Epistemological Positions in Design Research
"The significance of acknowledging the differences between the aspects of these epistemologies is twofold; first it connects the theory of research to the practice of research and reveals the limits of truth claims in terms of objectivity, validity and generalisability. Second, Crotty's model emphasizes the necessity of remaining epistemologically consistent. Objectivist research must distinguish scientifically established objective facts from people's everyday subjective meanings. In turn, consistently constructionist research must place all meanings, scientific and non-scientific on an equal basis - they are all constructions, and none is truly objective or generalisable [sic]. The further one moves towards subjectivism, the greater the limits of the objectivity, validity and generalisablity of one's truth claims (Seale 1999). Being epistemologically aware requires that at each point in the research process we recognize that we make a variety of assumptions about human knowledge, the realities encountered in the human world and the interpretability of our findings."
(Luke Feast and Gavin Melles, 2010)
Feast, L. and G. Melles (2010). "Epistemological Positions in Design Research: A Brief Review of the Literature". Connected 2010 - 2nd International Conference on Design Education Sydney, Australia, University of New South Wales.
"Point of View" by Christopher Hassler [http://500px.com/photo/6984247]
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Michael Polanyi and tacit knowledge
"Central to Michael Polanyi's thinking was the belief that creative acts (especially acts of discovery) are shot-through or charged with strong personal feelings and commitments (hence the title of his most famous work Personal Knowledge). Arguing against the then dominant position that science was somehow value-free, Michael Polanyi sought to bring into creative tension a concern with reasoned and critical interrogation with other, more 'tacit', forms of knowing.
Polanyi's argument was that the informed guesses, hunches and imaginings that are part of exploratory acts are motivated by what he describes as 'passions'. They might well be aimed at discovering 'truth', but they are not necessarily in a form that can be stated in propositional or formal terms. As Michael Polanyi (1967: 4) wrote in The Tacit Dimension, we should start from the fact that 'we can know more than we can tell'. He termed this pre-logical phase of knowing as 'tacit knowledge'. Tacit knowledge comprises a range of conceptual and sensory information and images that can be brought to bear in an attempt to make sense of something (see Hodgkin 1991). Many bits of tacit knowledge can be brought together to help form a new model or theory. This inevitably led him to explore connoisseurship and the process of discovery (rather than with the validation or refutation of theories and models - in contrast with Popper, for example)."
(Mark K. Smith 2003, infed.org)
Smith, M. K. (2003) 'Michael Polanyi and tacit knowledge', the encyclopedia of informal education, www.infed.org/thinkers/polanyi.htm.
Hodgkin, R. (1991) 'Michael Polanyi - Prophet of life, the universe and everything' Times Higher Educational Supplement, September 27, page 15.
Polanyi, Michael (1967) The Tacit Dimension, New York: Anchor Books. (108 + xi pages). Based on the 1962 Terry lectures (Yale) this book provides an overview of tacit knowledge. He looks at tacit knowing, emergence and the significance of a society of explorers.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Gestalt Principles
"Gestalt is a psychology term which means 'unified whole'. It refers to theories of visual perception developed by German psychologists in the 1920s. These theories attempt to describe how people tend to organize visual elements into groups or unified wholes when certain principles are applied."
(Spokane Falls Community College)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
How to Lie with Design Research
"Dan Saffer, author of "Designing for Interaction", gives a tongue-in-cheek talk about the misleading ways certain design researchers present their findings."
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Talita Emmanuela CondeSHARE
The Social Construction of Knowledge
"The partiality of the view of the world portrayed by science leaves a great deal unsaid and untheorised, even though, from a scientific point of view, knowledge is characterised as a unified field (Feyerabend, P) Furthermore, a significant aspect of the partiality of science is embedded in its supposed objectivity. It portrays the world from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Scientific utterances about reality are without human agency. It describes the world as it is, not as any particular scientist views it. Yet science itself is the product of human agency. Its proponents have beliefs and prejudices which they purport to leave aside when they are engaged in the business of science. The power of Foucault's analysis, is to show that this objectivity is an illusion. What he suggests is that science, the paramount foundation of knowledge in our society, is ideologically contaminated - that it operates for and through specific power interests whose view of the world it reinforces. Since almost the entire edifice of knowledge and education is built upon this foundation, the assertion clearly requires further explication."
(Tony Ward, 2008)
Feyerabend, P., Against Method, Verso, London, 1988.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
