New pragmatism and the vocabulary and metaphors of scholarly design research

Design Issues

Volumn 24, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 88-101

  Melles, Gavin ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

DESIGN; RESEARCH (ACADEMIC);

EID: 57349181206     PISSN: 07479360     EISSN: 15314790     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/desi.2008.24.4.88     Document Type: Article

References (114)

1. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, A Study in Human Nature (New York: Collier, 1936);
2. Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking: Popular Lectures on Philosophy {London and New York: Longmans, 1907);
3. and The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York: Dover, 1956).
4. Dewey's ability to show the relevance of pragmatism to multiple fields and social concerns is evident in John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958);
5. Experience and Nature (New York: Dover, 2nd ed., 1958);
6. Art as Experience (New York: Capricorn Books, 1959);
7. Moral Principles in Education (New York: Philosophical Library, 1959);
8. and Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (New York: Free Press, 1966).
9. Some recent treatments showing the breadth of these concerns for knowledge, ethics, and politics include James Campbell, Understanding John Dewey: Nature and Cooperative Intelligence (Chicago: Open Court, 1995);
10. Steven Fesmire, John Dewey and Moral Imagination: Pragmatism in Ethics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003);
11. Matthew Festenstein, Pragmatism and Political Theory (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1997);
12. and Russell B. Goodman, American Philosophy and the Romantic Tradition (Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
13. "Truth is now conceived more historically and, as a consequence, pragmatism Is more generally acknowledged as a position rather than as a consequence of particular arguments and theses or as a methodological limit," Charles G. Prado, The Limits of Pragmatism (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1987), 1.
14. Ibid.
15. John Dewey, Art as Experience; Robert E. Innis, "Meaning, Art, and Politics: Dimensions of a Philosophical Engagement," The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 19:1 (2005): 55-62;
16. Mark Mattern, "John Dewey, Art and Public Life," The Journal of Politics 61:1 (1999): 54-75;
17. and John H. White, "Pragmatism and Art: Tools for Change," Studies in Art Education 39:3 (1998): 215-229.
18. Richard Coyne, "Creativity as Commonplace," Design Studies 18:2 (1997):135-141.
19. Larry Hickman, Philosophical Tools for Technological Culture: Putting Pragmatism to Work (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 67.
20. Ibid., 81.
21. Ibid., 66.
22. Richard J. Ormerod, "Philosophy for Professionals: Towards Critical Pragmatism," Journal of the Operational Research Society 58 (2007): 1109.
23. Already in the 1950s, an intellectually vacuous conception of pragmatism is mentioned as prevailing in architectural education by Oskar Stonorov, "Education for Housing Design: A Dim View," Journal of Architectural Education 10:1 (1955): 33-36.
24. Thomas Fisher, In the Scheme of Things: Alternative Thinking on the Practice of Architecture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 130.
25. A philosophically (and practically) vacuous concept of pragmatism is not helped by studies that use pragmatism as a designation for practical, de-contextualized problem-solving. For example, Dan Davies, "Pragmatism, Pedagogy and Philosophy: A Model of Thought and Action in Action in Primary Technology and Science Teacher Education," International Journal of Technology and Design Education 13:3 (2003): 207-221.
26. Thus, Ulrich combines Schön's work on reflective practice, Habermasian critical theory, and pragmatist thought; but resists postmodern pluralism, preferring critical systemics. He argues strongly for a "predefined" ideological position for critical pragmatism in the field of planning, and is critical of the less political stance of John Forester. Werner Ulrich, Critical Heuristics of Social Planning: A New Approach to Practical Philosophy (Bern, Switzerland: Haupt, reprint ed. And Chichester, UK, and New York: Wiley, 1994);
27. Werner Ulrich, "Reflective Practice in the Civil Society: The Contribution of Critically Systemic Thinking," Reflective Practice 1:2 (2000): 247-268;
28. and Werner Ulrich, "The Quest for Competence in Systemic Research and Practice," Systems Research and Behavioral Science 18:1 (2001):3-28.
29. Cleo H. Cherryholmes, Power and Criticism: Poststructural Investigations in Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1988).
30. Tom Barone notes that "Cherryholmes contrasts vulgar pragmatism with critical pragmatism, the kind of neopragmatism favored by writers such as Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam," Tom E. Barone, "On the Demise of Subjectivity in Educational Inquiry," Curriculum Inquiry 22:1 (1992): 25-38.
