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EDUCATION

FOR DESIGN

Erich Jantsch

The notion of design adopted in this paper embraces the design of all human systems. The design tasks envisaged focus on processes rather than structures, They are viewed in the light of multi-level and multi-goal systems representation based on total human experience and aiming at coordination rather than control from the top. Education for design should focus primarily on the design of human relations, instrumentalities and institutions, along with their respective role patterns. The nature of learning at these three steps is seen as the cybernetic evolution of measure, norms and values respectively.

THE idea of an ~xperirne~t~ universi~ that focuses on ‘“the design and management of the man-made milieu” constitutes a fortunate formulation in that it links the notions of design and management. They are, indeed, inseparable if we understand them to signify design for manageable systems, ie, systems susceptible to continuous self-organisation and redesign, and management with the aim of bringing the potentials of continuous redesign into play. But to envisage something for this task, which might be called a university, encourages the building of traps into our thinking. One such trap has to do with our being used to think that management can be taught and that this can be done by transferring to students rational knowledge and methods for organising such knowledge basing this on some alleged ‘objectivity’ of the subject-matter and the transfer process. At present most curricula in management, whether their scope is business or public affairs, reflect this belief But they all focus on management qua control of a system of given design which is a narrow view of management and one in which management has been neatly isolated from design. A second and more serious trap is hidden in the idea that design can be taught. Leaving aside for the moment the issue of the “objectivity’ of the subjectmatter, we have to ask the penetrating question whether design is not inherently Dr Jantsch is currently Research Associate, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley. 0 1972 The Museum of Modern Art, New York. From an original paper prepared for its research project Institutions for a Post-Technological Society-The Universitas Project. This research project will be the subject of a forthcoming book to be edited by Emilio Ambasz, Curator of Design, The Museum of Modern Art.

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more than justorgan&&on

of ‘rational’ knowledge. The arts, for instance, are an important aspect of design-can their contents, modes of expression, and ‘methods’ of enquiry be subsumed under ‘rational knawledge’ ? However, we may link design with the very broad notion of ‘experience’, in which knowledge is included. We may say that, in dealing with design and management, we are addres;sing ourselves to total human experience. Having accepted this holistic notion, WCmay then try to identify itsimportant aspects so as to become a bit clearer about its scope,tSuch important aspects may include: + What we LEE(our bi~~~~iG~~genetic, anthro~lo~~~~ ~s~~holog~~l~ social and c~&ural nat~e~om~osed ofbasic as well as ~o~~tio~ed speak) ; e What we kmztt ~~~~~~ sensation and perception, intdlectud and in&itive. cognition, ~on~e~~ua~sa~~~ and learning) ; a What we feet (through affection quite generally, eg, through compassion, love, and hate-in the inter-personal domain, through resonance and dissonance with our natural and social environment, through aesthetic appreciation of nature as well as of man-made artifacts, etc) ; I, What we cdn do (in terms of basic capabilities, skills, modes of expression and communication-semiotic modes, but also more generally iconographic modes, etc) ; e What we ZD& (on the basis of our drives, desires, values? motives, understanding, etc) ; e and more. This explication is not supposed to prefigure any secturalisation in dealing with total human experience or design. l Rather, it should give a rough idea of a larger system in which knowledge is embedded. Indeed, any idea of sectoralisation breaks down when we rcaJise the extent to which all thelr;easpects are interrelated: what we are expresses itself in knowledge through a variety of scientific disciplines such as biology, psychology or behavioural science, but it expresses itself also in what we feel, can do, and want. In similar waysI our feelings translate themselves not only into what we can do or what we wan%,but also through intuitive formulation into what we know. 2 Bringing into play different forms of expression and ~ornrnu~i~a~o~~~ variation of what we can do, provides completely new perspec&ves not o&y to what we feel> know, and want, but even to what we are as culturally conditioned beings. And so forth. In Western society, considerable emphasis has always been placed on expressing all aspects of experience in terms of knowledge-to the increasing neglect of those aspects which resisted such reduction to knowledge, Most attempts to develop meta-languages concentrated on numbers (the Pythagoreans), the mathematisation of notions (Leibniz’s ~&t&s ratiocinator) J and mechanics (Kepler’s harmonices mundi, and Descartes). Raimundus Lullus’ ars mapa, developed in the 13th century, was perhaps the only noteworthy exception; it tried to design a system of figures and bodies in which all branches of knowledge could be represented, thus s~ar~bing for a somewhat more holistic approach to experience. The representation of ~on~nuously enriched experience through knowledge resulted in a “‘coherent trend toward optimal or~~ation of the cagnitive-semiotic modality” : 8 frcfm the axiomatic mode1 of scientific thought (Greek mathematics and philosophy) over the empirical model (early modern FUTURES

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physical science) to the ‘conceptual model (the contemporary coalition of the formal and experimental sciences) _ Marney and Smith were certainly justified to speak of a noetic evolution in analogy to biological and social evolution. This is a most significant extension of our concept of evolution, which may have tremendous consequences for the representation and organisation of knowledge. The very idea of inter-disciplinarity, understood as a mode of organising ‘rational’ knowledge towards a purpose,4 is conducive to an evolutionary as well as normative view of the noosphere. But is this all on which to focus attention. 7 Are evolution in the animate world and evolution and normative design in the organisation of society and of knowledge the only dynamic categories which set the stage for our discussion of human design? Shou’td we just continue and redouble our efforts to express all our experience in knowledge equivalents and thereby restrict ourselves to a narrow notion of merely ‘rational3 enquiry? To prepare ourselves better for an answer to tkis question, we may take a small informative excursion. Noetic evolution often~&.~z~s changes in meaning, human perception and thinking as well as changes in feeling, forms of expression and communication, and values. The apparent, almost perfect, synchronisation of such dramatic changes in scientific and artistic concepts-as occurred at the beginning of this century with quantum theory and theory of relativity, psychoanalysis, atonality in music, cubism and surrealism in painting, functionally oriented aesthetics in architectural and environmental design, etc-may be viewed as originating in preceding changes in the underlying shared experience and appreciation of the world. Because of the dominant position of scientific modes of enquiry in Western &vi&a&on, there may be little or virtually no visible phase shift between changes in knowledge and changes in other forms of human experience. But this was not always so. To many systemically oriented people and to many of the great non-specialised scientists the Bible represents a holistic expression of human experience and includes knowledge of a kind which has only been approached, not attained, by modern ‘rational’ scientific concepts. “Cognitive and affective aspects of meaning always go together”, states Jean Piaget. 5 It is only due to the more recent impoverishment of our experience outside knowledge and, in particular, our capability to respond to other than scientific modes of expression, that in Western society we equate progress with noetic evolution and its implications in form of a technicised world.

of

The scope of human

systems

ciesigu

We may take another cut at the question, what inputs ‘rationaP knowledge alone can provide for our design task. The purposeful organisation of knowledge ties in with our current (and too narrow) notion of planning. But underlying planning is a specific cultural bias by which the modes and directions of planning-or at least of that part of planning which is subsequently implementedare conditioned. It is, for example, not difficult to see that the present growthoriented basis of Western and Western-influenced society cannot accommodate planning with the general objective of global eco-systemic stability.B In the same way> planning conducive to anticipative action-instead of short-range

