Abstract
We introduce the notion of generic design from a new perspective, though the term does have a history in fields like systems science and along somewhat different paths in cognitive science, artificial intelligence and software engineering. For the latter, it was hypothesized as a unique type of thinking with similarities among design activities in different situations but with crucial differences between these and other cognitive activities. For the former, it was an approach to management of complexity through systems design via socialtechnical systems theory. The focus of our work is different from both. We do not investigate design as a unique type of activity, though we do not deny that it could be. Also, our work is not solely ensconced in a social-technical system. For us, the latter can also be seen as a physical and/or biological system from which materials for new construction can also be employed. Also for us, the arts are as important to address as science or engineering. Our work is generic because it does not start by limiting itself to designated disciplines or paradigms, fields or domains. Rather for us, generic design supposes an encompassing multi-disciplinary, multi-field approach for dealing with the ever-growing number and diversity of knowledge islands that are becoming more interconnected with support for going somewhat native. We also show how generic design participates in the qualitative or what are sometimes called incommensurable paradigmatic shifts in which knowledge grows. We begin development of generic design by combining philosophy and engineering, situating them in craftwork through the use of an integrative object from the construction crafts – scaffolding. Scaffolding becomes a way station between knowledge in its current state toward new conceptions under development. This paper is itself a way station, which links generic design with developments in philosophy (Wittgenstein, Poincare and Laruelle), in science (Poincare and Einstein) and engineering (dimensionless numbers).
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Notes
- 1.
Way Station is a 1963 science fiction novel by American writer Clifford D. Simak. Travelers arrive at the way station by a form of teleportation via duplication, where the original body remains at the source and a new live copy is created at the destination.
- 2.
Generic statements that express generalizations are non-totalizing because unlike quantified statements, they do not carry information about how many members of the kind or category have a specific property.
- 3.
These hyperbolic but still logical operations will be discussed in section on Einstein’s breakthroughs in physics.
- 4.
See Sect. 18.2.3 and especially the discussion on Wittgenstein’s use of scaffolding.
- 5.
Introduction aux sciences génériques[Introduction to Generic Science], Pétra, Paris 2008; Philosophie non-standard: générique, quantique, philo-fiction [Non-Standard Philosophy: Generic, Quantum, Philo-Fiction], Paris, Kimé, 2010.
- 6.
Although historians cannot be certain of prehistoric scaffolding use, archaeologists suspect that some form of scaffold system was in place for cave paintings. Indentations, which are suspected to be socket holes, were discovered at the Lascaux Caves in France over 17,000 years ago. These paintings extend onto the ceiling of the cave, and it is thought that the artist would have required scaffolding to paint the images found there. Herodotus writing about the pyramids of ancient Egyptians either related that they used light scaffold as a means for lifting heavy blocks from step to step. He wrote that their scaffold was intentionally lightweight so that it could be easily moved straight up to the next step (Herodotus, Histories, 2.125). There is documented evidence of scaffolding systems being used in ancient Greece both in art (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Foundry_Cup) and architecture (https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/grarc/hd_grarc.htm).
- 7.
Some prefer to call it a network, e.g., a semantic network. For current purposes, we consider structure and network interchangeable.
- 8.
We use craftship instead of craftsmanship because it applies both to men and women.
- 9.
- 10.
In this sense, the sake of the craft essentially involves the people who will use its products, so it is also for the sake of these people and more generally for the sake of all humanity who use craft products.
- 11.
For an interpretation of De architectura as something more politically grandiose than as simply a manual for architects and engineers see Vitruvius: Writing the Body of Architecture by Indra Kagis McEwen.
- 12.
Monarch and Subrahmanian have combined their backgrounds in software engineering and engineering design research with historically based philosophy of science ((Kuhn 1962; Foucault 1969; Feyerabend 1975) and (Sellars 1973, 1968)) through a series of case studies describing their design interventions in various engineering companies.
- 13.
Floyd refers the reader of her article to (Wittgenstein 2009) §§240–242 and xi §§345–362).
- 14.
Rails is a Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern, providing default structures for database, web and web pages. It encourages and facilitates the use of web standards such as JSON or XML for data transfer, HTML, CSS and JavaScript for user interfacing. Rails also emphasizes the use of other well-known software engineeringpatterns, such as Convention over Configuration (CoC).
- 15.
Here generalization is playing much the same the role it played for Poincare.
- 16.
Note the relationship to dimensional analysis to be discussed later.
- 17.
See Generic Design Process in Architecture and Engineering (Bucciarelli et al. 1987)
- 18.
Starting in the 1830s Redtenbacker began collecting and organizing practical and empirical knowledge on machine design and the disciplinary knowledge of hydrodynamics and classical mechanics that were seeped in geometry and algebra (Wauer et al. 2009).
- 19.
See the article by J. C. Reddy et al., “Designing as Building and ReUsing of Artifact Theories: Understanding and Support of Design Knowledge (Reddy et al. 1997).
- 20.
Fourier was the first astute observer to notice “that the equations by which the relation of the component parts of the system is analyzed are expressed in such a general form that they remain true when the size of the fundamental units is changed.” (Macagno 1971)
- 21.
Think of Plato’s design of the Republic and or the systems philosophy of Buckminster Fuller’s spaceship earth – both fictions but meant to have real effect
- 22.
- 23.
Two of us (Mambrini-Doudet and Schmid) have already worked on extending Francois Laruelle’s non-standard philosophy. Laruelle’s project combines philosophy with external knowledge usually from scientific disciplines creating what he calls generic science (see the Glossary of the Generic Quantum in (Laruelle 2010 translated online https://differendkomplex.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/glossary-of-the-generic-quantum12.docx). Focusing on quantum theoretical concepts produces non-standard philosophy. Its extension on the part of two of us became generic epistemology with an emphasis on interdisciplinarity and collective intimacy (Schmid et al. 2016; Schmid and Hatchuel 2014; Schmid and Mambini 2019).
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Monarch, I., Subrahmanian, E., Schmid, AF., Mambrini-Doudet, M. (2021). The Discrete Scaffold for Generic Design, an Interdisciplinary Craft Work for the Future. In: Pirtle, Z., Tomblin, D., Madhavan, G. (eds) Engineering and Philosophy. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 37. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70099-7_18
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