Abstract
With this volume we present 24 contributions to the philosophy of design. Design is an emerging topic in philosophy and not yet one on which work is shaped by a common set of questions or by an academically entrenched discipline of philosophy of design. We therefore consider it an effort in itself that we can present 24 contributions. Throughout the years we have approached in our careers design from our separate disciplinary perspectives and probed whether design was becoming a more general topic of philosophical reflection. One of us (Pieter) is working in a philosophy department and analyzed design as part of a larger project within the philosophy of technology. This has led to a predecessor volume on the philosophy of design (Vermaas et al. 2008), to analyses of design (Houkes and Vermaas 2010), to joint work with design researchers on the structure of design (e.g., Vermaas and Dorst 2007), and to the creation of the Design Research Foundations book series, in which this volume has appeared. The second of us (Stéphane) has worked first as a ‘philosophy applied to design’ teacher (Vial 2015c) and now is working in a design department and in a design research center. He analyzed design from a phenomenological perspective and contributed to developing the knowledge of design in France. These efforts led to a monograph about how to design affects, structures, and frames experience (Vial 2010) and to the founding of the French-speaking journal Sciences du Design edited by Stéphane (Vial 2017).
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
“The technical language of philosophy represents attempts of various schools of thought to obtain explicit expression of general ideas presupposed by the facts of experience” (Whitehead 1978, p. 12).
References
Cross, N. (2006). Designerly ways of knowing. London: Springer.
Dorst, K. (2008). Design research: A revolution-waiting-to-happen. Design Studies, 29(1), 4–11.
Findeli, A. (1998). Will design ever become a science? In P. Strandman (Ed.), No guru, no method: Discussion on art and design (pp. 63–69). Helsinki: UIAH.
Findeli, A. (2010). Searching for design research questions: Some conceptual clarifications. In R. Chow, G. Joost, & W. Jonas (Eds.), Questions, hypotheses & conjectures: Discussions on projects by early stage and senior design researchers (pp. 286–303). Bloomington: iUniverse.
Frayling, C. (1993). Research in art and design. Royal College of Art Research Papers, 1(1), 1–5.
Friedman, B., Kahn, P. H., Jr., & Borning, A. (2006). Value sensitive design and information systems. In P. Zhang & D. Galletta (Eds.), Human-computer interaction in management information systems: Foundations (pp. 348–372). Armonk: M.E. Sharpe.
Houkes, W., & Vermaas, P. E. (2010). Technical functions: On the use and design of artefacts. Dordrecht: Springer.
Ihde, D. (1990). Technology and the lifeworld: From garden to earth. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Ihde, D. (2008). The designer fallacy and technological imagination. In P. E. Vermaas, P. Kroes, A. Light, & S. A. Moore (Eds.), Philosophy and design: From engineering to architecture (pp. 51–60). Dordrecht: Springer.
Kroes, P. A., & Meijers, A. W. M. (2006). The dual nature of technical artefacts. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 37, 1–4.
Petroski, H. (1992). To engineer is human: The role of failure in successful design (2nd ed.). New York: Vintage Books.
Ritchey, T. (2013). Wicked problems. Acta Morphologica Generalis, 2(1).
Rittel, H., & Webber, M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4, 155–169.
Seepersad, C. C., Pedersen, K., Emblemsvåg, J., Bailey, R., Allen, J. K., & Mistree, F. (2006). The validation square: How does one verify and validate a design method? In K. E. Lewis, W. Chen, & L. C. Schmidt (Eds.), Decision making in engineering Design (pp. 303–314). ASME.
Simon, H. A. (1996). The sciences of the artificial (3rd ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Uexküll Von, J. (1934). Mondes animaux et monde humain. Paris: Denoël.
Van de Poel, I. (2013). Why new technologies should be conceived as social experiments. Ethics, Policy & Environment, 16(3), 352–355.
Van den Hoven, J., Vermaas, P. E., & van de Poel, I. (Eds.). (2015). Handbook of ethics, values and technological design. Dordrecht: Springer.
Van der Hoeven, F. (2011). Mind the evaluation gap: Reviewing the assessment of architectural research in the Netherlands. Architectural Research Quarterly, 15, 177–187.
Verbeek, P.-P. (2005). What things do: Philosophical reflections on technology, agency, and design. Penn State: Penn State. University Press.
Vermaas, P. E. (1999). A philosopher’s understanding of quantum mechanics: Possibilities and impossibilities of a modal interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vermaas, P. E. (2016). A logical critique of the expert position in design research: Beyond expert justification of design methods and towards empirical validation. Design Science, 2, e7.
Vermaas, P. E., & Dorst, K. (2007). On the conceptual framework of John Gero’s FBS-model and the prescriptive aims of design methodology. Design Studies, 28, 133–157.
Vermaas, P. E., Kroes, P., Light, A., & Moore, S. A. (Eds.). (2008). Philosophy and design: From engineering to architecture. Dordrecht: Springer.
Vial, S. (2010). Court traité du design. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Vial, S. (2012). The structure of the digital revolution. PhD in Philosophy thesis defended on November 21, 2012. Paris: Paris Descartes University.
Vial, S. (2013). L’être et l’écran: Comment le numérique change la perception. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Second revised edition 2017.
Vial, S. (2015a). The effect of design: A phenomenological contribution to the quiddity of design presented in geometrical order. Artifact, III(4), 4.1–4.6. Online: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/artifact/article/view/5137/25631.
Vial, S. (2015). Le design. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Online: https://www.cairn.info/le-design--9782130620433.htm. Second revised edition 2017.
Vial, S. (2015c). Philosophy applied to design: A design research teaching method. Design Studies, 37, 59–66. Online: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142694X15000022.
Vial, S. (2017). A Look at design research in France through design journals: Building a design discipline. She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, 3(2), 146–156: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405872616300478
Volti, R. (1992). Society and technological change (2nd ed.). New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Weinberg, A. M. (1966). Can technology replace social engineering? Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 22(10), 4–8.
Whitehead, A. N. (1978). Process and reality: An essay in cosmology. New York: The Free Press. (first original ed. 1929).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Vermaas, P.E., Vial, S. (2018). Towards a Philosophy of Design. In: Vermaas, P., Vial, S. (eds) Advancements in the Philosophy of Design. Design Research Foundations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73302-9_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73302-9_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-73301-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-73302-9
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)