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reaction--seems to run against our present cultural pre-occupations.7 And yet these two central ideas appear today as absolutely necessary pre-requisites to develop planning into anything useful for social systems design, even to prevent major global mis-developments. This we can see very clearly in a rational wayit is not the knowledge which is lacking but the cultural basis which would permit this knowledge to be applied effectively. Thus, cuZturuZchange is moving into the focus. But much more than with what we know, cultural change has to do with what we are, what our human nature is, what we feel and what we want. Recently proposed concepts such as Reich’s Consciousness I, II and III8 may be regarded as somewhat naive attempts to develop holistic measures of cultural change and break out of knowledgecentred, and in any case futile, modes of interpretation. The answer to the question posed in the preceding section is really not so difIicult. There is indeed a powerful incentive to develop a non-se&oral, holistic approach to total human experience-such an approach is even a conditio sine qua non for any design involving systems of human living. We must bring into play simultaneously not only what we know, but also: * what we are (the evolutionary aspects of bio- and so&-sphere and their feedback, archetypes and their modification, possibly leading to a ‘quantum theory’ of the psycho-social nature of Man) ; e what we feel (developing our potentials to communicate with our fellow human beings and with the whole animate and inanimate world, as great artists do) ; e what we can do (exploring possibilities to perceive and structure reality, conceptualise, develop new modes of expression and communication, etc) ; e what we want (exploring the potentials and imperatives of value dynamics, accepting and actively playing out the cybernetic responsibility of Man in regulating a world which, in turn, conditions him, etc), What is proposed here is, therefore, a systems approach to total human experience andpurposeful activity. But if we really mean it we have to try to develop a holistic measure of improvement for total human experience and for human activity respectively. With such an attempt we invariably find ourselves on slippery ground because the question of purpose enters here-the ultimate purpose of human life, There are both evolutionary and avowed purposes, the latter emerging from a particular cultural context. For example, cognition pgr se (the pursuit of Truth) was, and still is, one of the avowed purposes of Western-type culture. The result is the predominant orientation of scientific enquiry towards the world as it is, not only in the physical but also in the psycho-social sciences.9 “Value-free’ science has nothing to contribute to our understanding of the world as it ought to become through our conduct of human activity, If we stipulate in a general way that improvement is to be measured along the vector of evolutionary development-a plausible, if not cornpelting, assumption -we have narrowed down our difficulties, though not yet fulIy removed them. There are different basic images of human and socio-cultural evolution, and it may be instructive to quickly enumerate some of them: e Lizz~r~ ~~e~oprn~t, usually viewed as a deterministic movement towards a mystical, pressure-free end-state, a ‘paradise’. Most of these concepts are pre-

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sented in apodeictic fmhion as a Messianic promise which, by evoking naive hope, acquires a charismatic quality and thereby catches the ima~a~on of parts of the young generation. Apart from theoretic-idealistic Marxism with its economic determinism (for which it needs only a revolution to trigger the one and only possible development towards “bringing the good out” in Man in an ultimate classless society) and classical anarchism, one may mention as more recent models those by Galtunglo (the development towards a ‘post-revolutionary’ individualistic-egalitarian, read anarchistic, form of society with maximum entropy and the impossibility of any leadership), and, somewhat related to it, by Ozbekhanll (an uni-directional process of ‘ephemeralisation’ of thought as well as structure, from the ‘solid’ industrial over a hierarchical and flexible technocratic towards a ‘fluid’ fully participative form of society). l P~ural~t~~2~~~~ development, in which mankind is viewed as starting from a common origin and moving along different ways towards a common ultimate purpose of mankind-like moving from the South Pole along a multitude of meridians towards the North Pole. The famous model of this category was developed by Teilhard de Chardin,i2 who, significantly, labelled the target of the evolutionary movement ‘noosphere’, though giving this term a very broad meaning. l Cyclical development, a central idea to some Asian religions and cultures. l ‘SpiraEling upwards’ towards an ultimate purpose, combining linear and cyclical images of development, or ‘spiralling upwards and downwards’ in a cyclical development of a higher order. It may be readily seen that measures of improvement for the development of total human experience and of human activity, if projected against evolutionary trends, will be vastly different for each of the evolutionary images listed. If entropy increase may be recognised as such a measure (Galtung), so may be the contrary (Teilhard de Chardin). Progress towards an end-state may be called improvement, or increased dynamic stability, depending on the type of evolutionary metaphor applied. However, one may be reminded here that, quite generally, in a situation marked by growing instability of social, political, and economic systems, a cyclical development ‘ideal’ gains in esteem today due to the rising awareness of the interdependence and the eco-systemic nature of most of the systems of human living, including the ‘meta-system’ of the whole planet Earth. The purpose emerging now will probably have to do with the conscious creation of a world carefully designed as anthropomorphic-by which notion we understand a world made to human measure-and with the eco-systemic stability of its systems. Speciism, as parts of the American youth would call it in contempt -certainly, but there seems to be no choice. We cannot assume God’s position as ‘guarantor’lg of a natural eco-system from which we have already departed very far due to the specific psycho-social evolution of mankind. But we can be guarantors of human systems. And we are coming to understand that viable human systems cannot be built in the spirit of the cult of the artificial, as expressed in so much science fiction and ‘futurology’ not geared to meaningful planning, but rather in the spirit of what Bertrand de Jouvenel calls : Man as the gardener of his planet. l4

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In this context, a holistic measure of improvement for total human experience will have to do with the extent to which Man grasps his role as cybernetic actor on the planet Earth and is capable of relating his design capacity, ie, his capabilities of enquiry as well as creation, to this task. This may come to be expressed, and perhaps even partially quantified, in terms of balance between the natural and the artificial-implying also balance between ‘rational’ and other aspects of total human experience. What we would really have to develop here is a measure for Remon in the meaning Churchmanrs applies to it: “Reason has to do with the way in which human beings understand what human life means”. Some of the pertinent indices may be the extent of inter- and trans-d~s~ip~na~ synthesis under the knowledge aspect, the degree to which new modes of expression and communication increase our chances for freedom, the consistency of our values with the ideal of eco-systemic stability of human systems and the world, the wisdom of love in this context-a love which is no more set absolute as it is in Christian thought, but is seen in a creative perspective. A holistic measure of improvement for human activity may then be the effectiveness of design in integrating human systems towards an overall performance ‘ideal’ of ecosystemic stability, ie, the effectiveness of both enquiry and creation to that end, with specific indices such as flexibility and modifiability of design, propensity for self-organisation and engagement of the members of human systems, together with their active motivation, openness to genuine Ieadership, ie, proposals for redesign? etc. Obviously, education for design has to be geared to such measures of improvement. Finally, we may ask ourselves precisely what we mean by ‘human systems’. Social systems of various size and scope? They are justifiably moving into sharp focus today when we speak of design, normative planning, political processes, and the like. But human systems, approached on the basis of total human experience, mean much more, They embrace also the notion of cultural systems that underlie our social systems. And culture too is a matter of design. All great cultures were designed, usually around, and in consonance with, a religion. Under CcuIture’, we understand here (as a minimal notion) a shared appreciative system--“carved out by our interests, structured by our expectations, and evaluated by our standards of judgement~‘~~-plus a communication system through which sharing becomes possible. Culture includes a view of the worId, through the prism of values, plus modes of bringing the latter into play effectively, sharing and distributing them. In a static world, culture is translated directly into norms, through religious or ideological ethics. But in a dynamic world, we need a set of flexibly applied regulatory principles, in other words a policy. l7 Policies, too, must be designed if we take our systems approach to purposeful human activity seriously and all the more if we adopt the general idea of eco-systemic stability. Thus, when we speak of designing human systems we mean at least designing the structures and initial states ~f~~~~~s~~~~, theirpobicies (which implies, as will be pointed out later, the design of ~~~~ ~~~~~i~~~~ and the ctll&=~which gives life to them. But we mean also designing the human organisations such as governments, industrial corporations, universities, citizen groups or unions which make up social systems and which, by using technology, arts and other artifacts, act as human i~~rumentalities-and along with them the patterns of their