31. While Cherryholmes has revisited the negative connotations of the term "vulgar," the distinction remains a useful one. For some of the flavor of this contrast and its function in discerning where research discourses are, see also Cleo H. Cherryholmes, "Construct Validity and the Discourses of Research," American Journal of Education 96:3 (1988): 421 -457;
32. and Cleo H. Cherryholmes, "Notes on Pragmatism and Scientific Realism," Educational Researcher 21:6 (1992): 13-17.
33. For an analysis, see Jean Anyon, "The Retreat of Marxism and Socialist Feminism: Postmodern and Poststructural Theories in Education," Curriculum Inquiry 24:2 (1994): 115-133.
34. Schön's commitment to Dewey is evident in Donald A Schön, "The Theory of Inquiry: Dewey's Legacy to Education," Curriculum Inquiry 22:2 (1992): 119-139.
35. For a fuller account of his thinking, see Camilla Stivers and Mary R. Schmidt, "You Know More Than You Can Say: In Memory of Donald A. Schön (1930-1997)," Public Administration Review 60:3 (2000): 265-274.
36. Leonard J. Waks, "Donald Schön's Philosophy of Design and Design Education," International Journal of Technology and Design Education 11:1 (2001): 37-51.
37. Ibid., 38.
38. Ibid., 50, Significantly, Schön places Wittgenstein; along with Dewey, Piaget, and Vygotsky; in his pantheon of exemplary educators. Waks links this latter claim to Donald A. Schön, "The Theory of Inquiry: Dewey's Legacy to Education," Curriculum Inquiry 22:2 (1992): 119-139.
39. Richard Coyne and Adrian Snodgrass, "Models, Metaphors and the Hermeneutics of Designing," Design Issues 9:1 (1992): 57-64.
40. Richard Coyne and Adrian Snodgrass, "Problem Setting within Prevalent Metaphors of Design," Design Issues 11:2 (1995): 31-61.
41. For example, see David Watson, "Managing in Higher Education: The 'Wicked Issues,'" Higher Education Quarterly 54:1 (2000): 5-21.
42. Marshall W. Kreuter, Christopher De Rosa, Elizabeth H. Howze, and Grant T. Baldwin, "Understanding Wicked Problems: A Key to Advancing Environmental Health Promotion," Health Education Behaviour 31:4 (2004): 441-454;
43. Donald Chisholm, "Problem Solving and Institutional Design," Journal of Public Administration Research Theory 5:4 (1995): 451-492;
44. and Gerald Emison, "The Complex Challenges of Ethical Choices by Engineers in Public Service," Science and Engineering Ethics 12:2 (2006): 233-244. Emison deals with "reflective pragmatism" as an approach which employs Dewey's five-stage process of inquiry to engage the ethical complexity inherent in the practice of engineering in the public service.
45. Richard Coyne, "Wicked Problems Revisited," Design Studies 26:1 (2005): 5-17.
46. In Horst W. Rittel and Melvin M. Webber, "Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning," Policy Sciences 4 (1973): 155-169.
47. Herbert Simon uses the term "ill-structured" to attempt to capture these ambiguities and contingencies in design decision-making. Herbert A. Simon, "The Structure of III- Structured Problems," Artificial Intelligence 4:3-4 (1973): 181-201.
48. Richard Buchanan, "Wicked Problems in Design Thinking," Design Issues 8:2 (1992): 15-16.
49. Ibid., 16.
50. I deal with specific texts and scholars below, For some further versions, see Donald Ludwig, Marc Mangel, and Brent Haddad, "Ecology, Conservation and Public Policy," Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 32:1 (2001): 481-517.
51. Environmental Pragmatism, Andrew Light and Eric Katz, eds. (London and New York: Routledge, 1996).
52. Bryan G. Norton, Searching for Sustainability: Interdisciplinary Essays in the Philosophy of Conservation Biology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002);
53. Sustainability: A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005);
54. and Bryan G. Norton and Douglas Noonan, "Ecology and Valuation: Big Changes Needed," Ecological Economics 63:4 (2007): 664-675.
55. Bryan G. Norton, "Building Demand Models to Improve Environmental Policy Process" in Model-based Reasoning in Scientific Discovery, L. Magnani, N. J. Nersessian, and P. Thagard, eds. (New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 1999), 194.
56. John Forester, Critical Theory, Public Policy, and Planning Practice: Toward a Critical Pragmatism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 98.
57. Also see John Forester, "Creating Public Value in Planning and Urban Design: The Three Abiding Problems of Negotiation, Participation and Deliberation," Urban Design International 3:1 (1998): 5-12
58. and "Reflections on the Future Understanding of Planning Practice," International Planning Studies 4:2 (1999):175-189.
59. Hoch's work is wide-ranging, but in Charles J. Hoch, "Evaluating Plans Pragmatically," Planning Theory 1:1 (2002), 66, he contrasts rationalist and pragmatic approaches to planning evaluation: "When we evaluate plans, our judgments do differ as we select alternatives, compare consequences, conduct critiques, or assess competence.
