Hi Terry,
The discussion has moved on but I think this is really interesting - I'm spending some time in the world of (government funded) environmental encouragement where important words have 'lost their earlier more useful meanings' and instead business and buzz-wording has led to the light-weight meanings you speak of, to the point that one organisation I'm working with has a pin-board in their office of words they encourage their staff not to use - creativity - holistic - sustainable .....
How do we arrive at terms that retain a useful meaning throughout their (inevitable) evolution? 'Design' as we have heard can mean many things in different contexts and to people in different fields... has it suffered too from losing an earlier more useful meaning?
I'd be interested to read the article.
Rosie
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From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design on behalf of Terence Love
Sent: Sat 14/06/2008 05:59
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: A simple definition of 'Design' ~ De-constructing the Sign?
Hi Mike,
Thanks for your post. I wonder? I feel context is more or less relevant
depending on context.
When chatting in a kind of loose social way then for me words are just
whatever is useful to get some sort of idea across and for this I agree,
context can be crucial. In fact you can use almost any words that are
totally off meaning and still communicate an idea sort of (Ronnie Barker was
a master at it). Its also common when people are not so skilled in using a
second language. For this kind of converstation, dictionaries are useful
because they provide all the range of meanings of a word that people use and
have used.
For me it seems the practices associated with research and the creation of
useful predictive theory usually requires some fairly close agreement on
definitions of key words. This is usually the role of a glossary rather than
a dictionary.
The confusion between these two types of talking can be important. I've just
been delighted to review a fantastic critical design paper on the cultural
and historical use of the words 'analysis' and 'synthesis' in design. The
authors argue that we 'lost' the earlier, more useful, meanings and then
went and 'made up' some new lightweight meanings that are much less useful -
and these are in use today. The paper is signficantly relevant to most of
the Humanities besides Design. It potentially turns upside down much of
design theory and creativity theory and study of activities in the creative
industries.
Interestingly, if published, most of the Humanities and Design will miss it.
It's in a high status engineering design journal.
Best,
Terry
-----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 Mike
McAuley
Sent: Saturday, 14 June 2008 12:26 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: A simple definition of 'Design' ~ De-constructing the Sign?
If we could define anything by one single proposition, dictionaries would
shrink in content by about 80%. Okay, admittedly, I just made that
percentage up for dramatic effect. I noticed 30 definitions for the word
black. I think it is fair to say that single definitions are pointless. We
have such cumbersome rules in language. We call them verbs, nouns and
adjectives. I don't know who said it, but 'context is everything'.
Mike
McAuley
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