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roles which they play in the se~organisa~on of social systems. And we mean, finally, desiring a view of the world built on our total experience, a ‘~~~r~~e~~~~ ccmtext’ls of Hogan existence, as well as the ~~~a~ re~atiu~ through which we experience our world. The design task is therefore at least six-fold, and the constituent parts of it are, in the end, inseparable. For many purposes of human systems design we have to take a dynamic and very broad, even global approach since social systems policies have to be consistent among themselves and tie in with a global policy, and cultural contexts have to embrace many social systems even if we aim for cultural pluralism at world level. Scientific versus artistic modes of enquiry The notion of design is often juxtaposed to the notion of analysis, the former being considered the essence of artistic creation and the latter the essence of scientific research. Scientific and artistic enquiry are traditionally taken as neatly separated, at best sequential activities. The thoughtless repetition of such 19th century categorisation in our epoch, when scientific enquiry has long proceeded from empirical to conceptual modes and is about to develop an axiological approach, may surprise-if it were not for the recognition that it is the traditional Western cultural bias again which acts here as a trap. Whereas design is readily accredited with giving expression to human values, science generally is not. And where some well-meant enterprises cautiously start to explore possible connections between science and value, they often do it in a half-hearted way as if to avoid pulling us out of the trap which, to so many scientists, has become a comfortable ecological niche, The Nobel Symposi~~m 14, held in Stockholm in September 1969, carried as its theme the sIogan of more than thirty years ago, “The place of value in a world of facts”, whereas, Geoffrey Vickers rightly insists, 19 “the challeng-ing study of our day is . . . rather the nature of fact in a world of values”. Not the values, he claims, are enigmatic, but the facts. Both scientific and artistic modes of enquiry may be understood as combining approaches of analysis and synthesis-or, to be more exact, they constitute variations of the same basic process characterised by feedback interaction of appreciative and this is creative phases. But, if we follow Vickers 20, both phases of the process-and the crux-“change the norms to which they consciously or unconsciously appeal. The appreciative phase changes them by the mere fact of using them to analyse and evaluate a concrete situation; for this may affect both their cognitive and their evaluative settings. The creative phase affects them by presenting new hypothetical forms for appreciation”. Wilhelm FurtwangIerzl describes the artistic process in music as “an ‘improvisation perfecting itself’ . . . in the balancing (Auschwingen) of its proper musical form, and yet in every moment, from the beginning to the end, remaining improvisation”. Significantly, he sees the norms of artistic design as being “inherent in the specific psychic process, by which a work of art is represented”, ie, in the creative act, not in the created object. For Vickers, 2s this “evolution of norms is a fundamental form of learning; _.. it provides the criteria not only for ethics and aesthetics but for all forms of discri~nation”. Thus the evolution of norms is central to education for design, even to education in the most general sense.

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Both scientific and artistic modes of enquiry enrich our knowledge and, more generally, our total experience. Some forms of art, in particular dramatic forms, have often been-and are again today-mistaken as ‘mimesis’ of reality, a reality which is supposed to be understood and mastered ‘objectively’. But great art of all times has not mimed or depicted reality but changed it, given reality a new structure. In our days, the best and most self-evident example is probably modern architecture, but also film. An artist, says Ingmar Bergman, acts like a radar, receiving the ‘things’ of the world and reflecting them back, mixed with memories, dreams, and images, A difference in the essence of scientific and artistic modes of enquiry can only be suggested by a cultural bias such as the one with which we are living in Western society. According to this bias, science is reflective but art is not; science is ‘appreciative’ and art is ‘creative’ in an uni-directional sense. Also, a holistic approach is appropriate much more for art than for science. Under this Western cultural bias, the scientific mode of enquiry has obviously been distorted far more than the artistic mode. The ‘creative’ phase in the process is not officially acknowledged for the scientific mode of enquiry which is still largely identified with an empirical or experimental approach. Yet Paul Feyerabend,23 an ardent critic of scientific enquiry, writes: “The inventions and tricks which help a clever man through the jungle of facts, a,pr&oriprinciples, theories, mathematical formulas, methodological rules, pressure from the general public and his ‘professional peers’ and which enable him to form a coherent picture out of apparent chaos are much more closely related to the spirit of poetry than one would be inclined to think. Indeed, one has the suspicion that the only difference between poets and scientists is that the latter, having lost their sense of style now try to comfort themselves with the pleasant fiction that they are following rules of a quite different kind which produce a much grander and much more important result, namely, the Truth.” Still, there remains now chiefly the artistic mode as an example which may be used to resuscitate the ‘creative’ phase in all forms of enquiry-this is also the reason why the hopes placed in approaches which are of more artistic than scientific nature, may be intuitively right. As Feyerabend2& points out, science has, in general, evaded its obligation to criticise ideology; it attempted to reestablish itself quickly and regain, as far as possible, the old security after being shaken up in the early 20th century. Art has remained much more open and critical. “A critical rationalism setting itself the task to enquire into knowledge and behaviour, and improve them through critique, cannot leave aside the contributions offered by the artist.” Normative planning, conceived as a non-mechanistic ‘human action model’ and bringing into play the possibilities as well as obligations of Man as regulator of his systems, may hopefully develop into such an approach reinforcing the creative phase of enquiry. 25 The thrust of current theory-building in planning still points in the direction of increasing ‘scientification”, with the ill-defined ‘policy sciences’ often mistaken for being supposed to meet a challenge to build quantified mechanistic models of human systems. But planning in a broad connotation is inherently design. By its very nature it,is dynamic, systemic in scope and based on the feedback interaction between appreciative and creative, exploratory and normative approaches. In dealing with knowledge, it is also

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inter- and tram-disciplinary, focusing on the organisation of knowledge for the task of building human systems. But a plan includes other elements of human experience besides knowledge; its immediate aim is not so much to convince but to motivate. This is the reason why (as some of the foremost philosophers of science and of planning agree) a plan can often be grasped best through a story which may be regarded as a holistic form of relating a plan, drawing on the resources of artistic expression. If we rely on planning alone we encounter a major difficulty. In a period of high-pitched dynamics in almost all human systems, the supreme challenge may be seen in a basic change from reactive attitudes to anticipatory action through long-range planning-but does this not require a maximum degree of reflective consciousness? Not only must we understand the consequences illu~nated by our enquiry with long-range scope, we must also believe in them to change our modes of behaviour and our courses of action. On the other hand, as a general characteristic, reflection often blocks action, as we certainly experience to an increasing and frustrating extent with our medium- and long-range plans. The only way out of this dilemma would be the building of human systems with more space for non-reflective engagement with life, for spontaneity and joy. But this does not yet answer the question of how to build these systems in other than reflective ways. Nor does that type of spontaneity seem to be the right answer which is cherished so much by parts of the younger generation today, a spontaneity which expresses itself through a naturalist ideal d Eu Rousseau, despises structure and retreats to raw forms and materials close to the chaos from which they originate (eg, in rock music), and neglects altogether the potentials, the challenge, and the current anthropological necessity of design. Rather, we may think of a kind of ‘super-experience’ through some form of ecstasis (which, literally translated, means ‘standing outside onself’). Such ecstasis may be recognised as the inner core of primitive rites as well as of antique mysteries and the Greek festival. In our days, Jerzy Grotowski’s theatre is perhaps the foremost example of such a total and ‘direct’ experience. Allen Ginsberg’s chanting sessions and, to a lesser degree, the Sunday services at the Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco and other church experiments aim in the same direction, What is approached here is the ultimate in non-reflective knowledge as evoked by the chorus in Sophocles’ Oed$us at Colonus: Not to be born surpasses thought and speech. The second best is to have seen the light And then to go back quickly whence we came. Our human systems have become too complex and too inter-related to be rebuilt in the happy artistic spirit which played such a prominent role in the design of temples, cathedrals, palaces, or whole cities in past times. These were systems with human dimensions, systems whose parts could be directly related to human life, functionally as well as aesthetically, mythically as well as anthropologically. Most of the systems we are building today will be inhabited by people with technologically extended capabilities, functions, and desires. The modes of design, appropriate for such systems, will have to be more complex too. Above all they will have to combine reflective and non-reflective inputs, planning and intuition, intellect and eras. No us-dimensional criterion will apply to FUTURES

