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Ah, terry. Terry, Terry, Terry. Your definition of definition is indeed a definition. But it is not necessarily correct. Read Wittgenstein on the definition of a game. Modern cognitive scientists prefer a nearest neighbor definition. People have a prototypical example of things: a tree, dog, bird, fish. A designer, artist, engineer. Then, for any instance, they place the instance in the multi-dimensional attribute space and name it by the prototype to which it is closest, weighted by contextual cues, information, etc. (If you want a math model, consider a Bayesian network, with a-priories and current evidence). One of my favorite examples is night and day. Everyone knows what night and day are, but try defining the boundary: there are multiple "official" definitions. Most of us just accept that dawn and dusk are neither day nor night but rather some in-between state. So your claim that we must somehow find a definition that includes all possible cases and excludes all possible non-cases is wonderful and valuable, but very seldom obtainable in the real world in which some of us live. Very truly yours, Don On Mon, Sep 2, 2013 at 5:35 PM, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > A requirement of a definition is it defines a boundary that completely > includes 'everything that must be included' and simultaneously completely > excludes 'everything that must be excluded' (the 'necessary and sufficient' > condition. Most definitions, like that of Simon are partial. There are > other > aspects of design activity that some might see as essential that are not > included in Simon's definition. In other cases, there are other activities > that are included that some would argue unhelpfully include overmuch. For > example, 'rem sleep activities' would fit within Simon's definition of > design. As in 'design is everything' the problem then becomes that of lack > of precision and sensitivity: by including everything one defines nothing. > Similarly, Simon's definition does not effectively distinguish between > design and art. > -- Don Norman Nielsen Norman Group, IDEO Fellow [log in to unmask] www.jnd.org http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/ Book: "Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded<http://amzn.to/ZOMyys>" (DOET2). Pub date: November 2013 Course: Udacity On-Line course based on DOET2<https://www.udacity.com/course/design101> (free). Nov 2013. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -----------------------------------------------------------------