For now, my formal department of study at the Weatherhead is “Information Systems.” It is in the context of this discipline that I’m taking a “Research and Methods” class. I am curious as to how this fits into management and more curious as to how this fits in with design.
The first reading for the “Research and Methods” class is Fred Kerlinger’s Behavioral Research: A Conceptual Approach, a pretty straightforward book on the fundamentals of behavioral sciences with some helpful comments on the natural sciences as well. What’s eerie to me is that the book starts off with the question, “How do we ‘know’ the world?” and two paragraphs later the author states, “Unfortunately, authority and ordinary observation are not always reliable guides.” It’s eerie because Descartes starts off his argument the same way: the issue of epistemology followed by skeptism. Perhaps this parallel is not surprising since Descartes’ method of argumentation is very scientific.
For the purposes of his book, Kerlinger specifically focuses on the behavioral sciences of psychology, sociology, and education. I cannot help but think that the dept of Information Systems thinks of itself as a type of behavioral science (hence, this among other assignments as my first set of readings). This is not surprising since thinking about management (and even design) as a “social science” is one powerful school of thought.
However, there are some very interesting parts of today’s reading that made me turn my head in wonder as I tried to grasp how this relates to the Weatherhead’s theme of “Managing as Designing” as well as to the discipline of design as a whole. This cautious reflection is probably best summarized in one of the first phrases I underlined in the first chapter of today’s reading:
“To measure aspects of human behavior …”
I am curious to see how this will unravel and help shape my studies. Afterall, if there is a dialectic aspect to this, I can agree that human behavior is something that resonates with me – this is what interaction design is all about.
Some other interesting thoughts:
- “Relation” is probably the most fundamental word in science. The only way to explain anything is to determine how that thing relates to other things (to understand a phenomenon, one has to find out how it relates to other phenomena).
- “Variables” are concepts/constructs.
- Virtually no scientific knowledge would be possible if phenomena did not vary. The psychologist could not study intelligence unless people varied in intelligence. I wonder if pluralism (in design) works the same way.
- Kerlinger argues that the purpose of science is theory (A theory is a systematic account of the relations among a set of variables) and explanation. I think by theory, he’s talking about a framework. What’s interesting is that he disagrees with those who state that the purpose of science is to better humanity – this is not the purpose but a by product. I wonder if the same could be said of design although I would argue that explanation is not an essential purpose of design since design’s strength does not come from analyzing the natural world and laws.