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the assessment of such design tasks-the abominable results of the application of crude economic criteria to large parts of urban America are there to learn from. With new complex modes of design from where will the necessary creativity flow? Will we have to set our hopes, as in some sectoralised modes of enquiry, scientific-conceptual as well as artistic, on individual creativi@-or should we expect the emergence of some form of social creativity as it, to some extent, already characterises more complex and inter-disciplinary approaches to technology? Is individual creativity characteristic of non-reflective design and social creativity of reflective modes? Will we thus have to develop new modes of design so as to ensure interplay between both ? This would become in itself an important design principle for human systems, implying that cultural, political, social, and generally communicative structures will have to be built into human systems accordingly. We have to allow for chances for individual leadership and imagination in participative systems, we have to design policies so as to ensure the inflow of creative imagination as well as dynamic stability of these systems, and we have to design cultural bases which focus on creativity and communication rather than on egalitarian hedonistic ideals. Inter- and tram-experiential

enquiry

In an earlier paper, 26 I have attempted to sketch the organisation of ‘rational’ knowledge towards a human purpose by applying the structure of a multiechelon (multi-level, multi-goal, hierarchical) system (see Figure 1) .2’ Interdisciplinarity in this system constitutes a mode of organisation through the coordination of elements at one level from the next higher level (coordinationnot goal-setting or control!), and trans-disciplinarity extends this concept of organisation through coordination over the entire multi-level system. It is perhaps significant that Marney and Smith,2* for their approach to interdisciplinary synthesis, also use representation by a multi-echelon system, which

Horizonfalorganking languages: -

Anihrdpology

-c

-Planning

-

-Cybernetics

Logic

Figure 1. The organisation

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-

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seems to be a viable approach to discussing any kind of organisation towards a purpose, be it of physical, social, or noetic nature. Obviously, structured rationality alone- as much as it can enliven the role of the contemporary university and aid in orienting its basie functions towards a human purposwhas to be considered insufficient for design in a broader connotation. It seems worthwhile trying to extend the multi-echelon systems representation to a fuller spectrum of human experience. Figure 2 attempts to sketch such a scheme. In analogy to inter-disciplinarity, we may speak here of inter-experiential orgmisution, characterised by coordination of elements of human experience from the next higher level. Like inter-d~~iplinarity, this type of organisation is dynamic by nature, introducing a sense of direction as well as of development. Through coordination, the elements of human experience change to some extent in their concepts, substance, direction of development and modes of expression. We may say inter-experiential organisation changes the reality of human existence as we experience it and build it, It ties in with the same dialectic mode ofiterative alternation between appreciative and creative phases which we have identified above with the modes of both artistic and conceptualising scientific enquiry. We may stipulate now that design is inherently based on interexperiential organisation. What we also imply thereby is nothing less than that design changes the reality of human existence in its total context by changing not only the physical structures of our environment but also the ways in which we experience reality, cast it into knowledge concepts as well as into concepts of what we feel, want, and can do-in fact, by changing not only our ways of relating to reality but also ourselves. ~~~~-e~per~~~~u~ ~rgunisat~on, in analogy to trans-dis~ipli~ari~, we would then call the coordination of all systems elements and levels of experience-as it is the case within an intact cultural system. We may say, t~~~-expeT~e~t~~~en~ui~ is a mode of ~rg~n~s~~g~~~0~. Cultural design is inherently a trans-experiential challenge. To what extent trans-experiential organisation may affect systems elements at the lower levels becomes clear if we take a closer look at two notions at the ‘context of human existence’ level in Figure 2. As a human role, ‘Man as cybernetic actor in his world’ can be coordinated under a cultural heading favouring eco-systemic stability, the Promethean or Faustian notion of home faber which dominates Western culture, cannot. In the same way, it makes a vast difference whether what we want expresses itself as hope or as expectations. As Ivan Illich has pointed out 29 hope is subject to potential satisfaction, but expectations-at least the familiar “ever rising expectations” which are but “a euphemism for a growing frustration gap which is the motor of a society built on the co-production of services and increased demand’“--engender growth and fixation on ‘progress’ instead. Reflecting on the elements at the levelofbasic experience (the empirical level for rationality in Figure I), we realise at once how nebulous most of these forms of basic experience appear in our appreciation and how ineffectively they are used -if they are used at all-in our rationalised approaches to planning and action. For example, as Dubos 30 illustrates, we know next to nothing about the most important aspects of our biological nature, the genetic and psychological potentiafs and limitations of our adaptib~ity to changes in the environment. M7e know very little and probably underestimate considerably, the rudimentary

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Figure 2. Multi-echelon

systems

representation

of total human experience

and purposeful

activity

instincts still effective in us. In the realm of what we know, we generally exclude myths and common sense, forms of basic experience which were very important for the earlier phases of mankind’s psycho-social evolution. Thanks to Carl G. Jung we know something about our psychological and anthropological nature and how it expresses itselfin ‘archetypes’ but we hardly apply this knowledge to any design purpose except perhaps to advertisement and other forms of ‘manipulation of the subconscious’. In the domain of what we feel, the full meaning of eras has gone out of Western culture. We have become almost sterile in exploring and developing basic anthropomorphic modes of expression and communication such as languages, symbols and icons, forms of artistic expression, sexuality and even more trivial modes such as fashion, cooking, and celebrating-instead, we have shifted our interest to technomorphic modes of expression and communication such as computer languages and television. And we are apparently not at all clear about our biological, psychological, anthropological and social needs and desires. All these basic experiences can be animated, varied, explored and brought into play-whether consciously or not-through the human purposes implied in a living, dynamically developing culture. ‘Left alone’, many of them are driven to starvation and oblivion. At the level of the ‘represented context’ of human existence (in ‘rational’ connotation the pragmatic level), which stands for the world as we see it through our experience, we find today an uncoordinated conglomerate of human roles, of ‘wildgrowing’ technology and social ecology which fit human systems less and less, of frustrated inter-personal and downbroken intra-cultural communication, of sterile linearity in invention, and of proliferating, cancerous expectations. The picture we gain at this level may be regarded as typical for a cultural end-phase, not without beauty but certainly without hope for revival of the same cultural mode. This should not discourage us if we take up the challenge of transexperiential design all the way to the design of a new culture-on the contrary,

