Dear Ken, jean, Derek, Birger and all,
Enjoyed the posts.
The situation can be viewed in a simpler way.
For any analysis in this kind of area, look to Engineering design.
Engineering design has already addressed (and found working answers to) all the same issues that 'Art and Design' is now addressing.
As far as I can tell, there are no structurally significant ontological and epistemological differences between the two.
The benefit is that in thinking about these issues, engineering design has at least a 50 year lead.
It is the development of theory and concepts given by that 50 year lead, rather than any intrinsic differences between the fields , that makes the theory and practice positions of engineering design seem different to Art and Design. It is worth remembering that it is only in this lifetime that Engineering design made the transition from the Arts to the Sciences. At the current pace, it looks like that transition to science for 'Art and Design' fields will probably be mostly completed by around 2025. The similarities between the fields are already evident and will become increasingly so.
The main question is whether we have the intelligence to learn from what has already been done, or whether time is wasted going over the same ground.
Best wishes,
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 Ken Friedman
Sent: 22 October 2011 05:32
To: Dr Terence Love
Subject: Models
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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