Yes, Klaus, and it can't be theorised precisely because it's concerned
with the new (so emergence, in a Hobbesian sense, is not an appropriate
term). The new cannot be predicated: if it can, then it's not new. The
appropriate process of justification in design is not the
rationalisation of functionalism and Ulm, etc, but exactly what they
most derided: post-rationalisation. We make a story that makes sense,
after the event. This allows us to explain.
As to theory, and theorizing: at FutureGround I presented a very simple
paper (far too simple for some) which discussed what happens when you
have 2 entities (intentionally vague) and placed them together, using
set theory and/or logic. It explored what happened when one of the
entities was theory, and the other a subject, say design, and pointed
out that, for instance, if there is no intersection, the one cannot be
a theory of the other. Of course, this is not theory: it's meta-theory.
I know there are problems of interpretation when moving away from this
level of abstraction, but there are, nevertheless, limits and dangers
(and valuable learnables and other benefits) which remain in principle.
And as to nouns and verbs: the great contribution of Maturana, Varela
and Uribe in developing the concept of autopoiesis was that they
described life by insisting on it being a verb, live, not a noun. And
it's the same with design. As a process, an activity, it's a verb.
Unfortunately, we have connived to allow it to be presented almost
always as a noun: an outcome of a process (design) that may be treated
as a styled object. I have believed for a long time that, rather than
constructing, a better way of thinking about how, at least, we compose
our world is by designing concepts and their assembly. I wish George
Kelly had chosen to use this vocabulary!
Finally, the word object, (also both a noun and a verb—as in I object)
is a fabulous word. It has completely inverted its meaning,
etymologically speaking. An objective is what we want to achieve, or a
lens, but being objective is, in the words of von Foerster, “…a
subject’s delusion that observing can be done without him.”
Ranulph
On 3 Feb 2005, at 04:33, Klaus Krippendorff wrote:
> terry,
>
> i am glad you amplify the need to be careful about reifying linguistic
> constructions. i would not speak so strongly about "false" noun
> constructions and much prefer to show what we miss out when pursuing a
> particular construction of reality.
>
> for the same reasons, i also would not want to be read as saying that
> design
> theory is impossible, but that the nature of theory limits its domain
> of
> explanation to routines, recurrent, uncreative, and hence predictive
> behavior. design, like everyday life, is full of theorizable behavior
> and
> we might want to drive theory into the subject however far we want to
> go,
> but it cannot describe truly creative behavior.
>
> you mention communication theory. here too, we can develop useful
> concepts
> for the description of conventional practices, but not what is novel
> and
> provides interesting insights
>
> the same is true for the development of intelligent machines. early
> on,
> cognitive scientists believed that the brain is just a computer and
> developed computers to do what they thought the brain was doing. these
> computer programs can perform what is routine, repetitive and does it
> faster and involving (on some level) more data than humans can
> process, but
> it is not particularly intelligent.
>
> theory is limited. what distinguished design from other activities is
> not
> theorizable.
>
> klaus
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and
> related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf
> Of Terence Love
> Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2005 10:52 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Design & Theory
>
>
> Hi Klaus,
> You raise an important point here when you say
> "a point worth adding here: we should be aware that the word
> creativity is a
> NOUN. it paints that experiential moment as an OBJECT with the
> entailment
> of being able to treat it OBJECTIVELY, to theorize about IT. we might
> be
> duped but this linguistic artifact into believing that we can theories
> everyTHING. "
>
> I agree and feel it is an important issue that needs expanding on. Just
> because it is possible to make a linguistic construct that does not
> break
> the conventions of human language processing doesn't mean the term has
> a
> valid representation in real life. Such terms are false,
> unrepresentative
> and misleading. In many cases, these grammatically correct but falsely
> representative terms are easy to spot especially when they are a verb
> made
> from a noun. For example, 'peacing' (where as 'being full of peace' is
> fine). False noun constructs are, however, a different matter and are
> the
> basis of much of the problems of design theory.
>
> There are many examples of nouns made from verbs that describe objects
> that
> don't exist. Consequently, theory discussion using these false noun
> objects
> is compromised or meaningless. (They are linguistically permitted
> though
> false because of the object-based nature of the English language).
>
> Unfortunately for design researchers, many false noun objects are
> found in
> relation to human internal activities such as thinking and feeling -
> areas
> central to design research. In fact, high production of false noun
> objects
> occurs in any theory area where researchers are struggling becasue
> they have
> difficulty understanding or they don't have access to good models of
> the
> physical substrates. Until recently, this was very true of human
> internal
> functioning where we have a wide variety of these false noun objects so
> embedded in everday and technical discourses that we believe they must
> be
> real. Examples of false noun terms include: creativity; thought;
> knowledge;
> emotions such as love, compassion, hate; feelings; perception;
> judgement, .
> Greater insight into the physical substrates offers a different
> language and
> ways of making better definitions of existing language. For example,
> Damasio
> defines the term 'emotion' carefully - as the purely physical
> responses of
> an organism to its environment. This helpfully provides the theory
> ground
> for an improved theory framework and discussion of feeling and the
> states
> that people currently call emotions (feeling sad, happy etc).
>
> The discourse of design theory has a fair bit of catch up to do in
> these
> areas.
>
> On another tack, I feel suggesting the proposal that human design
> activity
> is not subject to theory or research is not helpful. Others have gone
> down
> this path (I'm thinking of Rosen's 'Limits of Analysis', Popper's
> three
> worlds, Feyerabend's work on representation, Sterman's work on
> modelling).
> All of these have been useful in clarifying the bounds of specific
> overarching theory approaches. Increased understanding the physicality
> of
> internal human processes is now, however, providing an
> empirically-based
> theory bridges between areas previously reagrded as incommensurate,
> and is
> allowing theorising about areas that were apparently 'out of bounds'.
> To
> propose that it is not possible to make theory about design and
> creative
> behaviour would be similar to suggesting Communication theory isn't
> possible
> because we don't know what people might say next, or that psychology
> isn't
> possible because we don't know what people will think next.
>
> Best wishes,
> Terry
> ____________________
> Dr. Terence Love
> Curtin Research Fellow
> Design-focused Research Group
> Dept of Design, Curtin University
> PO Box U1987, Perth, Western Australia 6845
> Tel/Fax +61(0)8 9305 7629 (home office)
> +61 (0)8 9266 4018 (university office)
> [log in to unmask]
> ____________________
> Visiting Research Fellow
> Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development
> Management School, Lancaster University
> Lancaster, UK
> [log in to unmask]
> ____________________
> Conselho Cientifico
> UNIDCOM
> IADE, Lisboa
> Portugal
> ____________________
>
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