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it may facilitate the task. We are already experiencing a widespread frustration caused by the imposing presence of an almost ‘autonomously’ developing technology. In a trans-experiential context, technology will be seen primarily as a way in which Man relates to the world, as organisation of broad human experience. The task of designing a civilisation, at the next level, is now of uppermost interest in planning. This development in our consciousness has been triggered by the decay of old and the unsatisfactory design of new urban systems. However, it becomes immediately clear that the building of social systems has been increasingly forced into a straitjacket by policies and by a cultural background based on values and criteria focusing on growth and ever rising expectations. The automobile is an example of the technologies that provide the measure for so many of our present ‘human’ systems; it is dramatically clear that social systems design is a hopeless enterprise without the possibility of designing simultaneously policies (regulating principles) and indeed whole new cultures. The level of culture focuses finally on the ultimate purpose of human life. Fuzzy and inaccessible a notion as this may be, Man has made remarkable success in pursuing the idea of creating an anthropomorphic world to which he could relate meaningfully and which he could develop by bringing his own free will to the task. Art has started in this way as image-forming of a man-related world and technology goes back to the same origins. To understand better what is anthropomorphic, what is ‘good’ or ‘appropriate’ for Man, we need perhaps only to go back to the level of basic experience, to what we are, know, feel, can do and want. A graphic expression of that would perhaps be a direct feedback link between the lowest and the top levels, bypassing the rest of the system, as it is not shown in Figure 2. However, it constitutes the very essence of a multi-echelon system such as the one depicted, that the goals are not imposed from the top but that the coordination of all goals inherent in the system elements determines the overall goals and direction of the total system. We have only to repeat here Vickers’ notion of a shared appreciative system (the backbone of any culture), “carved out by our interests, structured by our expectations and evaluated by our standards ofjudgement”,31 to realise to what extent culture is determined by the ‘represented context’, shaped through. the ways in which we experience the world. A new culture will certainly change, to some extent, our basic experience and how we use it to relate to the worldbut, at the same time, our basic experience will influence very significantly what we adopt as a viable cultural design. Even from a cursory look at the scheme proposed in Figure 2, it becomes overwhelmingly clear that social systems design is not an isolated task in itself. Apart from questioning and redesigning both the context of human existence and the cultural basis design also deals with the steps of inter-experiential organisation linking the multi-echelon levels. It has even to start with them. In order to redesign the ‘represented context’ of human existence, we have to redesign the human relations which organ&e our experience into this context; this constitutes the first inter-experiential step from the lowest to the next higher level. And in order to design social systems, we have to design human instrumentalities-organisations with human and technological capabilities, aims, and modes of behaviour -along with their corresponding role patterns. This constitutes the second interexperiential step, organising the context of human existence into social systems.

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And finally we have to design policies which regulate these social systems over time in such a way that their performance is consistent with the purposes embedded in our design for culture and the meaning it attributes to human life. Designing policies means inheren~y nothing else but designing human institutions and their dynamic role patterns. This forms then the final inter-experiential step without which any design for a new culture-which has to be based on the organisation of human systems towards the inherent or avowed cultural purposes-will remain a futile exercise. We may state now that the overall challenge of human systems design ti im@lici@ the challenge of bans-experiential design, involving all levels and all forms of human experience and activity. And the latter challenge, in turn, is but a reformulation of Church-

man’s “challenge

to Reason”.32

Educationfordesi~-af~wpr~~a~~de~es The challenge formulated at the end of the preceding section constitutes a vast programme which needs to be structured. We may ask ourselves first what kind of improvement education for design is seeking to achieve in the human ‘material’ exposed to it. For an answer we may come up with the following two basic notions : l one principal aim of education is the enrichment of the substance and ‘effectiveness’ of total human experience in the designer. l the second principal aim of education is the enhancement of the designer’s capability to organise his total experience towards a purpose through inter- and trans-experiential modes of enquiry.

These aims correspond to different approaches to education for design. One focuses on the substance at the four system levels in Figure Z-an approach which the university has traditionally taken in the realm of ‘rational’ knowledge at the two lowest system levels. The other focuses on the three steps of interexperiential organisation between the system levels. There can be no doubt that the latter approach is the more important today since it enforces a dynamic attitude towards experience and implies an orientation towards a purpose, thus an orientation towards design. For the purposes of this paper, we shall consider three basic structures for education geared to the idea of design. These structures focus on: l the design of human relations as a mode of organising basic human experience into a ‘represented context’ of human existence; o the design of human instrumentalities and their role patterns as a mode of organising the ‘represented context’ of human existence into social systems; o and the design of human institutions and their role patterns as a mode of organising social systems through policies into culture.

Figure 3 depicts graphically how these three structures are supposed to bridge the system levels of Figure 2. In the earlier paper on a type of university geared to ‘rational’ knowledge, 33 I have proposed a corresponding triplicate structure of discipline-oriented departments, function-oriented departments, and systems laboratories. FUTURES

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K

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Focus of educational (processes)

Human systems levels r----‘I

I

I

Culture

L----J

Civilisation

r--_-

C

i_ “Represented context” of human existence Basic

experience

-r--’

______-_4 & _-____-__-___A

--,

1

I

,___~ r-^~ c--_, ,--__, : ; ; ++; ; : ;

L---l

L--A

!--__I

’,-___I

r ___,

r-_-,

r--~

____;

L--i

---J

(processes) activity

Design of human institutions Design of human instrumentalities

,

,_‘__(

II I, I2 I I L__: ;____Ii_-__.! L___l

Figure 3. Inter-experiential educational structures system of total human experience and purposeful

structures

in relation

Design of human relations

to the multi-echelon

In addressing education for the design of human relations, we mean not just interpersonal relations but the general ways in which Man relates to his world. This part of education might be viewed as beneficial to all people, not just future planners and designers. Basic to this part of the educational set-up for design is Ivan Illich’s notion that learning has become measurement. 34 Whereas primitive Man lived in a world without measure and was initiated into reality through rites which made him share mythically in the lives of the gods, learning became a process of measurement in the classical Greek culture. There, Man “measured the world with his body and discovered that the world was made to the measure of Man”. More recently, contemporary man has come to learn “that he is measured by the same scale which can also be applied to things”. We may also say, the place of Man as a measure for the world has been taken over by technology, whereby not only the familiar scales have been vastly extended but also quite new scales have been introduced. But it is not only the scale, it is the over-estimation of the very concept of measurement which is put in doubt today in the context of learning. For Illich35 again, “men and women who have been schooled down to size let unmeasured experience slip out of their hands . . . They do not have to be robbed of their creativity. Under instruction, they have unlearned to ‘do’ their thing or ‘be’ themselves and value only what has been made or could be made.” The resulting fragmentation of experience has already greatly impoverished human existence and its context. We may even speak of a linearity in the development of experience along a limited number of tracks, the same linearity which has trapped us into patterns of economic and technological growth. Nevertheless, measure is an important, if not all-encompassing, aspect of design and, depending on what we mean by design, it will be either human measure or the measure of things. In the latter case, consequently, we ought to speak of the design of technological systems to which Man is fitted, whether the subject is a plastic chair, a computer, a moon rocket, or a modern city. If we speak of human systems we mean the use of human measures. This does

