dear ken,

you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater by suggesting that I was "debunking science, the scientific method or physics". I was suggesting something more nuanced and that is to look at the language or more specifically the discourse within which different disciplines construct their own and often incompatible realities with the explicit claim to study the universe as is. the work of fleck, Kuhn, and several others that I mentioned (and I could have added kant, vico, rorty, and more) shows the frequent shifts in theories and paradigms while claiming that the latest version is what the universe is, or in a more moderate version, claiming to have come closer to the truth. the historians and scientific practitioners I mentioned suggest that all we know is what we say, write, or believe, not what is. this was my main point of objecting to the preposterous belief that we could knew what really is and how things work without human interest in that.

I did not say and would not say that that paradigm shifts radically change everything. evidence suggest that scientific constructions evolve, build on each other and eliminate constructions that are inconsistent with current beliefs. but inconsistency has nothing to do with the universe only with our descriptions.

you say "The Copernican revolution rendered the Ptolemaic picture of the solar system wrong because it was wrong." copernicus merely offered descriptions of planetary motions that were simpler than the ptolemaic ones. current theoretical physicists question even the the existence of gravity as a force (you previously said this was an incontrovertible fact). you are not alone in claiming to know what is. i side with all the writers I mentioned who acknowledge that we cannot observe reality without observing it. the claim to know what is in front of our eyes would mean the ability of jumping out of our bodies and seeing the universe without us.

you claim that scientific theories do not presume taking a god's eye view and end this paragraph by saying that gods don't do science. indeed, i haven't met a god to ask her whether they do, but i understand quite well what scientists do in language. to me, saying that "X is true" does not acknowledge the position of its observer or the writer who says so. it presumes privileged access to what reality is against which the validity of X could be checked. It takes that god's eye view (hillary putnam) you claim scientists do not take when formulating their theories. I read scientific reports and I can tell you the god's eye view is quite common. in the sciences, we cherish inter-observer agreement, which is not the same as truth. you make several factual claims without admitting who told you so. 

you speculate that I am "not always aware of what designers today don't know." I grant you that and I never claimed I would. but your statement suggests that you do know what today's designers don't know. I would suggest that there are far too many designers to interview and to ask what they do not know is not likely to be answered. you omitted in your brief biography of mine that I have practiced design for many years while teaching other topics as well, working with big companies and in several educational settings. 

I think we should be a little bit more humble in generalizing, especially to the universe, and instead become aware of the language we are using. in my reading, saying "X is such and such" is a universalist statement as it does not allow anyone to examine who the writer is, what methods led that writer to conclude that "X is such and such" and suggesting X to exist independent of human involvement in X makes critical examination difficult. 

klaus

-----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: Tuesday, April 15, 2014 1:42 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Human-centred and universe-centred perspectives in discussions about design

Dear Klaus,

Thanks for your reply. Again, it's my view that unpacking these issues takes far more time and space than I can give it now.

There are a couple of places where I'd look at this differently than you do. Thomas Kuhn did not believe that he was debunking science, the scientific method, or physics. Rather, he was explaining how new paradigms come into being and how old paradigms vanish. This, of course, raises issues that such a simple statement fails to clarify or explain.

Scientific theories do not presume a "god's eye" view. They account for human beings who develop and discover facts using human-made perspectives, theories, and concepts, along with human-made routines, procedures, methods, and instruments. The relation of these perspectives, theories, concepts, routines, procedures, methods, and instruments to their human creators is a given. While different observers and thinkers describe and interpret their meaning in different ways, no one sensible imagines that gods do science.

While designers shape things for human beings in a human-centered context, I nevertheless believe that we must know something about how the universe works to do this well.

The physical elements are all the same in every place that we find them. Substances made of elements that we have combined in ways have different properties. From these physical and chemical properties, we can design different artifacts. We can do things with different kinds and grades of steel, copper, wood, neon, or water that we cannot do with other kinds and grades of the same material - and certainly not with other materials. While some kinds of laminated wood can be stronger than steel in some applications, we cannot raise a skyscraper on a wooden frame. A wooden sword is fine for kendo practice, but it will not do for combat - and a steel sword is an ineffective weapon against a handgun or a rifle. The applications of these facts are local and human. The physical facts appear to be universal. It is the immutable nature of such facts that allow us to design certain kinds of tools. Human ingenuity, invention, and design allow us to develop new ways to apply some facts - witness, for example, the massive wood beams supporting the roof of the Oslo airport in an application that would once have involved steel beams.

