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Don Now we agree!!! :) Have a nice weekend. Best Birger ________________________________________ Fra: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [[log in to unmask]] på vegne av Don Norman [[log in to unmask]] Sendt: 10. februar 2012 18:14 Til: [log in to unmask] Emne: Re: Where science fails Addendum: Where science fails 5. The emergence of narrow specialties As the body of knowledge in science increases, it gets more and more difficult to keep up with the entire filed. Moreover, more and more specialized knowledge and skills are required to understand, follow, and add to the ever-increasing body of knowledge. As a result, science becomes more and more specialized. The filed is divided up into an increasing number of disciplines, each some subset of previous disciplines. Periodically there is a cry for multi-disciplinary research, and people across disciplines get together and discover that the combination of their fields yields new insights and advances in understanding. This attracts more people to the domain, more funding for research, and more students eager to explore the new area. As a result, this new interdisciplinary field becomes codified as a discipline. In a few decades, it will be as established as any of the older disciplines, and the younger workers will start crying out for the need for multi-disciplinary research. This disease actually impacts much of the university, not just science. The push toward ultra-specialization is aided by the promotion polices of universities that increasingly want evidence that the faculty are the top workers in the field. This is measured through publication in peer-reviewed venues and by letters from other international authorities. But each authority only knows the workers in their own sub discipline. The person who publishes in several disciplines is apt to get lost, for each judge states that they barely know the person, or that there have been only a few publications, for they are unaware of all the work done in disciplines they themselves do not follow. Design is one of the few exceptions to this rule. Design is a practice, and practices must cut across disciplines, using the knowledge, methods, and findings of multiple disciplines in order to create valuable and useful artifacts. Great designers are generalists, knowing a little about many different topics. The world needs more generalists. Unfortunately, the world of the university does not know how to evaluate generalists. Each evaluator speaks of how little the generalist knows in their own field of specialization, a point that is true. But the generalist who knows a little bit about many topics has just as much valuable knowledge and understanding as the specialist who knows a lot about a tiny slice of knowledge. Alas, the formal requirements of university assessment do not know how to take generalists into account. Don Norman