" (6) "And, if the latter are included, what
constitutional boundaries ought be erected. Š That is, are theories about
social actions limited to generalizations about human action, or can
individual experience/s be theorized?" (7) "How can this issue of belief be
factored into a theory about design?"

Normally, a question calls for an answer. This is a debate, however, and
Bruce took the role of my opponent with a rebuttal and a challenge to my
views.

Debaters sometimes ask rhetorical questions hoping to win points when their
opponents can't answer. That's not the case here. I could answer and I did.
I offered thorough answers to questions 2, 3, 5, and 6. I indicated the
complexity of question 1. Question 4 was irrelevant. I didn't deal with
question 7, either. It is a profound and difficult question. As Bruce
wrote, "If, and when, this is solved, please advise everyone in the
academic community." I will, and I will inform those who are patient enough
to read the explanations that complex questions sometimes occasion.

Bruce Moon's response suggests that he doesn't want the explanations his
questions require. Rather, his last post suggests that giving a substantive
reply to what I accepted as substantive questions proves that I am a
positivist and a structuralist. On that basis, he states that no further
comment is needed.

I am in some regards a structuralist. I do not accept the notion that I am
a positivist. These sorts of labels seem silly. They raise the heat of what
in most regards is an interesting and important debate on significant
issues. The label is an attempt to render ideas invalid without addressing
their substance.

When I was a kid, some of the other kids in the neighborhood used to argue
against each other with assertions such as: "He doesn't know what he's
talking about. He's [Portuguese] [German] [Irish] [Catholic] [Jewish]
[Methodist]." In this case, Bruce is mistakenly labeling me a positivist
and waving a dismissive hand in the air as though the matter is thereby
settled.

That might be acceptable among designers who believe that those of us
interested in research and theory are fools. It's not the kind of position
I'd expect in this forum. DRS is a place to explore questions of design
research and design theory.

My model of good discourse suggests that we grow and learn by exchanging
ideas. Internet technology makes it possible for us to interact through an
ongoing series of transactions that makes it possible for all of us to
participate in the growth of the fields that interest us. I am disappointed
to be dismissed specifically because I took Bruce's questions seriously.


2) Naturwissenschaft and Geisteswissenschaft

The concept of "Verstehen," or understanding, is anchored in Wilhelm
Dilthey's hermeneutics. Dilthey developed a distinction between
Naturwissenschaft, the natural sciences, and Geisteswissenschaft, the
cultural or human sciences. The term "Verstehen" is a German word that
means "understanding." It is not a synonym for the theory of action. [This
clarification refers to the recent post that states: "In fact, the 'theory
of action' or VERSTEHEN (using the Germanic term)"] Even so, it bears on
design theory in important ways.

Dilthey, a central figure in the development of hermeneutics, asserted a
distinction between the natural sciences and the human sciences. The human
sciences at the beginning of Dilthey's work included such fields as
philosophy, history, psychology, and philology. By the end of his life,
such fields as sociology had emerged. The human sciences are sciences of
meaning, and Dilthey therefore contrasted the need for understanding in
these sciences to the need for causal explanation characteristic of natural
science. At the same time, Dilthey saw the field of Geisteswissenschaft as
scientific, that is, as a field that would allow of systematic organization
and broad theoretical perspectives. In opposing the positivist philosophy,
he did not assert that positivism was wrong or bad in a moral sense, but
merely that it was not applicable to the human sciences. Rather than
explanation, he sought interpretive understanding.

Dilthey saw "Verstehen" as a process of inference, learning the internal
constitution of a subject or an object based on interpreting its external
signs. Causal explanation, especially as it was in his era, could not
afford access to the rich inner life of the cultural and human phenomena he
wished to understand. In essence, the argument is that to explain the human
world in a large and meaningful sense requires understanding. This was also
Weber's view.

To speak of understanding in the human sciences is not to speak of empathy
or emotionalism. Rather, it means understanding meanings, values and
motives. It means understanding the internal and experiential world of
those whom one seeks to understand.

Dilthey advanced a new interpretive method for the cultural sciences, the
humanities, and the human sciences, the social and behavioral sciences,
precisely to place them on a richer and more substantial footing. He did
not propose linking them to action without theory, nor did he propose
deriving theory solely from action without interpretation or reflection. If
one uses the term "Verstehen," one must clearly recognize that reflection
and therefore theorizing are part of the process of action.

