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Criteria and other assumptions, as well as methods, can be liberated from tradition and recreated in a similar way, by postulating a larger convention which we call methodology.
We begin by postulating the meaning of one word, epistemology, as “what the creation of truth and meaning is based on”.
This gives us a way to name the more general approach we want to point at as postulating an epistemology. This article describes a single act of postulating an epistemology, and its consequences.
3. Definition of Design
The definition of design epistemology relies on postulating the meaning of design as “the alternative to tradition” . Intuitively, tradition may be associated with the way things, worldviews and customs tend to develop in a traditional culture (incrementally, by being tested and adjusted through many generations of use); design may be associated with the mindset of a designer (who assumes full responsibility for the result).
A third concept—wholeness—will help us understand tradition and design. Wholeness is the quality that characterizes a perfectly developed and healthy organism, or a complete and immaculately functioning mechanism: All the parts work well and in synergy with one another, and fulfill their purpose within the whole, so that the whole can function well and fulfill its purposes within even larger wholes.
Tradition and design are two ideal ways to wholeness. Tradition relies on spontaneous evolution; design relies on conscious responsibility for the result.
Those three concepts provide us a fresh view of “global issues” and “sustainability”: When for whatever reason and in whatever domain tradition is no longer a reliable way to wholeness (e.g., when changes become too large and rapid to be assimilated and tested through tradition), design must be
practiced and relied on.
Every real-world practice is a combination of tradition and design. Where we want to make a distinction is the ethical stance: When we follow the traditional ethics, we rely on “doing our job” or performing our role as it has been handed down to us by tradition; we practice design when we take responsibility for all systemic effects of what we do, and of our profession. A traditional designer, for example, would design a chair by making small modification to the traditional object, trusting, usually without questioning this, that the tradition has already given us the right way to sit; he would perhaps make the chair look like a “designer chair”. Designing a chair, on the other hand, would begin by asking such questions as “How does sitting in a chair affect our body over the years?” and “Is there a better way to sit?” A traditional journalist will do his job as he has learned it through education, and as
it has subsequently been modified through trial and error (by doing “what works” in practice). If a journalist would pause to ask “What sort of information do the people and the society really need?” and continue by modifying his work accordingly, he would no longer be a traditional journalist; (by our convention), he would become a journalism designer.
Design epistemology re-determines our priorities; it fosters the sort of attitude one exhibits when stopping the car to change the wheel that has a flat tire. This attitude change has far-reaching consequences, some of which are pointed at in this text.
Design epistemology gives rise to the design mode of information.
A traditional mode of information updates a worldview handed down by a tradition (a discipline, a religion, a culture ...), by using the concepts and the methods inherited from the tradition. In the design mode of information, facts and meaning are created as it may best suit the chosen goal—securing or stewarding wholeness.