60. But these ideas flow less from the logic of rational method and more from fitting purposes to context, helping blind persons learn to speak to one another. A pragmatic viewpoint encourages us to refine our practical reasoning critically and contextually, but without the confinement of rational precision, fit, principle, and expertise," In Charles J. Hoch, "Pragmatic Communicative Action Theory," Journal of Planning Education and Research 26:3 (2007): 272-283, Hoch concludes with the practical focus of a pragmatic account of planning theory thus: "Adopting a pragmatic orientation shifts debate about political and moral differences for planning from doctrinal disputes about knowledge claims to a focus on empirical and interpretive claims about the effect of particular urban changes and planning activity," (280).
61. Charles J. Hoch, "What Can Rorty Teach an Old Pragmatist Doing Public Administration or Planning?" Administration Society 38:3 (2006): 389-398.
62. Charles J. Hoch, "Evaluating Plans Pragmatically," Planning Theory 1:1 (2002): 53-75.
63. Ibid., 70.
64. Thomas Fisher, In the Scheme of Things: Alternative Thinking on the Practice of Architecture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000),
65. And see his "Letter to the Editor" on contemporary confusion and the need for engagement with neo-pragmatism in The New York Times (December 1, 2000): "Pragmatism is not against theory, nor is it an 'imperialist gambit' by American thinkers. Pragmatism urges us to look to the consequences of what we do; which the discipline of architecture, infused with an idealistic focus on intentions; frequently resists, And it has deep roots in modern European thought; which architects, unfamiliar with the work of the 'neopragmatist' philosopher Richard Rorty, might easily miss. The architectural community would greatly benefit from a more serious engagement with the ideas of pragmatism, which can illuminate some of the blind spots in architecture today."
66. For some thoughts on the pragmatist outlook of Frank Lloyd Wright and his contemporaries, see Peter Kucker, "Framework: Construction and Space in the Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and Rudolf Schindler," The Journal of Architecture 7:2 (2002): 171-183.
67. Aaron Betsky and David G. De Long, James Gamble Rogers and the Architecture of Pragmatism (New York and Cambridge, MA: Architectural History Foundation; MIT Press, 1994).
68. Ibid., 65.
69. I focus on architecture and architectural education, although note that Susan Savage tries to put Dewey and Schön in conversation with urban design education and new forms of knowledge production in universities. Susan Savage, "Urban Design Education: Learning for Life in Practice," Urban Design International 10 (2005): 3-10.
70. Michael Speaks, "Theory Was Interesting . . . but Now We Have Work," Architectural Research Quarterly 5 (2003): 209-212.
71. Ibid., 212.
72. Kathryn Moore, "Overlooking the Visual," The Journal of Architecture 8:1 (2003): 25-40.
73. Ibid., 26.
74. Simon Guy and Steven A. Moore, "Sustainable Architecture and the Pluralist Imagination," Journal of Architectural Education 60:4 (2007): 15-23.
75. The Pragmatist Imagination: Thinking about "Things in the Making, "Joan Ockman, ed. (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000).
76. Richard Coyne, "Wicked Problems Revisited," Design Studies 26:1 (2005): 5-17. Coyne is not alone though in seeing the need for critical and social dimensions to information technology design. See, for example, Geraldine Fitzpatrick, The Locales Framework: Understanding and Designing for Wicked Problems (Dordrecht and London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003).
77. Coyne, "Wicked Problems Revisited," Design Studies. 6.
78. Ron Wakkary, "Framing Complexity, Design and Experience: A Reflective Analysis" in Digital Creativity 16:2 (2005): 65-78.
79. Ibid., 67.
80. Donald A. Schön, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 150. Schön describes frame experiments as the iterative modeling and revision of solutions to design problems through a range of strategies, including sketching, scenarios, etc. The reflective engagement with the design situation itself constitutes the nature of the response, a familiar design experience.
81. Jozef Keulartz, Michiel Korthals, Maartje Schermer, and Tsjalling Swierstra, "Pragmatism in Progress: A Reply to Radder, Colapietro and Pitt," Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 7:3 (2004), Available at: http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/v7n3/reply.html (last accessed February 2,2008). Schön is interested in the creative and constructive resolution of policy controversies, They require what Schön calls "frame restructuring" - a necessary condition for frame restructuring. The recasting and reconnecting of things and relations in the perceptual and social fields is frame reflection.
82. Double Vision is "the ability to act from a frame while cultivating awareness of alternative frames," Donald A. Schön and Martin Rein, Frame Reflection: Toward the Resolution of Intractable Policy Controversies (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 207.
