Dear All,

A couple of off-list queries requested that I explain where in my editorial for Vol. 3, No. 2 of She Ji I discuss the issues relevant to Martin Salisbury’s comments on the PhD curriculum. These appear in the section of the editorial headed "Epistemology and Explanatory Knowledge.” I copy the section below in this email. You’ll find the full section with references at this URL:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2017.10.001 <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2017.10.001>

The article by Peter Murphy is titled "Design Research: Aesthetic Epistemology and Explanatory Knowledge.” It appears at this URL:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2017.09.002 <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2017.09.002>

Murphy also discusses the PhD in art.

My full editorial covers the entire issue of She Ji. The part that I copy below is relevant to the issues that Martin raised.  

Yours,

Ken

—

Epistemology and Explanatory Knowledge
Among significant debates in the field of design research, the questions of epistemology and explanatory knowledge are particularly important.

Peter Murphy examines these issues in an article on the epistemologies of design research.26 <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405872617301168?via%3Dihub#fn26> In his article, Murphy examines the consequences of three epistemological traditions: Platonic-Aristotelian, pragmatist, and postmodern.

Equally important, he explains the necessity of explanation to research.

Philosopher and physicist Mario Bunge describes research as a methodical search for knowledge. “Original research,” he writes, “tackles new problems or checks previous findings. Rigorous research is the mark of science, technology, and the ‘living’ branches of the humanities. It [research] is typically absent from pseudoscience and ideology.”27 <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405872617301168?via%3Dihub#fn27> For Bunge, exploration, investigation, and inquiry are synonyms for research. Nevertheless, legitimate forms of exploration and inquiry do not in themselves constitute research if they lack methodics and we fail to substantiate inquiry through explanation.

One confusion in design is a tendency to use the terms “knowledge creation” and “research” as though they mean the same thing. They are not the same, and not all knowledge creation is research. Most legitimate ways to create knowledge do not constitute research. Learning creates knowledge. Learning how to do something creates knowledge for the learner. Every day, billions of people learn skills and facts that are new to them. In schools and homes, at work and leisure, these billions gather information and develop capacities that extend their knowledge. While each of these individuals is engaged in knowledge creation, we do not believe that each of these people engages in research.

Practice is a significant method of knowledge creation, creating skill and knowledge for the practitioner, and deepening existing skills and knowledge. Practicing a skill creates applicable knowledge. Consider, for example, experiential knowledge and embodied cognition. Experiential knowledge and embodied cognition allow individuals to function effectively. Because they are properties or attributes of the individuals who experience and embody them, however, they need not be shared with the external world or the larger community to be effective. A skilled surgeon, a great artist, or a superb chef attain and practice mastery through the exercise of tacit knowledge—experiential knowledge—applied through embodied cognition. Others do not know what these individuals know unless they explicitly share it with others in some way.

Practice creates skill and knowledge for the practitioner. Practicing a skill creates applicable knowledge. For example, practicing a surgical technique creates knowledge for a surgeon that will benefit patients. When football teams practice their passing technique, the team becomes stronger and more skilled.

Research creates knowledge for the larger community of human beings beyond the internal mental or physical world of the individual researcher. When a medical researcher describes the surgical technique through research communication that shows other surgeons how to use the technique, it creates knowledge for all surgeons. As more surgeons learn and apply the technique, it leads to medical progress.

When a football team practices its passing technique, the team becomes stronger and more skilled. When a researcher in athletics examines and develops the strategy of passing techniques, this changes the culture and repertoire of a sport.

Sharing knowledge that helps others to learn creates progress. Nevertheless, there remains a difference between teaching and research. Research involves examining new problems or inquiring into previous findings. If a bright youngster were to discover the Pythagorean theorem without having previously studied mathematics, this would be a remarkable demonstration of intelligence. Nevertheless, it would be a form of learning. It would not constitute research to share something with the world that mathematicians knew long before Pythagoras gave his name to the theorem.28 <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405872617301168?via%3Dihub#fn28>
In many cases, original research builds on earlier work. While the earlier foundations are not original, examining well known findings to frame them in a new perspective may be original and even revolutionary. One of the best known and most dramatic examples is a 1905 article by Albert Einstein29 <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405872617301168?via%3Dihub#fn29> on Brownian motion in Annalen der Physik.

Leucippus and Democritus first stated the fundamentals of atomic theory 2,500 years ago. At the dawn of the 20th century, however, no one had been able to demonstrate the physical reality of atoms. At that time, many physicists and chemists did not accept atomic theory as a responsible description of reality. While many physicists and chemists accepted atomic theory for heuristic purposes and for calculation, they looked on atoms as an idea that no one had been able to demonstrate.

Albert Einstein demonstrated the physical reality of atoms with an argument built on physical and chemical facts that were widely known and accepted by all trained scientists. He built his argument on well known facts, carefully restated and so organized that they led through deductive argument to the necessity of atomic theory. These facts were so well known and widely agreed that Einstein used only four citations—three to his earlier articles in Annalen der Physik and one to Gustav Kirchhoff’s 1897 Lectures on Mechanics.

