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Dear Ahmed, Thank you for pointing out that there is a strong body of critique of approaches to complex socio-technical-environmental design. One of the problems I have with the literature you refer to (and I'm reasonably familiar with both Systems/Cybernetics approaches and critiques of them from the Humanities and Social Sciences) is the difference in the balance of complexity of abstractions (and hence in the limit, the possibilities for understanding) between the two sides. Certainly it is reasonable to ask those in Systems Sciences to be able to fluently understand the positions of those in the Humanities and Social Sciences and their critiques of systems approaches. Many Systems Scientists have in effect undertaken a parallel additional education to do so. It also, however, it is reasonable to ask the other, that Humanities and Social Scientists understand the mathematical abstractions and modelling techniques and the nuances of the mathematical modelling representations and processes. I suggest the two positions will overlap more when understanding mathematics is more evenly spread. Best wishes, Terry == Dr Terence Love www.anzsys.org [log in to unmask] Tel: +61 (0) 0434 975 848 == -----Original Message----- From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ahmed Ansari Sent: Sunday, 20 March 2016 12:49 PM To: [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Norman, D., & Stappers, P. J. (2016). DesignX: Design and complex sociotechnical systems. She Ji. I would question this: "Because understanding the complex, non-linear complexities of the world is far too complex for human minds (for that matter, for any minds). Heuristics are the method humans have adopted in order to simplify their life." Heuristics are not the sole and only way human societies have developed to deal with, understand and explain the complexity of the world around them and social order. Historically, heuristics and the computational reduction of the world, of which they are a part, are a product of the Enlightment, of modernity, and of western civilization - they most certainly have not played a primary role in understanding the world for many societies, at least until the colonization of societies around the world by the Europeans and the postcolonial twentieth century world whereby western civilization retained its global economic, socio-cultural, political and epistemological hegemony through the substantiation of global institutions like the IMF and UN (of course, these ways of thinking about reality and the world remain dominant because of the global dominance of knowledge developed under specific traditions in the west today). Any decolonial scholar like Mignolo, Quijano, Dabashi etc. would immediately point this out. But apart from decolonial\postcolonial critiques, contemporary theories in sociology and philosophy that focus on nuanced explanations of how the social and the material are intertwined and inextricable - actor-network theory, living systems theory etc. - all strive for explanations of complex phenomenon at the macro level that are not reductive. One can ask why we don't see more of these fields and disciplines informing design today, but that again is a question the answer to which lies in the peculiar politics and culture and history of contemporary design practice and pedagogy (as an aside, it would be an interesting task to trace exatly which ideas from which disciplines have hegemonized and normalized mainstream design practice and discourse). I think it is worth remembering that cybernetics, cognitive science, and complexity theory are all twentieth century disciplines that developed out of a certain metaphysical and epistemological tradition, under specific historical circumstances, and have all demonstrated severe limitations, as well as dangerous potentials, as the present day unsustainability of most modern societies, and the extreme degrees of systemic inequalities today show. In fact, the entire lexicon of twentieth century western philosophy, as well as cultural and critical theory, has shown us the dangers of reducing the complexity of systems that are not only social and technical but also cultural (value laden) and political (embodying the dynamics of various kinds of power relations) to easily explainable and verifiable descriptions. One can quote any number of publications and scholars from within the tradition one subscribes to (cybernetics, computation, systems theory etc.) to validate one's claims, but it is worth remembering that an equally vast amount of equally influential literature exists in both the same tradition and in other traditions (philosophy of technology, critical and cultural theory, living systems theory etc.) that may serve to critique it. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -----------------------------------------------------------------