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not imply throwing technology overboard-rather, it implies fitting technology to human functions and measures. At first look, the call for human measures may appear as retrogression-but we may also understand it as a new phase in a cyclical development. It implies also, quite generally, the acceptance of the conditio humana. In Greek tragedy, for example, freedom is gained by active acceptance of the laws of the gods, of the restrictions imposed on Man in building his anthropomorphic world. What a great thought for design! Freedom can only be gained in this way. “All human liberties are social artifacts”, says Vickers, “created, preserved and guaranteed by special social and political orders.“3s In human experience as much as in science it is common to discriminate between ‘specialists’-the intellectually or the aesthetically gifted, etc-and to favour a split of education into C. P. Snow’s ‘two cultures’, or even into more. This is one of the reasons behind the irrelevance of contemporary education. Norman Dalkey and Bernice Browns7 relate an interesting experiment conducted by the RAND Corporation with students from the Los Angeles area. These students were asked to enumerate and rank by means of a Delphi procedure-first, what they thought were the principal tasks of contemporary university. ‘Cognitive skills’ came out as the winner-no departure from the traditional focus of the university-and ‘communicative skills’ came ninth. Second, the same students were asked to state and rank in the same way what they thought should matter most in society in the near future. ‘Love’ came first, %uccess’ only sixth, ‘dominance’ ninth, etc. Asked whether they thought the functions of university today had anything to do with the society of tomorrow they answered in the a~rmative and requested a re-run of the first Delphi. ‘Communicative skills’ then came out first, ‘creativity’ second, and ‘cognitive skills’ shpped down to ninth place, by some irony exchanging its former position with ‘communicative skills’. A first-rate lesson for design. It is most significant that these students considered as the two most important foci of the university the principal relations in the domains of what we feel and what we can do, namely, communication and creativity. These have hardly found a place yet in higher education. Creativity, under some heading, is taught in management, organisational psychology, architecture, the fine arts-but it is hardly developed in a systematic way, as a means of relating to the whole world. And even less is done for ‘communicative skills’. Creativity has, inter a&a, to do with the development of new modes of expression and communication. In education for the arts or for architecture, this is sometimes recognised but hardly in the context of pur~seful organisation of all forms of basic experience. Richard Meier3* has observed that a significant shift has occurred in the background of students who leave conventional tracks and become the brilliant inter-disciplinary explorers and innovators. A decade ago, these were still the physical scientists who, in many cases, turned to areas of burning social concern and started to question in a penetrating way both existing human systems and current modes of their design, and attempted to develop some (mostly unsatisfactory and naively ‘scientific’) remedy. But in more recent years, according to Meier, these innovators who bridge the dissected disciplinary structure and other gaps and ‘can do everything’, have turned out to be the students who went through some basic education. in architecture ie, in human systems design.

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We are far from a systematic approach to education which would focus on human relations. As an interesting experiment, the undergraduate College of Creative Communication of the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, may be mentioned here. It blends communication sciences, literature and languages, history, philosophy, creative and performing arts-but hardly attempts to really integrate them in a purposeful way. Another remarkable approach is taken by the Evergreen College of Olympia, Washington, which started in the autumn of 197 1. It permits the largely unstructured exploration of areas of interest by the student himself, aided by the college on the grounds of an individual ‘contract’ set up with the student when he enters. The idea for an International Ecosystems University, planned for Marin County north of San Francisco, so far gives particular attention to the ~se~ib~isatio~’ of undergraduate students with the aim of enabling them to relate better to an eco-systemic ‘represented context’ of their world. Education geared to the development of human relations would have to mix formalised and non-formalised learning (living) through novel approaches. The trend among American students to acquire “living experience’ in between their formal studies, eg, by working in the sore spots of the social fabric and their demands for the acknowledgement of such living experience as part of the formal requirements of higher education seem to point in the right direction. Among the ‘rational’ topics which may, to some extent, be ‘taught’, those are of particular importance which emphasise the dynamic, organising and integrating aspects of human relations, They may include: + Human and environmental biology; l Psychology and psycho-analysis; l Behaviaural science; 0 Critique of empiricism; l Theory of reflective consciousness; l Theory of creativity; a Principles of eco-systems ; l Formation of myths ; l Cultural anthropology ; l Semiotics ; a Origin of the arts; l Forecasting methodology; l Aesthetics (from the view point of natural and anthropomorphic modes of expression) ; l Interfaces of human biology, psychology and aesthetics; l Communication theory and basic notions of cybernetics.

forms and

Edwatim design of humani~tr~~e~taz~t~esaddresses perhaps the crucial inter-experiential step in our struggle for meaningful design today. Here, Geoffrey Vickers’ notion of the essence of education3g is central: The screen of schemata through which we filter our experience 5s itself a product of the process which it mediates and, though tacit, can be developed by consciously exposing it to what we want to influence it’“, It is not sufficient to set norms and develop approaches to dreaming up social

for the

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designs which satisfy them. The central theme here is the design of human instrumentalities, of organisations of people, technologies, communication systems, ambitions, expectations, goals, feelings, etc. On the basis of constructive elements available in human beings as well as in the natural and the man-made world these instrumentalities develop their proper roles and, in interaction with each other, build and manage social systems. The focus of design is thus on the pattern of instrumental (or, in some cases, individual) role playing rather than on the structure of the system in question. Education, focusing on this second inter-experiential step and reaching up to the normative level, will centre on the key notion of a normative method yet to be fully developed. Such a method would attempt to systematise the enquiry into behavioural and structural norms expressed through instrumental (and individual) role players, it would attempt to translate human and institutional values into behavioural patterns regulated by norms, and it would set a framework for the development of alternative instrumental roles by enquiring into the capabilities, goals and modes of expression of individuals or human organisations, viewed along with their psychological, technological, anthropological, aesthetic, and social attitudes. The normative method would thus focus on Man together with his entire world context. In the realm of ‘rational’ knowledge, we may follow Marney and Smith*” in their call for innovation in the modification of alternative techniques of systems analysis based on objective-predictive and normative-prescriptive modes of enquiry, a development which has already started in forecasting and planning methodology. Although the involvement with real-life instrumentalities and systems and their design appears most essential to the educational tasks in this domain, a few topics may be enumerated which can be ‘taught’ to some extent: systems

Philosophy of rational creative (non-deterministic) planning and action; Innovation processes in the social, political, technological areas; 0 Political science (from a normative angle of view) ; l Advocacy, persuasion, motivation, self-motivation, coercion, etc; l Systems approach; l Organisation theory (with special focus on intra- and inter-organisational flexibility and modes of decentralising initiative) ; l Principles of complex dynamic systems (especially social systems) ; l Operations research and general approaches to systems analysis; l Forecasting methodology and theory of strategic planning; l Social indicators and general experiential indicators; l Concepts of social systems effectiveness and cost :benefit ; l Concepts of applied behavioural sciences; l Decision theory, decision and heuristic models, investment in dynamic systems, etc; l Decision-making processes, including ‘non-rational’ ones (rites, magic) ; l Rational approaches to resource allocation; l Science, technology and public policy; 0 Policy analysis. l

l

In educationfor the design of human institutions and their rolepatterns, finally, learning is essentially geared to a better understanding of the evolution of values. As we

