Design Epistemology
I know this one, but the answer is complex...
simon downs
Loughborough University
s.t.downs@lboro.ac.uk
Keywords: Design, Epistemology, Complexity, Systems
Abstract
There is a seductive logic in Abelson's 1979 paper Differences between belief and knowledge systems. This seduction comes in the form of an implicit promise that the formulation of a working epistemological address to the problems raised in the paper will give us a toolset that will blow away the fog of belief from the human landscape. This paper proposes that the very dynamism that makes the human landscape a swamp of wicked problems makes Abelson's conjecture – however true they may be on a meta scale – an unproductive addition to the designers toolbox. It proposes that middle-range theories offer productive addresses to the complex systems and wicked problems that define our world.
This paper is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence.
→ download the paper (PDF)
Cite this paper: Downs, S. (2016). I know this one, but the answer is complex... Proceedings of DRS 2016, Design Research Society 50th Anniversary Conference. Brighton, UK, 27–30 June 2016.
This paper will be presented at DRS2016, find it in the conference programme