Design + Evolution = Design

Abstract

Evolution is a way of explaining of what results from interrelated random processes, not the mechanism that brings about those results. From the moment ofthis theory's inception, the danger of extrapolating from evolutionary descriptions to designerly prescriptions has been frequently demonstrated in violent historical contexts. Whilst these moments are well known, they are perhaps being taken for granted (because evolution is in principle incapable of learning from history, except as it manifests as a current environmental pressure?) now that design researchers are once again beginning to explicitly embrace notions of 'guided evolution'. It is useful therefore that recent design history scholarship is uncovering links between earlier exhortations of evolution by design and actual eugenics experiments (see the work of Christina Codgell; eg "The Futurama Recontextualised: Norman Bel Geddes's Eugenic 'World of Tomorrow" America Quarterly vol.52 no.2 (June 2000): "Products or Bodies: Streamline Design and Eugenics as Applied Biology" Design Issues vol.19 no. I (Winter 2003)). These politically dangerous moments begin to look like a consistent tendency when one takes into account the first work at the convergence of design and evolution, that of Ernst Haeckl- coiner of the term 'ecology.' vilified eugenicist but also visual researcher into natural evolutionary patterns, the latter still inf1uential in foundation design curricula since the Bauhaus (see Alain Findelis genealogies of the Bauhaus. particular "Moholy-Nagys Design Pedagogy in Chicago (1937-46)" Design Issues vol.7 no.1 (Fall 1990)). This paper supplements these particular reminders with a general account of why design continues to be seduced by notions of evolution. Design is the quintessential constructivist discipline, consequently forever endangered by relativism. To resist foundering, design dreams of wholistic systems that 'autoshore- up' the flow of its variable outcomes. This is what Jacques Derrida (Dissemination [London: Athlone. 1983]), and after him. Philippe Lacoue- Labarthe, (Typography: Mimesis. Philosophy, Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1989]) has called a mimetology, an attempt to install a logic that limits the effusive productivity of mimesis to mere reproduction or imitation. Derrida has shown why such constraints necessarily fail, and Lacoue- Labarthe, in his analyses of Heidegger 's Nazism, has shown the political dangers associated with these doomed desires. Design's renewed embracing of evolutionary systems must be mindful of these analyses. This paper is therefore interdisciplinary critical theory research, drawing on historiographical analyses oriented by poststructural concepts. The hypotheses it generate will be tested against readings of a range of current writings at the convergence of design philosophy and evolutionary systems thinking. from meta-theorists like Erwin Lazlo to sustainable design advocates like David Orr.