Tim
I DISAGREE
If it were not for Terry's contributions (provocative often insightful) this list would not debate very much at all.
If you dont like a particular tread then just DELETE.
anton
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From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Tim Smithers [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 24 August 2012 15:29
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Leaving the beach behind ...
Hello!
After some hesitation I've decided to address the following
words to you all EXCEPT Terry.
Terry: if you would like to read them, that's fine by me!
They are, however, not addressed to you. They are about you.
Take a deep breath, here goes ...
I am fed up with Terry's frequent and mostly ill-judged,
poorly reasoned, sometimes silly, occasionally rood,
PhD-Design posts and responses. Terry keeps taking us all to
the beach and getting us splashing around in the water's edge.
It's fun, yes, but it's not what I think PhD-Design list is
for. Okay, occasionally, yes, when it's holiday time and
sunny, but not for what feels like most of the time.
Let me illustrate why I'm fed up. Take Terry's recent post, a
response to Ken, that starts "Ken's defence of design history
...", the one in which he cites the Working Paper of
Preiser-Kapeller.
1 This seems not (yet) to be a peer-reviewed published
paper, so why is Terry recommending it to us all? I think
he is obliged to add some explanation and justification for
his recommendation, to show that he is not wasting our time
with this.
2 Has Terry read this paper, all 81 pages of it? Has he
understood it? Is he a trained and sufficiently well
practiced historian to be able to fairly and adequately
judge the contribution and worth of this Preiser-Kapeller
work as a work of historical analysis? If he has read it
and does consider that he is well enough qualified to judge
this work, then, again, I think he is obliged to give us
some explanation of why this work is indeed interesting and
worthwhile, and, given the context of the PhD-Design
discussion he started, why this is a sensible and
interesting example of historical analysis that is of
relevance to doing some better design history scholarship.
3 I have read this paper. Now, I am not an historian, so I
am not able to judge its worth and contribution to a
history research literature. But, I do know enough about
modelling, having trained as an engineer and practiced as
an engineering researcher, a science researcher, and as a
design researcher. I know something about Complex
Dynamical Systems concepts, techniques, and models, in
particular, so called Chaotic dynamics models, having
studied and used these kinds of techniques to model and
analyse mobile robot behaviour. And, I have some
familiarity with the Turchin (2003) dynamical system model
that Preiser-Kapeller bases his work on, which I came
across while looking at work that uses the Verhulst
population growth equation (also known as the Logistic Map)
... but this was in the context of an interest in and use
of the Logistic Map and related systems in my computational
painting activities, not research. Still, all this does
give me, I believe, a sufficient basis to reasonably judge
certain aspects of this Preiser-Kapeller paper, albeit not
its value to historical analysis.
It is, I think, an interesting piece of work, but it uses a
modified version of the Turchin model to present what is,
and can only be a descriptive model of the Byzantine
history it covers. There is no validation of the model
against some independent data, which of course would be
difficult to do in this case--what independent data could
there be? So, in the end, what we have, I would say, is an
interesting and perhaps novel way of re-describing a period
of Byzantium history, and perhaps this has important
history research contributions. But, given the
non-validated status of this model, it can have no
predictive power, of Byzantine history nor of any other
history, nor, more importantly, any explanatory power.
Furthermore, the fact that it is a chaotic dynamics model
means that there can be no take away or carry over to any
other system. So, even if it does do some good historical
(descriptive) analysis work, there is no reason to believe
this particular model will necessarily do anything useful
in a different case of some history. And a lot of detailed
work would be needed to establish that this kind of
modelling would be useful in some other case of history.
Just because this has been done usefully in this case (if
indeed it is useful) does not mean it is therefor useful
for other kinds of historical analysis. The very least
that would be needed would be some good indications of how
and why design history is sufficiently like this history of
Byzantium, but Terry neither says this, nor offers any such
indications. So, it's not clear what Terry sees in this
work that makes it a good example to follow for doing some
better design history analysis. I'm not saying it could
not be a useful way of doing things. I'm saying it's not
clear from this paper that it could be.
More. What Preiser-Kapeller does to develop his modified
eversion of the Turchin model, after some extensive and
mostly reasonable criticism of the original Turchin model,
is, I think, not sufficiently motivated nor justified: he
introduces some random processes to vary some of the
parameters to model certain external factors, but does
nothing to establish that these externalities can indeed be
sensibly approximated in this way--and I doubt that they
can be. So, if I was reviewing this paper, I'd ask for
some clarification on this, noting that without sufficient
justification, his model is seriously weakened and suspect.
(Mixing chaotic dynamics and random processes is a
difficult thing to do well, such that the resulting model
behaviour can be understood. As you might expect.)
Last, this working paper displays plenty of signs of never
having been reviewed by anybody except, perhaps, the
author. (So, I hope it hasn't been!) The writing is
somewhat turgid, with some weaknesses in the structure and
organisation. And it's too long. These are all things
that good reviewing would pick up and that could be fixed
by some careful re-working, but this version that Terry
points us too is not a good paper to have to read; to have
to plough through, more like. It would only be worth doing
this if it really did present something important that,
despite its premature status (not yet peer reviewed), is
worth studying. So, Terry should warn us of these
weaknesses and make clear why and how he thinks an effort
to bear with these weaknesses would pay off.
