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Dear Stefanie, You illustrate a seemingly useful account of the problems that arise when critical strategies are taken out of context. (See below) That is, the challenge of "social construction" to any and all theories is useful in some contexts and damaging in others. The "social construct" approach, at its best, is a gentle warning to all of us that all theories are ways of showing and account for things that we would not otherwise be aware of and able to use. If I show you my theorem (theory) about the square on the hypotenuse etc. this might be very useful to you in constructing a well-built house. It might also lead you to the deluded view that all knowledge (math) is of a similar kind to the geometric kind of knowledge. (Lots of further interesting things can come out of a study of Plato's uses of such theory.) If I am able to locate Darwin's theories in a social and hence historical context of ideas then I am able to gain additional insights into the theories and their origins and of their possible uses and of their possible issues. That is, the social construction approach allows me to get past the aura of theories to the theories themselves. It doesn't mean that I conclude that there is no longer any real validity to the theories because they were made up by Darwin. The only naive realists who get woken up from their philosophical sleep in which they think there is no reality problem are first year philosophy students; the rest of us always knew there were issues with theory and reality and theories about reality and the reality of theory and the reality of reality and why my mum won prizes for her sponge cakes and yet she was an unhappy person. Steve McQueen use to draw his cow boy guns on other people on movie sets. Apparently he was the fastest gun in town. When he did this he would say: "I just shot your aura." This technique seemed to work for Steve but it didn't have much impact on others. cheers keith >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> **The equalizing of all kinds of knowledge in the way proposed by these sociologists runs the real risk of leading to the sugggestion that all forms of science are merely social constructions. Newtons and darwins theories of the world are put on a par with conversation at the bar or dinner party chatter. According to this view, there is no reality at all independent of power and language. It is all social construction. Such arguments are a kind of sociological imperialism, analogous to the scientific imperialism they attack. Both such views rapidly depart from common sense and an alternative approach to understanding society-nature relations must be found** -Dickens, P 2004, *Society and Nature,* 1st edn, Polity, p. 19 and one last quote in context of design: *"designers are endlessly confronted with design problems that emerge from ideas situated on this continnuum from the objective to the subjective** Crouch C, 2012,* **Doing Research in Design**,* 1 edn, Berg Publishers, p. 45 ...ill scuttle back beneath the books *Stefanie Di Russo* PhD Student Faculty of Design Swinburne University *twitter:* @stefdirusso <https://twitter.com/#!/stefdirusso> *linkedin: public *profile<http://www.linkedin.com/pub/stefanie-di-russo/35/16/a84> ----------------------------------------------------------------- PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design -----------------------------------------------------------------