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simulate the dynamic outcomes of bringing into play various value patternsthrough human institutions and their role playing-we try to match them with the purposes embedded in a cultural design. As new patterns of values emerge from this feedback process and are tested against new dynamic designs, we improve our understanding of their effect in role playing. The key notion for inter-experiential synthesis at this step would be an axiological method or value enquiry, which is yet to be built. It should be conceived so as to systematise enquiry about the nature of values represented by various institutional role players, relating them to their behaviour, forecasting their implications in an exploratory as well as normative sense and bringing them into play effectively. The axiological method would focus on the issue of regulation of policies for social systems. If we aim at a cultural basis favouring an eco-systemic perspective of regulation, ecology in a wide sense becomes the central notion. It embraces physical ecology (including the dynamic inter-relationships of both the natural and the man-made milieu), political ecology (which we may base on Vickers’ notion4r of the relations between ourselves as doers and as ‘done-by’), economic ecology (the relations between production and consumption activities), and the ecology of the appreciative system (again a notion proposed by Vickers, denoting the inner coherence of our systems of values and norms). In short we are dealing here with the ecology of human institutions for whose regulation Man has to assume the responsibility. The ethics of whole systems, Churchman’s notion42 which may also be considered in interaction with the above-mentioned normative method at the second interexperiential step, may become one of the key elements of an axiological method. It has the potential of accelerating and guiding cultural change as well as providing a driving force for the design of new cultural images. Ethics of whole systems is a vastly different concept from the traditional ethics of the individual prescribed within intact, static cultures by religions or ideologies. Taking the ethics of whole systems seriously implies facing moral issues of such dimensions as we normally avoid discussing or even recognising today. We may recognise here a new form of ‘existential’ pressure, comparable perhaps to the former pressures of a hostile environment and of scarcity which were counterbalanced by Man through the design of his cultures, of appreciative systems and means of communication which made it possible to define and secure Man’s world against the background of this existential experience-be it through myths, art, or technology. Besides the vast moral issues brought to us by the consequences of social system dynamics on the basis of Western growth-oriented culture, the pressures mounting within society and mankind due to the increasing gaps and the culturally conditioned phenomenon of ever rising expectations, may also lead to pressures of such an ‘existential’ quality. The essence of ‘pedagogy’ in this domain is practical design work in systems laboratories, relating the phenomenology of total dynamic behaviour of systems to their spatial and temporal morphology, and above all to the value patterns in action and expressed through the roles which human institutions assume and play. The aim is a better understanding of the interdependence of culture and social systems through policies, and of the possibilities and the feasibility of designing cultures and social systems in a feedback process.

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Education for Design

Some of the more ‘rational’

topics which enter here, may include:

Anthropology of the industrial and post-industrial society; Values and value dynamics; l Ethics (especially ethics of whole systems) ; l Philosophy of self-renewal; l Evolutionary concepts and trends (cosmological, biological, social, noetic, general experiential and value evolution) ; l Systems theory (general systems theory, feedback systems, hierarchical systems, etc) ; l Feedback and control theory, cybernetics in general; l Information theory; l Dynamic modelling (Systems dynamics, etc) ; l Theory of normative planning; l Institutions of industrial and post-industrial society and their changing role patterns; l Religions and ideologies (‘static’ policies) ; l Holistic interpretation of great art, religious and philosophical systems. l

l

Table 1 summarises the aims of education for design at the three interexperiential steps. The nature of learning may be understood now integrally as triplicate feedback interaction between ‘loops’ built on the same basic principle of iterating appreciative and creative phases. As we synthesise our basic experience into a ‘represented context’ of our world, measure evolves-human measure in this specific process. As we try to build social systems from this ‘represented context’, norms evolve. And as we aim at synthesising these social systems and their dynamic behaviour into a coherent cultural design, values evolve. The principal approaches to inter-experiential synthesis at these steps provide us also with key notions for education. Again, we find a triplicate feedback interaction, but here between ‘loops’ built on the common principle of cybernetic self-organisation through role playing. Human relations play such roles in conceptualising the ‘represented context’ on the basis of human experience; in this process, which we may label human cybernetics, the created context acts back on the basic experience and changes it to a certain extent whereby, in turn, the role playing

TABLE

FUTURES

1. FOCAL

NOTIONS

FOR EDUCATION AT THE THREE STEPS EXPERIENTIAL SYNTHESIS

Educationalstructure

Nature of learning

Design of human institutions Design of human instrumentalities Design of human relations

Evolution

of values

Evolution

of norms

Evolution

of measure

September 1972

OF INTER-

Principal approach to inter-experientialsynthesis Cultural cybernetics (axiological method) Social cybernetics (normative method) Human cybernetics (conceptual method)

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pattern of human relations changes. In ‘scientific’ terms this corresponds to the familiar conceptual method. The same basic process goes on at the step of human instrumentalities, where we may call it social ~beruetics, and where the ‘represented context’ and the tentative design of social systems are interlinked and change in a process kept in motion by the role playing of human instrumentalities. In ‘scientific’ terms we may hope here for a normative method which has yet to be perfected. And finally a process which may be called cultural cybernetics, characterises the design of cultures in a feedback loop with social systems and their policies, animated by the role playing of human institutions. The corresponding methodological approach may be called axiological method. The overall task of designing human system may thus be viewed as focusing main& on the design of processes rather than structures. The methods to be applied are therefore cybernetic rather than heuristic. Of course, the design of such feedback processes in the human, social, and cultural sphere involves the design of structures in so far as an initial system state and an initial role playing pattern have to be introduced, if they are not given by what exists-but none of these structures is supposed to remain fixed. It has to be kept in mind that the structures of which we are speaking here are primarily structures oftotal human experience at various levels and may be coupled to physical structures only incidentally. Physical structures tend to restrict the dynamics and full spectrum of possibilities of the processes. In the form of a side-remark only, it may be mentioned here that the proposed perspective of design entails enormous consequences for methodological development in forecasting-which has already found a formulation in cybernetic terms as evolving in a ‘loop’ of exploratory and normative modes-in planning, policy design and analysis, political science, law, economics, sociology, history, etc, but even more so in inter-dis~iplina~ approaches to human systems. Some branches of psychology, anthropology, and linguistics are already well advanced in exploring the cybernetic perspective mainly in the realm of what we have Whereas human cybernetics is thus halflabelled here human cybernetics. way established, and the challenge of social cybernetics has found the response of some of the best inter-disciplinary minds today, there is little awareness yet of the potentials and the necessity of cultural cybernetics. As backbone of the total and fully trans-experiential approach to design one may may conceive a comprehensive normative theory which has yet to be developed. For ‘rational’ knowledge, it would include five distinct classes of criteriaes: formal criteria (concerned with syntactical well-formedness and logical consistency) ; empirical criteria (concerned with conceptual reprodu~ibili~ and testability) ; pragmatic criteria (concerned with interpretability and practicability) ; aesthetic criteria (concerned with cybernetic elegance or simplicity) ; and evolutionary criteria (concerned with meliorative trend, or viability, and stable-optimal organisation) . From this enumeration, it becomes clear to what extent a general normative approach to total human experience would extend these ‘rational’ concepts. Whereas we may retain the classes of criteria, adding perhaps ethical criteria, the matter of concern for these criteria will change significantly if we extend the scope of enquiry. Certainly, logical consistency, reproducibility, interpretability, elegance, etc, are then no more essential. Instead, we may tentatively formulate :

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Education for Design

Formal criteria will be concerned with anthropomorphic form and measure; Empirical criteria will be concerned with comprehensiveness of human experience involved ; l Pragmatic criteria will be concerned with inter- and trans-experiential coordinability ; l Aesthetic criteria will be concerned with systemicity (consonance?, consistency ?, harmony ?-or generally composition ?) in the organisation of total human experience ; l Ethical criteria will be concerned with the improvement of whole human systems; l Evolutionary criteria will be concerned with meliorative trend and viability. l l

Most of what I have formulated in the earlier paper-44 on the general characteristics and aims of a process of higher education geared to inter- and transdisciplinary enquiry remains valid in the extended framework of education for design and even more so. The inter-experiential learning processes-through evolution of measure, norms, and values, respectively-cannot be the subject of teaching in the traditional sense, nor of training in the use of methods. The learning processes in school and in real life have to become identical, they have to be experienced themselves in order to become part of human experience. Whether the instrumental form in which this can be achieved best will be called a university or something else, and whether it will even faintly resemble a contemporary university or not, is of secondary importance. In any case, such an instrumentality will be part of human and social life-it will be political and an instrumental role player itself. And education of this scope in general will certainly play an institutional role of considerable importance in our search for viable cultural designs. As in the trans-disciplinary university, students may focus on one of the proposed educational structures only, ie, one step of inter-experiential synthesis, or may go through two or all three of them. They may ‘fluctuate’ between them, for example experimenting with the design of ‘soft’ institutions and policies, and interspersing this with studies in the design of ‘hard’ instrumentalities or elements of the ‘represented context’, such as technology. Industrial designers of the traditional type may stay within the ‘human relations’ section, whereas architects, city planners and social planners may focus on the ‘instrumentalities’ step, and some of them on the ‘institutions’ step. For all of them, the proposed approach to education may offer a broader basis of human experience and enhanced capabilities to apply it to design. What is missing altogether in the present picture is the cultural designer who focuses on human institutions and their roles. Yet without him even the bestmotivated and most sophisticated efforts of inter-experiential design will be rendered futile. Only trans-experiential synthesis, the coordination of total human experience and all forms of human systems is capable of providing that sense of purpose and meaning which characterises a viable culture. As I have stated already, design is inherently a trans-experiential challenge-if we fail to develop our responses to this challenge, above all in education, human experience and human systems will become ever more fragmented and further removed from a reality which appears to us as increasingly ‘inhuman’.