When I first wrote all this I didn't think I should post it to
PhD-Design because I don't think this is the kind of post that
should appear on this list. Let me be clear. I do think
Terry deserved Victor's strong, careful, and respectful
rebuff, and deserved other such responses, like the one from
Martin Salisbury. And I appreciate the bravery and efforts of
Victor and Martin to respond to Terry as they did. And I am
happy that they did so: I would not have done this nearly as
well. However, these, and other responses, are still only
splashing around in the water. Terry has taken us all to the
beach and got us all messing around in the water's edge. It's
fun, as I said, but it isn't what I think PhD-Design is for,
and so it should not be going on here. Victor and Martin have
managed to splash Terry back in his face, which he asked for,
but others are just joining in the fun and not worrying much
about who or what they splash with their less well considered
posts. Ken's attempts, to rescue something of serious value
from all this wet play I also admire, and would not wish away,
but they don't stop the playing. What I've said here too,
only creates more splashing and shouting, and even if any
water does land on Terry, it will run off like water off a
duck's back.
It's very hard to stop Terry playing with us like this, I
think. He seldom doesn't have something to say to other
people's posts, seldom doesn't reply to people who respond to
him, never back-tracks nor withdraws nor corrects things he
has said, but always moves on, just as he did in his response
to Victor and Ken. As a result Terry never stays in the same
place, always doges or swerves to take up a different
position, and often one that seems to have little or nothing
to do with his previous one. It's good for the splashing
game, but does nothing for constructive and productive
discussion of design research matters.
More. Terry works hard to give the impression of a
knowledgeable, widely experienced, authoritative research
leader; a kind of father figure indeed, thus making it hard to
counter his posts and expose them for the superficial,
ignorant, ill-judged, even silly posts they all too often are.
Just read the last paragraph of his post in reply to Ken. The
one in which he recommends the Preiser-Kapeller work as an
example, which I referred to at the start of all this.
Let me finish saying a little of what I would like to see on
PhD-Design: carefully and thoughtfully prepared posts that
show some quite humility, openness to others, respect for
readers, sincere gratitude and recognition when due, and a
clear desire and sincere effort to keep discussions moving on
in a productive and constructive way. We DO see these kinds
of posts, and discussions ARE productive, but hardly ever when
Terry comes along and takes us off to the beach.
If anybody is offended or hurt by any of this, tell me! Tell
all of us. Please! I will want to apologise. It's not my
intention to harm anybody here, but I do know words often can
and do harm, even when they are not meant to.
Best regards,
Tim
==============================================
On Aug 23, 2012, at 18:04 , Terence Love wrote:
> Ken's defence of design history provides an additional insight that helps
> unpack other aspects of the relationship between design education and
> design history courses.
>
> Looking through the list of publications Ken referred to, I realised how
> many had been lumped under Design History when their disciplinary focus was
> elsewhere. The result is a bit like studying the engineering design of
> Ferrari in terms of what colour the cars were painted, or trying to
> understand the paintings in the Louvre by studying the mechanics of how
> well they are hung.
>
> An example is Petrofski's work on design failures. The disciplinary homes of
> Petroski's analyses seem mostly to be 'Organisational Design' and
> 'Cognition' (more accurately cognitive delusions perhaps) and reading them
> requires drawing on theories and concepts of Organisational Systems Design,
> Psychology and, to a lesser extent, Engineering - rather than Design
> History. Applying the same kind of disciplinary categorisation also suggests
> the work of Gordon, Pacey, and Don Norman would all benefit design
> students more by being studied via courses and disciplinary perspectives
> other than Design History. Taking a quick look through the essays in the
> classic 'Man-made Futures: Readings in Society, Technology and Design' by
> Nigel Cross, David Elliott and Robin Roy offers the same insights (Wow
> that's a field with an acronym issue).
>
> Another aspect of this 'category' issue is the opposite. Having Design
> History analyses of complex interactions in historical phenomena involving
> multiple feedback loops by which designed outputs interact in ways that
> create *dynamic* outcomes in history would be really useful for advancing
> the field of design. An example is the analyses described in Figs 1-36 in
> http://www.oeaw.ac.at/byzanz/repository/Preiser_WorkingPapersIV_ComplexCrisi
> s.pdf . These kinds of Design History analyses seem, however, to be sparse.
> This ability to explain the historical behaviour of situations with complex
> feedback loops would likely be a worthwhile contribution from Design
> History to Design education. I'd welcome examples.
>
> Best wishes,
> Terence
> ==
> Dr Terence Love
> PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
> Western Australia 6030
> [log in to unmask]
> +61 (0)4 3497 5848
> ==
>
> Ken wrote>>
> Arnold Pacey's (1992) history on the relation between technology, artifacts,
> and the societies that emerged around them. One of the great works of design
> history from the perspective of artifacts and how they work is J. E. Gordon
> (2003 [1978]) Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down. Gordon's (2006
> [1968]) book on strong materials is equally rich in examples, though it
> leans more toward the basic science, as fits one of the founders of
> materials science. Henry Petroski has published a range of books that fund
> as design history (1994b), the history of designing (1992, 1994a), and
> examinations of design and design process richly illustrated by historical
> exemplars (1996, 2004, 2008, 2012).
>
> And then, there is that great book of examples of how things work and fail
> to work by Don Norman (2002 [1988]), whose long notes are always worth
> reading.
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