Abstract:
The Western philosophical tradition has overlooked those forms of truth
that are closest to us – assertions that draw attention to aspects of the
referential wholes that govern our concerned engagement with the world –
focussing instead on assertions that point to present-at-hand entities – the
sort of entities that can be decontextualised from our everyday practical
concerns and recontextualised in terms of ‘world pictures’ (theories).
Designers, as makers, engage constantly with referential wholes – adopting
and/or developing appropriate frames of reference as they respond to
design situations, making judgements about the final form of design
outcomes with reference to relevant referential wholes, and in the case of
‘strong’ design, bringing to the fore implicit aspects of referential wholes
and/or reconfiguring those referential wholes.
Space must be made to acknowledge the truth of work that explores the
potential of artefacts to deepen and broaden our understanding of
ourselves, of each other and of the world. This paper is a development of a
previous paper (McLaughlin, to be published) in which I argued that
designers proceed by developing orientations towards a situation and that
the articulation of these orientations should be considered a contribution to
the knowledge of the domain. In this paper I will briefly summarise and
expand on that argument by considering issues associated with the
validation of such contributions as research.