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References 1. Psychological schools have up to now concentrated on such a sectoralisation. As C. West Churchman discusses critically in his book ~~al~e~ge to Reason (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1968, paperback edition, page 97), even Carl G. Jung tried in his book Psy~ko~ogi~alTypes to break the human mind up into four separable functions : thinking, intuition, sensation, and feeling 2. Some of these inter-relations have been discussed in a very stimulating way in Martin Krieger, Planning and Feeling: Advice Giving in a Sexualised World, Centre for Planning and Development Research, University of California, Berkeley, 197 1. Book publication envisaged 3. Milton Marney and Nicholas M. Smith, Institutional Adaptation, Part II: Interdisciplinary Synthesis, Research Analysis Corporation, McLean, Virginia, 197 1, publication in preparation in Richard F. Ericson, ed, Toward Greater Social Relevance, Proceedings of the George Washington University Program of Policy Science and Technology (New York, Gordon and Breach, 1972) 4. Erich Jantsch. “Inter- and trans-discip~nary university: a systems approach to education and innovation”, PO& S ciences, Vol. 1, No. 4 (December 1970), pages 403-428. Also in Erich Jantsch, Tecknological Planning and Social Futures (London, Cassel/ABP, 1972) Chapters I5 and 16 5. Jean Piaget, in Harold A. Abramson, ed, Problems of Consciousness (Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, 1953), page 145. Quoted in Geoffrey Vickers, “A theory of reflective consciousness”, unpublished paper for the Burg Wartenstein symposium No. 40 on “The effects of conscious purpose on human adaptation”, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 16-25 July 1968, footnote 5 6. See Jay W. Forrester, World Dynamics (Cambridge, Allen-Wright, 1971). Industrial growth and increase in food production-avowed objectives of almost all parts of contemporary mankind-are demonstrated as the principal factors giving rise to future instabilities of cat~trophical dimensions in the global system 7. See Donald 1c. Michael, ‘i%e ~n~repared Society: ~~anni~g for a Pre~a~ous Future (New York, Basic Books, 1968) 8. Charles Reich, Tke Greening of America (New York, Random House, 1970) 9. This aspect is critically discussed in more detail in Erich Jantsch, op. cit. footnote 4 10. Johan Galtung, “On the future of human society”, Futures, Vol. 2, NO. 2, June 1970, pages 132-142 11. Hasan Oibekhan, guest lecture in the framework of the lecture course “TechnoDepartment of City and Regional logical and environmental forecasting”, Planning, University of California, Berkeley, 16 April 1971 12. See, for example, Teilhard de Chardin, Ike Future of Man (London, Collins, 1964) 13. The notion of a ‘guarantor’ of a system is elaborated in C. West Churchman, op. cit. footnote 1 14. Bertrand de Jouvenel, Arcadie: Essais sur le Mieux-Vivre, “Futuribles” series (Paris, SEDEIS, 1968) op. cit. footnote 1 15. C. West Churchman, 16. Geoffrey Vickers, Freedom in a Racking Boat: Changing Values in an Unstable Society (London, Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1970) page 93 I apply here the same 17. The term ‘policy” is widely misused and underrated. meaning as formulated by Geoffrey Vickers, op. cit. footnote 16, page 125 : “Policy (consists) in regulating a system over time in such a wav as to ontimise the realisalidn of many conflicting relations without wrecking the system in the process” 18. The term ‘represented context’ has also been proposed by Geoffrey Vickers, op. cit. footnote 16, page 82

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Education for Design

19. Geoffrey Vickers, “The tacit norm”, unpublished paper for the Burg Wartenstein symposium No. 44 on “The moral and aesthetic structure of human adaptation”, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 19-28 July 1969, page 19 20. Geoffrey Vickers, op. cit. footnote 19, page 15 21. Wilhelm FurtwZngler, Ton und Wart (Wiesbaden, Brockhaus, f 954) page 79 22. Geoffrey Vickers, op. cit. footnote 19, page 2 23. Paul K. Feyerabend, “Problems of empiricism, part II”, in The Nature and Function of Scientijc Theories: Essays in Contemporary Science and Philosophy (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970) page 78 24. Paul K. Feyerabend, “Theater als Ideolo~ekritik: Bemerkungen zu Ionesco”, in Die Ph~~osoph~eund die WissenscIzaften; Simon Moser zum 65. Ce~ur~tag (Meisenheim am Glan, Anton Hain, 1967) ; page 408 f. See also the same author’s paper with the significant title “On the improvement of the sciences and the arts and the possible identity of the two”, in R. Cohen and M. Wartofsky, eds, Boston Studies in the Philosophy Science, 111 (New York, 1968) 25. For a discussion of various aspects of normative planning, see: Erich Jantsch, ed, Perspectiues of Planning (Paris, OECD, 1969) ; in particular Hasan Ozbekhan’s contribution “Toward a general theory of planning”, pages 47-155 26. Erich Jantsch, op. cit. footnote 4 27. For the general mathematical theory of multi-echelon systems, see: M. D. Mesarovic, D. Macko and Y. Takahara, Theory of Hierarchical, Multilevel, Systems (New York, Academic Press, 1970) 28. Milton Marney and Nicholas M. Smith, op. cit. footnote 3 29. Ivan Illich, “The dawn of epimethean man”, paper contributed to the conference on Technology: Social Goals and Cultural Options, Aspen, Colorado, 29 August3 September 1970. Mimeographed version, page 3 f. 30. RenC Dubos, So Human an Animal (New York, Scribner, 1968) 3 1. Geoffrey Vickers, op. cit. footnote 16, page 98 32. C. West Churchman, op. cit. footnote 1 33. Erich Jantsch, op. cit. footnote 4, pages 421 ff. 34. Ivan Illich, op. cit. footnote 31, page 6 35. Ivan Illich, “Schooling: the ritual of progress”, Zze New York Review (New York), 3 December 1970, page 22 36. Geoffrey Vickers, op. cit. footnote 16, page 184 37. Norman Dalkey and Bernice Brown, oral communication, 1969 38. Richard L. Meier, oral communication, 1971 39. Geoffrey Vickers, op. cit. footnote 19, page 7 40. Milton Marney and Nicholas M. Smith, op. cit. footnote 3, page 45 41. Geoffrey Vickers, op. cit. footnote 16 42. C. West Churchman, op. cit. footnote 1 43. Milton Marney and Nicholas M. Smith, op. cit. footnote 3, page 45 44. Erich Jan&h, op. cit. footnote 4

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