None of this is religious, nor is it beyond the realm of human understanding. In my view, the human creation of science transcends local concerns to reveal facts about the universe on which we can draw (see, for example: Cromer 1993, 1995) to meet local human needs. This is even the case with mathematics (Hersh 1998). Whatever one may say about religion or metaphysics, one God or many, some sense of these issues is helpful to designers.

Again, I don't ask that you agree with me. I am saying that I differ from you on this, and I believe that rich conversation would disclose far more than I am able to say here.

The short story, again, is that research as I see it remains one useful way to inform wise design choices, and I'd argue that designers with a sense of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and material science can do more and better work than a designer ignorant of how the universe works. For that matter, this is also true of designers with an understanding of the biological and human sciences and philosophy. No one can master all these, but any well educated citizen should have some idea of what these fields know, and what the underlying disciplines mean for any specific design practice. Our field suffers from the fact that too many vocationally trained designers know far less than they should compared to what an educated professional designer ought to know.

I'd have to think more about the issues you raise in the philosophy of science to enter this conversation seriously. For now, I can say that I partly agree and partly disagree without sorting through the layers of issues.

I will make a comment on the perspectives that inform my concerns with respect to debating you on these issues.

It sometimes seems to me that your excellent educational and professional background means that you are not always aware of what designers today don't know. You followed an engineering degree with a degree in design at Ulm and a PhD in communication at Illinois. You've worked at top universities all your life, mostly in communication, and always in departments where people have a broad knowledge of scientific issues. You are a skilled research methodologist and a developer of research methods - for example, the widely used Krippendorff's alpha.

If we were all Klaus Krippendorffs, I'd be less concerned.

As it is, I am concerned about the broader range of general knowledge and different kinds of background knowledge that support wise design.

Yours,

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | University email [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Private email [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830 462 | Academia Page http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman

Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Adjunct Professor | School of Creative Arts | James Cook University | Townsville, Australia

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References

Cromer, Alan. 1993. Uncommon Sense. The Heretical Nature of Science. New York: Oxford University Press.

Cromer, Alan. 1997. Connected Knowledge. Science, Philosophy, and Education. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hersh, Reuben. 1998. What is Mathematics, Really? London: Vintage Books.

--

Klaus Krippendorff wrote:

-snip-

well,

ken,

as you say, issues in the philosophy of science are complex and your feeling that my saying that the idea of research as a search for universal truths is epistemologically questionable is due to its complexity. so you are right rhetorically but not substantially. i took too much for granted.

when i say epistemologically questionable i mean worth questioning the possibility of finding universal truths in the universe. when i said "debunked" i had in mind, for example the writings by ludwig fleck on the history of a fact, showing how the conception of syphilis evolved as it accommodated the often strange conceptions of different generations of scientific communities with no final understanding in sight. or thomas kuhn's work on the shifting paradigms in science, at each juncture claiming universal truths only to be replaced by new construction. or bruno latour's study of laboratory work which showed it to be guided by all kinds of strange conceptions, including to get appropriate funding. or the theoretical physicist john wheelers' "participatory anthropic principle" which asserts that researchers are participants in bringing about explanations of the universe's functioning which cannot exist without human participation. or werner heisenberg's famous statement that we cannot study nature only nature's response to our method of asking questions. i think they support what i had summarized in a few sentences.

i'd say that projects like "trying to understand how the universe works" are "epistemologically questionable" as they assumes the ability to take a god's eye perspective on how it works, failing to admit that real people have to undertake such a project. researchers who pursue their careers, bring their own often unacknowledged methodological commitments and intellectual imperialist ambitions to such projects, or have vested interest in seeing particular theories validated or findings what they expect to find.

i think we agree that designers need to know something about how things work in the domain of human practices of living in which a design could intervene. these communities may be small or large, even have global affects.

but this can hardly be construed as a universalist perspective. rather as one that embraces everything that a particular design could affect, especially the communities that could be affected, and potentially opposed or embrace a design. in my opinion, to facilitate professional design practices, in my opinion, this is what design research should aim at.

ken, you tried to be very clear about what you saying, looking at the etymology of words and the source of quotations. i appreciate that. but i invite you to question the epistemology of claims that escape of the realm of human understanding and language use into the metaphysics of religious claims. i hope that designers stay on the ground of creating realities for others.

research that merely explains how the universe works without human participation and without considering its effect is usually undertaken by researchers who oppose improvements, keep things as is. designers have better things to do than what the current universe is like.

--snip-



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