Dear Jean,
In your reply to Derek and Birger, you ask, “… is it possible to have
a discipline, that aims at acting on the world to transform it, produce
any body of evidence (either truths or models)?”
It is possible. Without truths in the sense of responsible facts and
models in the sense of working models, it would not be possible to act
on the world.
Consider two professions that Herbert Simon described as design
sciences, medicine and engineering.
Research-driven medical practice and evidence-based medicine help
physicians to act on the world, transforming it. Facts or truths
organized in theoretical models guide the physicians, surgeons, and
nurses who operationalize these facts and models in medical practice.
Had Semmelweis, Pasteur, and Lister not paid attention to facts and
created models as they did, they would not have acted on the world to
develop antiseptic practice.
This is the case in engineering as well. When we first proposed
traveling to the moon, this goal was nearly impossible. Engineers and
scientists accumulated facts and truths (including facts and truths
dating back several centuries) organizing these in models that led to a
future that was once unpredictable outside the realm of fiction.
For an example in our field, consider product design. In product
design, we many facts or truths and models on which we base reasonable
practice. This practice leads to transformations in the world. When we
design products, we do so knowing the strength of metals, the uses of
materials, the possibilities for combining materials, the comparative
usefulness of certain ideas rather than others. Expert designers make
use of mental models accumulated through experience, and expert
designers have a body of factual information on which they draw. A
transformed world need not exist now to make existing facts and models
useful. Quite the contrary: without facts and models, we lack the first
steps in any new development.
To design new products, we sometimes experiment, trying out ideas,
possibilities, accumulating new facts and creating new models before
applying them. We must still understand the subtle relations between
past and present facts and future facts that may not yet exist.
You’ve argue that a failure to ask ontological questions “makes the
discussion endless.” This suggests that everyone in these debates
offers opinions rather than positions, and that everyone takes part in
the debate on an equal footing. This is not so. Some read philosophy of
science and some don’t. Philosophy of science is a field that examines
the ontology and epistemology of research. Some people who post to this
list have developed clear positions based on both ontology and
epistemology. Derek states a clear, well-argued position involving more
than mere opinion.
Some of us have examined issues in research methodology, methodics, and
method, and some haven’t. Those who have not done so are trapped in an
endless discussion of clashing opinions. This changes when people become
better informed.
This involves more than a failure to engage in ontological
investigation. Those who cannot work with facts and models are unlikely
to do better by studying ontology.
Fields advanced through better models. Even so, it is not the case that
everyone adopts better models based on the evidence that they work.
Semmelweis’s model worked. It took decades for medical practice to
catch up.
The great physicist Max Plack put it well, “A new scientific truth
does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the
light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new
generation grows up that is familiar with it”(Planck 1968 [1949]:
33-34). Nothing seems to suggest that designers or researchers in the
design fields are any more likely to adopt models that work than
physicians or physicists are.
As it is, the debate is slowly shedding light on our field. This
process is assisted by the great aid to progress in every field:
retirements and funerals. To the degree that there is always something
new to learn, discussions will never end.
Yours,
Ken
Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished
Professor | Dean, Faculty of Design | Swinburne University of Technology
| Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask] | Ph: +61
39214 6078 | Faculty
References
Planck, Max K. 1968 [1949]. Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers.
Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.
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