This, by the way, is precisely the method used in Herbert Blumer's symbolic
interactionist perspective. It would be too long a case to discuss here,
but those interested in a methodological approach to the description of
human action based on phenomenological, heterodox, and qualitative
procedures will find Blumer's writings particularly interesting. Blumer's
classic book - >Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method< - is still
in print from University of California Press.

All of these thinkers are structuralist without being positivist.

One of the difficulties in understanding design is that it is an
integrative practice and a field of study anchored in four frames. Without
repeating the comprehensive argument I offer elsewhere, I see design as a
field that engages and involves different aspects of four fields we
normally see as distinct or separate. These are 1) natural science, 2)
technology, 3) social science, 4) the arts.

The challenge of working in a field that rests on a wide range of
knowledges demands a richer kind of thinking and theorizing than has
previously characterized the practice of design. I assert that this
practice must be anchored in a richer body of thought to be effective. It
may or may not be the case that this body of thought requires research or
theorizing. In design, as in many fields of practice, one can simply get on
with things and muddle through. It doesn't seem to work well, but it does
seem to work well enough to permit some forms of design practice. Even when
it works, muddling through without reflection is not the tradition of
"Verstehen."

We cannot know is how Dilthey would have responded to a world in which new
advances in natural science shed important light on the human sciences. The
emerging sciences of complexity and the perspective of consilience both
suggest a spectrum of knowledges that range from the most reductive,
positive science on one extreme to the most evanescent and indescribably
feelingful of the arts on the other. The sheer abundance of new discoveries
and the technologies that make them possible were unknown to Dilthey. Some
of them were equally unknown to Einstein or to Feynman. Perhaps a scholar
as widely read and broadly informed as Dilthey would adjust his philosophy
to account for these new phenomena. I like to think so.

the skilled designer of the future will be a practitioner and a theorist
both. Planning and executing artifacts and processes in today's complex
environment requires understanding anchored in a wide range of knowledges
and many kinds of intuition. Simply to muddle through as a fabricator or
applicationist will no longer do the job. On this, even Dilthey would
surely agree.


3) Four topical notes


Note 1: A valid and useful idea remains valid and useful without regard to
the identity of its author.

Several participants in this debate have been sharing off-list notes with
me to request references or to suggest ideas. One note raised an important
issue that I hadn't made clear.

I have adopted a specific idea raised by Herbert Simon. That doesn't mean I
agree with Simon in all things. I respect and admire Herbert Simon. Even if
I didn't, I'd be free to use a good idea.

Let's propose - just for the sake of argument -- that Herbert Simon really
were the rip-snortin', macho-man, Crocodile Dundee kind of positivist that
Bruce Moon seems to think he is, hell-bent on a Rodney Ansell style
shoot-out with post-structuralist philosophy. Moreover, let's say that he
had written 48 volumes of collected works containing over 15,000,000 words
of pure rubbish. In addition, let's say that somewhere in this mountain of
rubbish, I were to stumble on two or three ideas that seemed valid and
useful. Wouldn't I be free to use them?

Given the politics of science, perhaps I'd be wise to paraphrase rather
than to quote. On the other hand, wouldn't justice demand an
acknowledgement?

Perhaps I might hesitate to quote Benito Mussolini or Count Dracula or the
other grand Ayatollahs of positivism. Given the fact that Herbert Simon
isn't a dictator or a vampire, and given the fact that he hasn't written 48
volumes of nonsense, I don't see what's wrong with adapting Simon's valid
and useful idea to the purposes of our discussion.


Note 2: An explanation or summary is useful if a position is to be made clear.

Most of the participants in this debate have explained their views or
summarized the positions they assert. I'm interested in what William
Outhwaite has to say. Most of us haven't read this article. It has been
offered as a significant perspective that will resolve some of the issues
under discussion here. If Outhwaite's conclusion is, indeed, "extremely
pertinent to this discussion," it seems fair to ask for a summary by
someone who has read the article and offered it as pertinent.


Note 3: Positivism and post-structuralism do not form an opposed polarity.