83. Richard Coyne, Designing Information Technology in the Postmodern Age: From Method to Metaphor (Cambridge, MA: Leonardo Books, MIT Press, 1995).
84. Henrik Gedenryd, How Designers Work (Lund: Lund University, 1998).
85. Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).
86. Terry Barnes, "Metaphors and Conversations in Economic Geography: Richard Rorty and the Gravity Model," Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 73:2 (1991): 111-120.
87. I'm using Charles Hoch.
88. Here, I'm thinking of the work that followed his explicit pragmatist manifesto: Richard Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism: Essays, 1972-1980 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982);
89. and particularly Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge, MA and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989); and Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Cambridge, MA and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), where the instrumental value of redescription and vocabularies are on a level playing field, where science and the humanities have an equal chance and stake in dealing with truth (but not "Truth"),
90. Hoch, "What Can Rorty Teach an Old Pragmatist Doing Public Administration or Planning?" Administration Society 38:3 (2006): 395.
91. Ibid., 396.
92. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
93. Alan R Malachowski, Richard Rorty (Teddington: Acumen, 2001).
94. Prado, The Limits of Pragmatism (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1987), 147.
95. Ibid., 147.
96. It is particularly, though not exclusively, Davidson's theory of meaning and language in Donald Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 1984) that Rorty brings in. Although, like other appropriations by Rorty, Davidson challenges some of the interpretations of his work.
97. This suggests that the concerns of some to pin down a language of design may be misplaced (e.g., Sharon Poggenpohl, Praima Chayutsahakij, and Chujit Jeamsinkul, "Language Definition and Its Role in Developing a Design Discourse," Design Studies 25:6 (2004): 579-605).
98. For a more complex account of how sources are as a language of inspiration in design, see Claudia Eckert and Martin Stacey, "Sources of Inspiration: A Language of Design," Design Studies 21:5 (2000): 523-538. And for categorization systems underlying product semantics,
99. see Uday A. Athavankar, "Categorization: Natural Language and Design," Design issues 5:2 (1989): 100-111.
100. Thomas W. A. Whitfield and Gillian Smith, "The Social Standing of the Design Professions: An Intercultural Comparison," Journal of Intercultural Studies 24:2 (2003): 115-135.
101. Tazim B. Jamal, Stanley M. Stein, and Thomas L. Harper, "Beyond Labels: Pragmatic Planning in Multistakeholder Tourism-Environmental Conflicts," Journal of Planning Education and Research 22:2 (2002), 171.
102. Ibid., 391.
103. The Pragmatist Imagination: Thinking about "Things in the Making, "Joan Ockman, ed. (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000).
104. Ibid., 267.
105. Ibid., 11.
106. Jerold Abrams, "Pragmatism, Artificial Intelligence, and Posthuman Bioethics: Shusterman, Rorty, Foucault," Human Studies 27:3 (2004): 241-258, claims Shusterman's approach is the best and most internally diverse in the literature incorporating self-fashioning on linguistic and somatic levels, feminism, African-American culture, Asian studies, American pragmatism, and cosmopolitan democracy. The fundamental spilt between Rorty and Shusterman is their position on Dewey's notion of experience. While Shusterman wants to revitalize this in relation to aesthetics, Rorty essentially shifts the focus to language and vocabularies. Shusterman has coined the phrase "somasthetics" to refer to subdisciplines around the body and its experience.
107. For Shusterman's work see, for example, Richard Shusterman, Analytic Aesthetics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989);
108. Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art (Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1992);
109. Performing Live: Aesthetic Alternatives for the Ends of Art (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000);
110. and Surface and Depth: Dialectics of Criticism and Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002).
111. Ken Friedman, "Theory Construction in Design Research: Criteria: Approaches, and Methods," Design Studies 24:6 (2003): 507-522.
112. Robert B. Johnson and Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie, "Mixed Methods Research: A Research Paradigm Whose Time Has Come," Educational Researcher 33:7 (2004):14-26.
113. For sustained treatments of the pragmatist rationale for mixed methods, see John W. Creswell, Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2003);
114. and Abbas Tashakkori and Charles Teddlie, Mixed Methodology: Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998).