Dear Ranjan
I very much appreciate your perspective and your invitation to an ongoing conversation at this level. I also look forward to reading the history of NID. Great school!
Regards
Harold
TheDesignWay.net
AccidentalVagrant.blogspot.com
AdvancedDesignInstitute.blogspot.com/
OrganizationalDesignCompetence.com/
On Jan 11, 2014, at 9:22 PM, Prof M P Ranjan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear Ken, Klaus, Harold and Birger
>
> I believe that a design is characterised by both its Form as well as its Structure and in various permutations of these characteristics the Performance or Failure are predicated at a variety of Times and Places. Quite a mouthful, but let me explain. Form can be seen and sensed while structure is largely invisible but contribute in a huge way to the meaning that we derive from the particular Composition, to use a term from the Design Way, Harold and Eric. The unique expressions of these compositions produce vastly different meanings, and this we will have to apply to Fire as well.
>
> Some Forms of Fire are indeed designed, and this is what I would look at when we debate here about the origins of design expression. I have been using a diagrammatic model to express the origins of human use of design and in this model I place Fire as the possible origin of human design expression, placed at about 2 million years ago when Fire was first used by pre-humans for a single purpose or intention (to use Harold and Eric expression) which was to ward off predators in front of cave dwellings in Africa. The dating is provided by Richard Dawkins in his book the AncestorsTale. This Form of Fire is unmistakably a design act and I placed the Hand Axe at the next major design breakthrough, when the Stone Axe was combined with a handle which is dated about 1.5 million years ago.
>
> I believe we will need to continue this exercise with all major breakthroughs and if we do persist we would have a new history of innovation that is informed by the design actions which in my view preceded the Art of making through refinement and much later the Science of creating the required knowledge to explain the situation and phenomenon in question. Much of our scholarship has placed science invention first while Klaus in his Oxymoron paper tells us that the design acts that precede these science actions get forgotten as design has remained a neglected area in the knowledge creation for the future. My model of the History of Design can be downloaded at the link on my Academia.edu site
> https://www.academia.edu/attachments/31318935/download_file
>
> I have exchanged notes with Ken earlier off list about this subject and I do think that there are areas of scholarship that will open up in design research if we can look at the whole area with a new and fresh perspective. I use the Metaphor of Fire to describe. The systems nature of design, the Metaphor of the IceBerg to describe the invisible nature of structure and the Metaphor of a Seed to describe the latent nature of a design concept which needs Nurture and human acceptance to move from a design concept to a 'design in the world status' which then contributes to the formation or the transformation of our Culture and our behaviour.
>
> I look forward to an extended debate on this from our list members and Design will benefit from this extended dialogue I am sure.
>
> I had posted a note on this model some time back on the PhD-Design list, perhaps in 2002. But it did not merit a discussion at that time.
>
> By the way the History of NID has been published and released this month and the book is titled
> "50 Years of the National Institute of Design - 1961 to 2011" and more information is available at the NID website http://nid.edu
>
> With warm regards
>
> M P Ranjan
> From my iPad at home
> 12 January 2014 at 9.40 am IST
>
>
> Prof M P Ranjan
> Independent Academic, Ahmedabad
> Author of blog : http://www.designforindia.com
> Archive of papers : http://cept.academia.edu/RanjanMP
> Sent from my iPad
>
>> On 12-Jan-2014, at 2:44 am, Ken Friedman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Dear Klaus and Birger,
>>
>> You are quite right about the etymology of the word "discover" (see [1] and [2] below). I agree – and I note that the metaphor of uncovering involves uncovering or disclosing to awareness. Something may be visible yet not seen.
>>
>> Galileo saw what Aristotle and Archimedes did not, in this case at least.
>>
>> There is a distinction to be made between that which we see, and our language constructions of that which we see.
>>
>> Gravity existed.
>>
>> Human beings constructed the law of gravity.
>>
>> In the sense of “laws of physics,” a lawlike phenomenon existed. Human beings saw it, discovered its properties, and stated those properties in the form of codified law. They did not legislate these “laws,” however. They described or codified them.
>>
>> As human beings understand more about physical phenomena, they rewrite the codified law. As the “laws” of gravity have been better understood, they have been described in different ways, and the codes have been rewritten several times. These are all attempts to better describe and understand something that exists that human beings did not create or legislate but rather came to understand.
>>
>> Ursula LeGuin wrote a wonderful book titled The Dispossessed about a theoretical physicist named Shevek on terribly poor planet in the far distant future. Thinking deeply, without a laboratory, Shevek builds on the work of a physicist whose profound ideas on time met with disdain from other physicists. Shevek builds on her work to create a new theory of time.
>>
>> A new theory of time, of course, is also a new theory of spacetime. This has revolutionary consequences, being to Einstein’s work what Einstein’s was to Newton’s.
>>
>> One of the key issues of the book involves the way in which language and human understanding are vital to our place in the world and how we shape the world (in some sense) through our understanding of it even before acting upon it. The book explores the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, along with many other issues.
>>
>> This is a crude and sketchy outline of a profound work of fiction that raises fictional questions that we see in other forms through philosophy of science, sociology of knowledge, and a new form of focused inquiry on modes of explanation.
>>
>> I agree with Birger that Harold is writing about anthropogenic fire. The Norwegian language captures a distinction with single words that the English word fire does not.
>>
>> If you reread the first post in which I mentioned The Design Way, this is the distinction I drew between natural fire and domesticated fire, between uncontrolled fire in its wild setting and controlled fire captured for human use, and finally human-made fire.
>>
>> Once again, I agree with Harold. This is a conversation about language and distinction, not a critique of Harold and Erik’s book.
>>
>> It is my argument here that one sentence in a magnificent book is mistaken:
>>
>> “Humans did not discover fire – they designed it” (Nelson and Stolterman 2012: 11).
