Dear Terry,
Your reply to Victor intrigues me. I’m assuming that the tool to which you refer is the taxonomy you describe in “meta-theoretical structure for classifying abstractions of design theory” (Love 2000: 305-306).
The article and your taxonomy constitute offer a conceptual contribution. You don’t actually demonstrate the tool in a direct analysis of the literature. The examples you give are hypothetical examples rather than actual examples from the design literature.
The example that caught my eye was, “This continuous production of new abstractions by each new generation of design researchers, and the requirement for terminology that differentiates each new abstraction from earlier ones, appears to be never ending. The Indian literature of the Vedas provides a parallel to this situation in describing how the earth is supported: ‘...on elephants, and they are supported on more elephants, and they on other elephants. Elephants on elephants for ever....’ This is temporally-based conceptual development, in which new concepts and new terms are needed as time goes by to describe patterns in the theories of previous generations.” The Vedic parallel is clear. A few examples of this problem in the design literature would help.
Your reply to Victor argues that over 50% of your 1,000-item sample of the literature had no theory foundation and expressed no theories. You state that another 40% demonstrated deeply flawed reasoning.
It would be interesting to see the actual review rather than statements about the review.
A 1,000-item literature sample represents a massive proportion of the design research literature in the years up to 2,000. Even thirteen years later, your review would constitute a major contribution to the literature of our field.
One valid purpose for a critical literature review is to demonstrate problems and gaps in a field as a way of showing the challenges the field must overcome. This massive sample would permit you to make the broad statements about the field that you have been making – if it does, indeed, demonstrate the problems that you note.
Right now, you state that the literature of design research is deeply flawed but you provide no direct evidence for your opinion. This would not be acceptable in any mature theory-driven field. Design theory may well be inadequate and immature for the period covered in your review. Publishing a proper literature review with a full reference list and specific examples of the problems you state would make a strong case for your views.
With over 1,000 items, of course, the reference list alone would run the length of a normal journal article. The full review article would be far longer than a standard journal article. Even so, this article would have such importance to the field that one of our major journals would doubtless make the space available.
A time-bounded literature review to the year 2,000 would demonstrate that your critique of flawed theory in the past literature is correct.
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830 462 | Home Page http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/people/Professor-Ken-Friedman-ID22.html<http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design> Academia Page http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman About Me Page http://about.me/ken_friedman
Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China
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Reference
Love, Terence. 2000. “Philosophy of design: a metatheoretical structure for design theory.” Design Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 293–313.
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Terry Love wrote:
—snip—
As part of some research into design theory making some years ago, I reviewed around 1000 publications of prominent design theorists to map out their design theories and found that over half had no theory foundation and expressed no theories. For the remaining 400 or so documents, I found the use and development and definition of concepts and the development of design theory deeply flawed by faulty reasoning. In many cases, there appeared to be an almost complete lack of awareness of this faulty reasoning to the point that authors would define a concept and then almost immediately use it in a sense different to how they had defined it. This applied even to the most basic concepts of design theory. In other cases, authros would confidently make assumptions that were selef evidently false when viewed from a slightly different perspective.
These problems of deeply flawed theory making were so widespread in the literature led me to develop a formal tool for meta-theoretical analysis of design theories. The same tool can be also used for analysing theories expressed by an author. Design Studies published the tool in 2000 (see references). In 2000, I made an offer of a prize if anyone could provide me with ANY publication in design theory that would stand up to serious critical review of the reasoning underpinning its theory making. So far, I have come across only one design research publication that would win that prize (Houkes and Vermaas see below).
This presents a serious suite of problems for reviewing the literature in terms of theory and requires a particularly focused effort on the epistemological detail of design theory and the validity of reasoning that underpins it.
—snip—
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