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Dear Derick There is no humility when the two million green and sticky plastic things are in the stores awaiting buyers. That is, there might be humility in designing, but there is none in production or marketing. In talking of the three muses (Memory, Practice, Inspiration), in a paper of mine (Sophia and the Technologists: http://knol.google.com/k/design-scandal-sophia#) I raise the concept of rehearsal as a way of indicating the New Humanities. The paper explores the connections between designing and the traditional humanities. Rehearsal, for me, is the embodiment of humility within the practice of design. An excerpt is given below cheers keith >>>>>> From: http://knol.google.com/k/design-scandal-sophia# Next Muse in line is Practice. If we allow this idea to expand to include rehearsal rather than just doing things over and over then we can see how doing and being can meet in action. The word "rehearse" has a most interesting etymology. A hearse is a rake so that to re-hearse is to re-rake. The Japanese meditation technique of raking makes practice look more like critical thinking. It also makes it look more like a way of being as a knower. That is, there are techniques of being a knower. The seemingly repetitive boredom of the activity of raking and re-raking a bed of sand or pebbles is indicative of reflection: the ideas are structured in an observable form and then they are reformed and reformed. Each reforming points to the origin of forming (being) and to the content formed (doing). Like the 50 year-old observing two aspects of generation from a point of repose, the meditative action of raking looks in two directions without itself becoming an event in either. This process of rehearsal is the major business of the Humanities as a way of being-doing. It both allows for the transmission of a content and for the reforming of that content in the dynamics of being a learner. Knowledge then becomes a process of being a learner. >>> Derek Miller <[log in to unmask]> 03/30/11 10:26 PM >>> Dear Fil, Not a Buddhist, and don't even play one on TV, so I can't answer that. But as for a scientist: Yes! It's identical. Staring at a white board (or black board, if you're old enough) and wondering "how do i answer that? Is that even the right question?" or simply (ala Dr. Suess), "How do we get from here to there, what do we do?" is the nature of the task. This why Tim Brown is wrong is thinking that "creative" thought is inherently different from "analytical" thought, and we need to shift from the latter to the former with "design thinking" to unlock innovation. It's a PR game to build theory around core business competence at IDEO. It is living proof of what we often call the political economy of knowledge. Coming up with an appropriate research design for valid analysis is an INCREDIBLY creative task. And teaching research design is also hard for that reason. We can explain standards, criteria, and grounds for claims (as well as techniques, methods, approaches), but in the end, it requires a stroke of insight to: 1. Drill for ice core in the arctic to find trapped ancient gases to map CO2 over millennia as an answer to "where is there falsifiable proof of climate change?" 2. To examine the teeth of elephants for mineral deposits to track atmospheric conditions 3. To use the exacting rate of growth in stalactites to compare it to the data from carbon 14 dating to provide the rate of variance and therefore shift the entire paleontological calendar as a seismic shift for the discipline* * and the list goes on and on and on. Whoever doesn't think this is a creative act is simply mad. It is just creativity in response to a different set of constraints (scientific ones about claims) as opposed to other sorts of constraints. Of course this is designing. Which is why scientists are wondering what all the fuss is about. I'm not saying that design doesn't indeed offer something new. I'm openly exploring what that is and I don't know. But it lacks humility as a field. I once read a pithy comment in a self book at the check out stand. It said, "Be humble, a lot was accomplished before you were born." Not bad advice for "design thinkers." d. _________________ Dr. Derek B. Miller Director The Policy Lab 321 Columbus Ave. Seventh Floor of the Electric Carriage House Boston, MA 02116 United States of America