I have been having sporadic email conversations with Elliott lately and we’ve been talking about some interesting things. Particularly, he has some interesting things to say about thought and action. This topic has been of interest to me and I have blogged about it before under a different title of Theory & Practice.
Elliott writes,
… I quoted Bruce Lee from an interview he did on how martial arts are basically systems to connect the self with actions. He spoke about how thought is usually the intermediary between the self and action, and by creating a tool, a system, such as a martial art and learning to bypass thought and just act, people can be truly expressive of themselves and their true selves. I have definitely experienced this, not in any Eastern martial art i have taken, but in capoeira, which is a Brazilian “dance” comprised of attacks and defenses. I have always been able to tell a lot about someone’s personality by the way they perform in the Rhoda (sparing session).
This conversation reminds me of the anonymous quote,
Sow a thought; reap an action
Sow an action; reap a habit
Sow a habit; reap a character
Sow a character; reap a destiny
Thought and action/theory and practice/thinking and feeling, have been the center of debate and investigation for … a long time. In the design world, some frequent questions that rise again and again is, what is design research? Is it theory or practice? Do designers contribute to theory by their practice? Or is there a more deliberate way to contribute to design theory?
As Elliott observes, there is a distinction between method and art. In the design world, there is much talk of methodologies. In some ways, the heuristic evaluations, the focus groups, the card sortings are all part of this bucket. What if design were an art? Like the martial arts, with years of practice and habit, can design become second nature, beyond just a series of habits?
I remember Dick saying that in the Middle Ages, there were 3 or 4 core arts. I have them in my notes somewhere, but his mentor, Richard McKeon, really delved into the Middle Ages. Medicine was an art as was the study of law. Then there was also theology. People back then didn’t study specific categories of thought like we do today in our respective specialized professions. There is also the old form of architecture called architectonics … which was a generalized study of all sorts of things, a meta-design. These arts produced a different breed of intellectuals; I believe this form of education is what produced the da Vincis and Thomas Jeffersons in times past, people who were able to master a higher form of learning and “play” in any field of subject matter.
I am trying to read a book by McKeon called Rhetoric: Essays on Invention and Discovery as well as the Howard Fineman’s The Thirteen American Arguments: Enduring Debates That Define and Inspire Our Country.