John, David, All,

 From John...
>The emergence of the sciences of complexity, or the 'holistic'
>sciences, through much of the 20th century provided, I believe, a
>far sounder basis for design practice.  Soft systems thinking, for
>example, seems much more consonant with design practice than
>the hard systems thinking that preceded it and epitomised the
>reductionist worldview.
>
>Yet many in the design community seem strangely unaware of
>the 'sciences of complexity', or unwilling to engage with them in any
>real sense.  Is it that most designers see anything labelled 'science'
>as antithetical to design and proceed no further?  Or are the
>reasons elsewhere?

With absolutely no offence to Wolfgang but you only have to look at his
recent post and realise one great barrier to many designers or indeed other
professions from entertaining the concepts of systems thinking /
engineering or whatever you wish to call it now.  This is not a topic that
you can easily become familiar with and the language makes you believe that
you never learned English in the first place.  As a busy designer I would
find such material interesting but generally over my head.  Thus systems
thinking is very much the domain of academics and hardened systems bods
such as the MOD / DOD etc.

We can of course find use of systems thinking within design but I would
assume that it was not introduced to the design community that way it was
either there all along or evolved through other tools, techniques and
ideas, presented in a less forbidding package.

 From David....
>On this occasion I am dismayed by the endless strings of generalisations
>WITHOUT A SINGLE COCRETE EXAMPLE OR CASE. Most of the time, I just ignore
>it. But every now and then, I cannot. Some recent comments by John Broadbent
>just crossed the line once too often.
>
>John, I'm not singling you out for any personal reason, there is clearly a
>community of scholars on this list who seem to thrive on this type of stuff
>and you just happen to be the one that finally prompted me to say something.
>
>I quote from your recent comments?
> > most design professions have only known an intellectual world
> > dominated by reductionist science.
>Can you please list them and give concrete examples? Could you also tell us
>which are the 'minority' non-reductionists, also with examples. You see, I
>can point specifically at both tendencies in the areas of design I work in.

 From my experience the design community and in particular the product
engineering arena has traditionally been influenced by the hard systems
school of thought.  From a pragmatic point of view hard systems thinking
reflects the concerns with manufacturing efficiency and time to market -BUT
only on the surface.  Whilst  the necessity for a soft approach that looks
at a holistic framework for design is increasingly being adopted and has
always been recognised by some, there are still examples of poor design and
poor design practice.

Russ.

--
Dr Russell Marshall.
Design Ergonomics Group,
Dept. of Design and Technology,
Loughborough University,           Tel. (+44) (0)1509-22 2669.
L'boro, Leics. LE11 3TU. UK.       Fax. (+44) (0)1509-22 3999.
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/cd/