[1167 words]

some theories of theory, and other thoughts and interventions, occasioned
by this discussion (which I'm enjoying though I can barely keep up with
it!):

1. from the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1968) entry re theory:

theoria [or rather its ancient Greek equivalent] originally meant viewing,
a sight, spectacle.
'Theorie without Practice will serve but for little.' 1692.
'Were a theory open to no objection it would cease to be a theory and would
become a law.' 1850.

2. from Joseph Conrad in a letter to Edward Garnett, 1895 (quoted by Utopia
in the 1992 edition of 'Design methods', now published by Wiley, New York):


'Theory is the cold and lying tombstone of departed truth ... But he was
right says Utopia and then she pales as she perceives that any assertion
about theory can be seen as theory too. We are all vulnerable she adds as
she sits down on the nearest tombstone.'

3. I do not believe that it is possible to describe designing, let alone to
explain it, for that would be to describe or explain ourselves, and hence
everything (as we are a consequence of everything and a, or the, source of
such notions as theory, description, design and  everything). I prefer to
speak of methods, not methodology, and of mnemonics and rules of thumb and
of navigation. I avoid speaking of design research as a theoretical science
or as an explanation. I believe that the objective (or detached) method of
experimental science cannot be applied to people without contradiction as
it does not include self-awareness and does not admit that ideas,
perceptions (and science itself) are themselves both realities and
constructions. As was the stone kicked by Dr Samuel Johnson, was it not?.
And as is literature.

4. When reading the discussion on scientific theory versus critical theory
(much helped by Anthony Dunne's quoting Geuss to point out that, whereas
scientific theories are intended for manipulation of the external world,
critical theories are intended to make one aware of hidden coercion) I
realised that I prefer theories to be neither scientific nor critical but
constructive; i.e. useful in imaginative collective action. To me a theory
that is not practical is mistaken and theories of design that make no
mention of imagination seem unlikely to lead to things new.

5. I have always disliked frames of reference when they are taken to define
boundaries to thinking and doing. However, I heard recently of some
research showing that only a small minority of people like to work without
boundaries - perhaps the majority find them necessary for peace of mind?
But I can't see that as a fit state of mind when you are trying to make
something new. You need to be dissatisfied with things as they are, and
hence with existing boundaries. Theories also. I imagine that the liking
for boundaries is temporary - something that can disappear as people get
used to new powers and new freedoms (such as are described in the posting
from Wolfgang Jonas (07/08/99, putting us all into the role of jesters!).

6. The defining of variables, meanings and values at the start of a design
process, and treating them thereafter as fixed, seems to me to be creative
death. I usually begin a lecture on designing with the mnemonic p=s (with a
two-way arrow as in a reversible chemical reaction) by which mean that
'problem' and 'solution' (if we must use such terms) are interdependent.
One of the aims of designing is I believe to find designs which can change
our perceptions (and hence our 'needs') and thus make 'problems' vanish and
allow new possibilities to arise.

7. The designing 'in other fields'* from which this discussion began is now
I believe the primary field of design as computing (and other
microtechnologies) show the new possibilities of artefacts that are not
specialised but adaptable, and hence enable us to give up specialisation
(induced by adaptation to mechanical technology) and to recover our
biological adaptiveness. I believe that the design methods movement was
(and I hope still is?) one of the one of the sources of this widening and
demechanising of life.

8. However, after listing these complaints against rigid theory, I admit
that it is essential to have a language in which it is possible to discuss
designing while doing it, especially when designing things that are beyond
the competence of the specialised professions, even when working as teams
of specialists (who will often be either unable to understand each other or
else be unaware that they do not - see B N Lewis' paper in Conference on
Design Methods, Pergamon, Oxford 1963) . But this language should I believe
be less and less like scientific theory and more and more like fiction,
poetry, colloquial speech and direct democracy, in which people can be
political and/or divine presences, not just consumers or specialists or
instruments.

9. I have recently come to believe that the presence of the internet, and
the possibility of discussions like this, is one of the means by which
'designing in other fields' (or as I prefer to call it 'the collective
redesigning everything') can come about. I am have recently completed a
book ('the internet and everyone', ellipsis London, forthcoming) in which
this view is explored. It is, I suppose, a view of designing as politics,
or as a way of life. 'Design without a product', as I once found myself
calling it, as an end in itself.


And now unexpectedly the ghost of my Aunt Elizabeth reports that she is
delighted with the celestial wheelchair which she has designed herself with
the aid of a website for constructive action at which she learnt how to do
it. It's so comfortable and convenient that she still uses it in Heaven
though her ailment has gone.

Thank goodness for good theories, she adds, with a wink at her nephew, I
always knew you were a theorist. And there's no need to fear death, nor the
universe - they are doors to the unbounded from whence we all came.

But do remember that all you can do while alive is to 'move muscles' says
Charles Sherrington** (from Heaven also, where that miracle's not
possible)...


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*Re-reading the email in which Dr Terence Love began the discussion, I got
the impression that he thinks  of design research not as academic
description of what designers do now but as something that helps people to
design 'in other fields', as he put it. And that, it seems to me, is what
is needed (and by 'people' I mean everyone).

**Sir Charles Sherrington, 'The integrative action of the nervous system',
New haven, Yale University Press, 1947.

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(c) 1999 john chris jones
You may transmit this text to anyone for any non-commercial purpose if you
include the copyright line and this sentence. It may appear also at my
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