There are a number of confusions in the contrast of positivism and
post-structuralism as a pair of natural opposites. They can be far better
understood as four positions on what may be a larger matrix.

One four-by-four matrix embracing positivism and structuralism looks like this:



Positivism

Yes			No

Structuralism

Yes 					+P +S -------------ý -P +S

No					+P -S --------------ý -P -S



One can be a structuralist without being a positivist. Dilthey, Weber, and
Blumer are perfect examples of this. One can be a positivist without being
a structuralist. Many instrumentalists are essentially black box
positivists who adopt a positivistic and reductionist methodology without
expecting any form of systemic, structured explanation as a result of their
use of positivist methods. One can obviously be both positivistic and
structuralist: many natural scientists are. And one can be neither
positivist nor structuralist.

But, then, that's a structured explanation.


Note 4: Not all theories or explanations rest simply on belief and not all
beliefs are equally valid.

One issue raised in Bruce Moon's first response is implicit in his second
response. It is appropriate here to address it.

Bruce proposed the notion that theories are merely propositions stating the
belief of the proponent, and suggested that the primary use of theory is as
a form of rhetorical teaching whose purpose is to make the mind supple.
Dealing adequately with theory does enliven the mind and make it supple.
Even so, the notion that one theory is as good as another and that argument
is all that counts is not merely a rhetorical issue. Perhaps this is the
place to answer question seven, at least in a preliminary sense, "How can
this issue of belief be factored into a theory about design?"

If I understand the nature of Bruce's first rebuttal and this later
rejoinder, he seems to identify the post-structuralist position with a
radical social constructionist stance in which all propositions are
considered to be the products of relatively equal contending belief systems.

Radical social constructionism is a misinterpreted elaboration of the title
of classic 1966 work of sociology by Peter L. Berger and Tomas Luckmann
titled >The Social Construction of Reality<.

Like Kuhn, this work is much more widely cited than read. I'd guess the
ratio of citation by those who have never read the book to informed
citation based on reading must now be running 50-to-1.

Berger and Luckmann did not state that all reality is socially constructed.
They stated that social reality is a social construction, and their book is
an analysis of how this construction develops and takes place. As it
happens, a book titled "The Social Construction of Social Reality" would
have seemed redundant. >The Social Construction of Reality< is a more
provocative and sellable title. Who, in 1966, could possibly have imagined
the development of the radical social constructivist viewpoint?

Neither Berger and Luckmann nor anyone else with much sense asserts that
the nature of physical reality rests on our belief systems. The chemical
composition of the sun and its physical functions do not depend on belief,
no matter the debate between Anaxagoras and Parmenides. No mater what
anyone believes, a theory that claims that wood and steel can be used
equally well in tall buildings won't go far in a fourteen-story building
even though wood can be stronger than steel in other applications.

Even those post-structuralists - if that is the correct term - who assert
the strongest version of radical social constructionism recognize the
distinction between belief and reality in some circumstances. Imagine, say,
getting a pay check with the zeroes at the end of the sum missing and being
told by the bursar, "In this organization, we have come to believe that
zeroes are irrelevant. Only the positive digits matter." One can imagine a
post-structuralist faced with this kind of explanation would offer a highly
positive response. Alternatively, imagine ordering a steak, and being
served a block of cardboard by a waiter who declares, "Our chef has
announced the principle that steak and cardboard are metaphorically
equivalent Since the perception of reality is based on metaphor, we are now
serving cardboard. Besides, the roughage is better for you." I'd like to
hear the post-structural response to that.

It is not necessary to raise every case to make the point. Now, I may be
mistaken in confusing the arguments of the first response or this last with
radical social constructivism. After taking the first response seriously
enough to answer the questions, a serious reply might have made things more
clear. If I am mistaken in understanding the relation between belief,
theory, and the description of reality that seems to lie behind the
rejoinder, I will welcome clarification. As it is, some descriptions state
physical reality without recourse to belief.

Samuel Johnson dispensed of this issue 236 years ago give or take a few
weeks due to the change of calendar. On August 6, 1763, he went walking
with his friend Boswell. Boswell was arguing the point that although no one
found George Berkeley's idealism satisfactory, it was impossible to refute
it. In reply, Johnson gave a hearty kick to a nearby stone, saying, "I
refute it thus."

Ken Friedman







%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%