>>
>> I brought this up in a thread on the four orders of design in an attempt to capture certain issues in the conversation with an appropriate example.
>>
>> As Harold clarified his intention in a post to the list, I agreed – and I agree with Birger about what Harold and Erik meant in the book.
>>
>> My focus here has been to examine that sentence because it speaks of designing all fire. This is not the case – and even today, there are many fires we do not design. Human beings designed anthropogenic fire, ild and baal.
>>
>> Incidentally, Klaus did not suggest that designing ild or baal is problematic. He wrote about the English word “fire.” This words embraces concepts for which Norwegian uses three words and more. For example, the word fyr still exists in such forms as fyrtaarn, firetower, like the old signal system seen in Lord of the Rings, or the one near my old house on the islands outside Toensberg. Klaus captured the distinctions between fire in the wild and anthropogenic fire. He also discusses an evolutionary path that took human beings from fire as an experienced phenomenon that humans or early pre-humans conceived of in a different way than would later be the case, a potential evolutionary path from wild fire to controlled fire to anthropogenic fire. I appreciate the concept that “fire has evolved in conjunction with how it could be controlled or tamed by humans.” That’s something that Nils Bohr might have said if he had written about fire instead of physics.
>>
>> In a comparable sense, physicists, engineers, and others observed the phenomena of gravity, constructed the laws of gravity, and then went on to design different tools, processes, and tools that use gravity.
>>
>> Given the fact that our world is built of and wrapped around the manifestation of spacetime known as gravity, every creature on the planet has in some way put gravity to use, but the human understanding of gravity enables us to use gravity in new and better ways. In my view, this demonstrates the power of a useful alliance between the natural sciences and the design sciences. But that’s another story.
>>
>> 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
>>
>> --
>>
>> Reference
>>
>> Nelson, Harold G., and Erik Stolterman. 2012. The Design Way: Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World. 2nd Ed. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
>>
>> --
>>
>> Etymology of the word “discover”
>>
>> [1]
>>
>> From Merriam-Webster’s:
>>
>> Main Entry:dis·cov·er Pronunciation:\dis-ˈkə-vər\ Function:verb Inflected Form(s):dis·cov·ered; dis·cov·er·ing \-ˈkə-v(ə-)riŋ\ Etymology:Middle English, from Anglo-French descoverir, descovrir, from Late Latin discooperire, from Latin dis- + cooperire to cover — more at COVER Date:14th century.
>>
>> [2]
>>
>> From the Oxford English Dictionary:
>>
>> Etymology: < Anglo-Norman descoverir, descovrir, descuverir, discoverir, discovrir, discuverir, discouvrir, descoverer, discoverer, descoverre, Anglo-Norman and Old French, Middle French descovrir, Anglo-Norman and Middle French descouvrir (compare Anglo-Norman decoverir , decovrir , decuvrir ; Middle French, French découvrir ) to expose (a thing) to sight (first half of the 12th cent. in Old French), to make known, reveal, divulge (something not generally known) (first half of the 12th cent.), to betray (a person) (second half of the 12th cent.), to take a physical covering off (a person or thing) (second half of the 12th cent., originally and frequently with reference to undressing), (in chess) to reveal (an attack, especially check) by removing a piece which stands between the attacking piece and the piece being attacked (13th cent.), to remove the roof of (a building) (13th cent.), to confess one’s sins (end of the 13th cent. or earlier, reflexive), to reconnoitre, survey (a place or country) (14th cent.; also used intransitively (last quarter of the 14th cent.)), to reveal or manifest (an attribute, quality, circumstance, etc.) unconsciously or unintentionally, especially by one’s actions or behaviour (c1344), to explore (1558, in the passage translated in quot. 1568 at sense 3c, or earlier), to catch sight of (a place) (although this is first attested slightly later than in English: 1564) < post-classical Latin discooperire (also discoperire ) to remove the covering from, uncover, to remove (a covering), to reveal, lay bare (Vetus Latina, Vulgate), to betray (9th cent.), to unroof (frequently from 11th cent. in British sources), to reconnoitre (13th cent.), to explore (from 15th cent. in British sources) < classical Latin dis- dis- prefix + cooperīre cover v.1
>>
>> --
>>
>> Klaus Krippendorff wrote:
>>
>> —snip—
>>
>> etymologically, I side with birger.
>> “dis-cover” invoked the metaphor of uncovering.
>> my objection to using the word “discovering” stems from the implication of something already existing as such.
>> the law of gravity did not exist and could not have been discovered. it is an invention in language. what preexisted are the words as used in terms of which that law ( and all other laws) was constructed.
>>
>> —snip—
>>
>> Birger Sevaldson wrote:
>>
>> —snip—
>>
>> Perhaps the problem with the fire discussion is that in English (and i think in e.g. German) the word “fire” has two or more connotations that are split in Norwegian into “brann” meaning a wildfire or natural fire like a forrest fire or a catastrophic fire like a house burning down and “ild”, the fire in an inndoor enclosed fire place or “bål” which is any controlled fire out doors or a fire in an open indoor fireplace. The latter two are the harnessed and designed fires...... ? ( the etymologically same word as fire, “fyr” means an igniting fire like lighting a cigarett. Who said Norwegian was a poor language? :-) )
>> Harold clearly points to the latter two while in the discussion we sometimes refer to the first?
>>
>> Why do you think that calling the designs for creating ild or bål is problematic regarding design? I think its a pretty ordinary design process: modification of a material with technologies, in this case the material is fire. Some materials are easy to shape and control, others are less. In a time where we design for complex human activity systems and emergence it seems like a pretty simple material to shape and control.
>>
>> —snip—
>>
>>
>>
>>
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