Archive
January 21, 2021
Not Knowing
(Knowing)
“The future is uncertain… but this uncertainty is at the very heart of human creativity” Ilya Prigogine
“Love and Fear in the Lab” is a song written and performed by physicist and improviser Uri Alon. Coming from a very synthetic orientation seeking to integrate the tacit emotional and subjective experiences of the process of science into the tacit norms of science, Alon has created several important distinctions to support a collective process of changing the culture of science. Because he had first-hand experience with both science and improvisational theater, he was able to make novel connections that would not have been possible without his first-hand, embodied understandings of these apparently different kinds of processes. Uri Alon describes the space of risk and not knowing that occurs when our linear mental schema of the relationship between problem and solution is complicated by not knowing —by not having the answer. He refers to this fuzzy, scary unscripted space that defines the boundary between the known and the unknown as “The Cloud”. By acknowledging that the subjective experience of not knowing is a normal, perhaps inevitable aspect of the process of science and giving it a name, he is convening a conversation about shifting the culture of science from a “results model” to a “process model”. In Normal Science, scientific inquiry is commonly presented as an end result. This can give rise to the perception that the inquiry led directly to a “solution”. It foregrounds the destination rather than the journey. In reality, science is much more creative and nonlinear that it may appear. As a matter of fact, discovery, according to Uri Alon, entails “changing our minds” which is a way of finding value in uncertainty. Watch his self revealing talk from TED Global 2013 “Why truly innovative science demands a leap into the unknown”
As you know, the culture of professional design is similarly transitioning from an emphasis on products and outcomes to an emphasis on processes and possibilities, and from problem solving to opportunity finding. You may recognize that as a creative designer you are no stranger to “The Cloud” and in fact you know it quite intimately. Although we may not welcome the arrival of the space of not knowing, with experience we gain trust that the cloud is where we let go of all our frameworks, handholds and interpretations in order to allow nonlinear creative emergence. Innovations in product and service design, biotechnology in medicine, music and pop culture originate in “the cloud” the space of pure creative potential. Designers and other creatives find that as their capacity to address complex systems expands, they are better able to tolerate the ambiguity that inevitably arises whenever we work within complex open systems. Stepping out of known categories and typologies, letting go of familiar toolkits and practices and pushing designing into the unknown and scary territories is the way of true innovators.
Truth and certainty are among the most cherished ideals of modernity, so it’s sometimes easy to lose sight of the fact that uncertainty is a source of great wisdom. Writing in the early 19th century, English Romantic poet John Keats use the term “negative capability” to describe the ability of artists to remain open to and curious about the world as opposed to categorizing and theorizing about the world. This embrace of not knowing over knowing has been very influential on theories and philosophies of creativity. Negative capability can be defined as a active stance that reframes our mental tendencies to see systems and structures as fixed and stable and category and in nature. Negative capability brings wonderment, awe and play to the foreground of our experience. Negative capability eschews unifying theories in favor of direct personal experience. Developmentally oriented design researcher and educator Nigel Cross dedicated his career to understanding how designers make sense of and operate in the world. His “Designerly Ways of Knowing” distinguished the practices of design from the practices of Sciences, Arts and Humanities. His term ‘constructive thinking’ has been compared to C.S. Peirce’s definition of abductive reasoning. Various authors (Morello, Cross, Simon, Martin) have characterized design as demonstrative of C.S. Peirce’s abductive reasoning model. Our inadequate understanding and appreciation for the value of constructive thinking, otherwise known as guessing, can be attributed, according to Cross, to the dominance of other, qualitatively different types of cognition (the formal and operational in Piaget’s terms). Cross asserts that the concrete/iconic (Piaget/Bruner) modes of cognition are highly developed in design practitioners.
That state of uncertainty, which feels fuzzy, unstable and awkward, yet is also the source of breakthrough insight, is arrived at by means of ‘abductive reasoning’ according to philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce distinguished abductive reasoning from the more familiar deductive and inductive reasoning logics. Where deduction reasons from the general to the particular, and induction reasons from the particular to the general, abduction reasons via contextual inference — otherwise known as guessing. In a world where truth and certainty are highly valued, guessing might not sound like much, but it’s actually the secret sauce behind the way designers think and work. Guessing comes out of contexts of limited information and not knowing. Guessing is not an inferior way of knowing but rather a nonlinear way of knowing.
Retroduction is a synonym for abduction, more commonly known as guessing. The term retroduction highlights the retroactive aspect of sensemaking to discover why patterns occur. This forensic or MacGyver-like logic is the default modality of many working designers. Richard Buchanan has noted that reverse engineering, hacking and steam punk all make use of forensic, evidence-based starting points for designing processes.1 Due to the interlocking nature of our design challenges, retroductive design thinking aids in framing design briefs, pattern analysis, ideation, prototyping, and testing. Whether you’re designing a learning system for a toddler or public way finding system for public transit, guessing from the point of view of contextual informance, is an essential capacity. The ability to enter “the cloud” surrendered to not knowing is a key capacity of contemporary designers while the inability to tolerate uncertainty is a serious hindrance to innovation.
Buchanan?↩︎
Previous post Naturing - Artificing “There is no such thing as an empty word, only one that is worn out yet remains full.” ― Martin Heidegger Nature is Mother Next post Reflecting (Acting) Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought. Henri Bergson (1859 - 1941) Insanity can be defined as repeating the same