The article used established facts that had begun to emerge in the 1820s when botanist Robert Brown first observed the phenomenon known as Brownian motion. Beginning with facts known to every working physicist, Einstein convinced most physicists that atoms are, indeed, real rather than a mere heuristic convenience. Prior to this article, the issue had been a matter of controversy. What made the article so interesting is that Einstein based his revolutionary article on physical and chemical facts that had been observed and described for nearly a century. While Einstein received his 1921 Nobel Prize for the photoelectric effect, this paper gave rise to another Nobel Prize in 1926 when Jean Perrin won the prize for experimental verification of Einstein’s 1905 article published in 1908.30 <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405872617301168?via%3Dihub#fn30> The logical power of this argument demonstrated the physical reality of atomic theory. Perrin followed this with experimental poof.

Here we come to a crucial aspect in Murphy’s article: the role of explanation in research.

Research requires explanation. It requires explanatory power and demands a narrative account if it is to produce knowledge for all members of a research field, a discipline, or a profession. This is why we describe research as “a contribution to the knowledge of the field.” In this article, Murphy gives particular attention to doctoral research. He distinguishes between description and explanation—linking extended explanation to the demonstration of serious research in a Ph.D. thesis. One criterion of the Ph.D. as a research doctorate involves making “an original contribution to the knowledge of the field”—sometimes described in shorter form as “an original contribution to knowledge.” The ability to engage in independent research is the fundamental criterion for awarding a research doctorate. The Ph.D. thesis is a demonstration that the apprentice researcher is able to do research—the “journeyman piece” that warrants admission to the guild of practicing research professionals.

The thesis rests on the importance of explanation, and it requires an epistemological distinction between information and knowledge. We cannot share knowledge directly, mind to mind. We can only share information about what we know. When we engage in research, we learn something that becomes our knowledge. We share information by writing reports, papers, articles, and books, or presenting these less formally in talks. One of the confusing issues in discussions of research is that many of the same initial steps that lead to learning also lead to research.

One key difference between learning and research is that what we learn may be new to us while it is not new to others, as we see in the case of the bright child who rediscovers the Pythagorean theorem. Learning often involves original discovery for the individual that is neither original nor new to the world. This may be research for the individual in the same sense as “collecting of information about a particular subject.”31 <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405872617301168?via%3Dihub#fn31> This kind of research does not warrant publication or a research degree.

Another key difference between learning and research is that research involves information that is new to the others with whom we share it. Serious research enables others to learn in turn from our questions, our methods, or our conclusions.

Research creates knowledge for researchers and information for the field. When other members of the field integrate this information into their knowledge, it becomes the knowledge of the field. In his article, Peter Murphy offers a rich overview of the epistemological challenges of design research, locating them in three epistemological traditions.

It is possible to frame design research in other ways. Murphy focuses on John Dewey’s approach to pragmatism; one could also examine George Herbert Mead’s approach.32 <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405872617301168?via%3Dihub#fn32> Mead’s work led in turn to symbolic interactionism, and to the constructivist tradition. Hermeneutics offers another useful epistemology for grappling with design as meaningful communication.

There are other ways to understand the world—but not all of these involve research. Art offers a rich and legitimate approach to understanding the world—it involves revelation, not explanation. Murphy’s elegant distinctions honor the necessities of art without neglecting the necessities of explanation in research epistemology. Murphy articulates a useful critique of the failure to demonstrate explanatory knowledge in what is sometimes labeled “practice-based research.” Much of this work is not research at all: it is a justification for advancing the careers of people whose work does not warrant a Ph.D. by redefining research in implausible ways. Murphy demonstrates why this is so, and why many Ph.D. awards in architecture, art, and design should be studio master’s degrees rather than research doctorates.

Epistemological clarity reminds us that words cannot explain all wisdom. The ancient Chinese master Han Shan33 <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405872617301168?via%3Dihub#fn33> describes this in a poem:

A master of the brush and the sword

met three illustrious lords

in the East his advice was ignored

in the West his valor wasn’t honored

he mastered the brush and the sword

he mastered the sword and the brush

today now that he’s old

what’s left isn’t worth saying34 <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405872617301168?via%3Dihub#fn34>

This is revelation rather than explanation.

But Han Shan didn’t explain and he was not involved in research. He followed a humble path practicing Zen and avoiding recognition. Han Shan wrote his poetry on rocks and walls, working in a monastery kitchen to earn a living. In Han Shan’s day, China had a powerful and well organized civil service based on lengthy examinations for admission and promotion to higher ranks. For those who chose explanation, the classics, and the law, this was the path to advancement—not unlike today’s university research system. Han Shan chose another path, and he did not confuse the two epistemological traditions, demanding a civil service career while living the life of an artist.

Legend has it that Han Shan and his friend Shih Te vanished into the mountains when fame sought them out, disappearing rather than accept honors and rewards. Han Shan would not have expected a Ph.D. for his poetry, and he would not want promotion to professor as a paid academic.

Those who engage in research must think deeply on the epistemological challenges that we face in design inquiry. To advance requires that we explain what we think and do. Peter Murphy’s article offers a compact symposium on the issues. Murphy invites us to reflect on philosophical traditions from the time of Plato and Aristotle to the present day.

Reason, argument, and explanation are central to research. If design research is to flourish, we must give serious attention to the challenges they pose.

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