[2]Cf. the recognition of the problem in the systems approach, when noting that the first three things to be done by the designer, according the definition of design, include the phrases "attempts to", "tries to", and "aims at" or, quoting: "The point is that the designer tries to do these three things, but may not succeed. If the phrases had been omitted, then we should have been caught in the awkward position of saying that design behavior occurs only when it is completely successful, i.e. never. Indeed it is important at the outset to recognize that there are many degrees of design, depending upon a person's interest in the three efforts, as well as the amount of success he attains in them" (Churchman, 1971, p. 5, my emphasis). The awkward implication of this definition is that it suggests that the amount of tinkering and bricolage needed later depends of the designer's prior interest in making certain kinds of effort.

[3]Such approaches, that are not necessarily equivalent to what I have called elsewhere Don Juan syndrome (Ivanov, 1986, pp. 135, 139, 159), seem to be on the order of the day. I edit and translate from the call, or, rather, the newspaper advertisement (in the Swedish newspaper VK, 6 September. 1997, p. 14) for a commercial IT-conference where a couple of IT-researchers, supposedly in their own words, present their lectures:

IT will not deal anymore with "use" and "adaptation" of organizations to technological change. There will be no more "problems" to be "solved" by purchasing IT-solutions. The new IT-strategy will rely on the creation of the unique and unexpected...The industrial society's old view of thinking before acting does not work in the new service society. Thought and action must become one. Budgets are only made by those who do not dare to act, and must be done, rather, on-line. We want to achieve simultaneity in everything we do.

[4]See, however, the post-modern paradoxical appeal for so-called weak feeble thinking in e.g. Sotto (1990), following among others the Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo's ideas exposed also in his later book Credere di credere (Believe to believe).

[5]By ancient Chinese thinking this work intends (Jullien, 1996, pp. 9-10) several classical Chinese texts, most of them dated between the 6th and 4th century B.C., including "moralists" like Mencius, and power-war "realists", dealing with war, politics, diplomacy, power, and the word ("information"). These include the Sunzi or Sun-Tzu, SunBin or Sun Pin, Han Feizi, Gui gu zi or Guiguzi, and the Laozi or Lao-tzu (Te-tao ching). Specifically ethical aspects are dealt with in another parallel work by the same author (Jullien, 1995), whose content should ideally have been incorporated in this essay. The question of the extent to which these ancient texts are relevant to Chinese culture in general and to present times is supposedly analogue to the corresponding question of the influence of the Bible and Greek philosophy upon Western thought.

[6]The reader can support the understanding of this extremely complex discussion by going to the sources with which I have myself struggled in earlier similar system-contexts (Aristotle, 1984, vol. 2, Nic. Eth. VI, 1139-1145, esp. 1140b1) and earlier related texts (Plato, 1961, Statesman, esp. 257-288, being an example). An in-depth review integrating later philosophical thought is found in Aubenque (1993). Scandinavian readers can see an example of this kind of intellectual struggle in the doctoral dissertation by J. Ramirez (1995). The English translation of Aristotle referred here mentions two kinds of knowledge or "states by which the soul possesses truth": (1) knowledge as theory, science, contemplation, and (2) art, poiesis, aesthetics, or making products. They are supplemented by (3) practical wisdom or phronesis, doing ethical actions, completing and adapting general knowledge to action in particular situations, and, finally, by (4) philosophical wisdom constituted of comprehension and knowledge, not only about what follows from first principles, but also about their truth. Cf. this 4-dimensional conception of knowledge and truth with contemporaneous methodological theorizing on "double knowledge interest" in terms general theory and particular practice, or on "trilateral truth" in terms of correspondence, meaning, and practical use. The text that follows here indicates that these knowledge problems are more complex than the development of "Chinese" theory-in-use, knowledge-in-action or reflection-in-action that would contribute to bridge the gap between a private and a public rationality, or, rather, knowledge, a gap which has been already sharply contested in the systems context (Churchman, 1971, pp. 154-156). Aristotelian ethics also stands at the basis of Roman Law and Western notions of personal responsibility, e.g. in relation to coercion and intended vs. unintended consequences of action. Cf. the theorizing of later strategic and IT-design approaches about freedom of action vs. its dependence upon coercion or so-called formative contexts in face of shift-and-drift of technology.

[7]Similar phenomena concerning obstructive and manipulative communication have already been noted in the IT and system context under the label of "conversation killing" (Churchman, 1979, p.118f; Churchman, 1982, p. 57; Ivanov, 1993, notes 30-31; Nordström, 1990).

[8]I will return to this matter in this paper's conclusions. Cf. "The Eastern attitude violates the specifically Christian values, and it is no good blinking this fact. If our new attitude is to be genuine, i.e., grounded in our own history, it must be acquired with full consciousness of the Christian values and of the conflict between them and the introverted attitude of the East. We must get at the Eastern values from within and not from without, seeking them in ourselves...(Jung, 1953-1979, vol. 11, On "The Tibetan book of the Great Liberation", 773). In Christian terms it is probably a matter of replacement of the Christian couple love-justice by the pagan couple justice-power, whereby justice easily gets identified with power as in positive law.

[9](Gras, 1997). In order to appreciate the complexity of the issue in terms of trust, cf. Huemer (1997). The traditional scientific counterpart of trust, with political implications, is found in some discussions of methodological confidence in the gap between the general and particular, the public and the private, within the frame of a complex philosophical historical development (Churchman, 1971, p. 111-115 and following chapters) that is often ignored and bypassed in Western applications of "Chinese" thought.

[10]For a better appreciation of these thoughts about action please compare them with another Eastern parallel approach as in the Hindu Bhagavad-gita: "He who in action sees inaction and action in inaction, he is wise among men..." (Radhakrishnan, 1949, IV.18, p. 163). Cf. also the ethical difficulties implied by today's theorizing about the so-called epistemology of practice and theories-in-use, as well as about the clash between ideals plus actions-repertoire (cf. Weltanschauung in Hegelian inquiring systems in Churchman, 1971, p. 169, and freedom of action or degrees of freedom in design), and the situation.

[11]It has been suggested (Svensson, 1997) that the weakening of the concept of guilt and personal responsibility in the context of the vicissitudes of architectural and city-planning aesthetics, has crept into Swedish law and criminal justice. It implied the replacement of punishment by a well-meaning but subtly totalitarian sort of "aesthetic" rehabilitation in the form of hospitalization, or expert care of criminals. A possibly "oriental" twist in our ethics seems to be consistent with such tendencies. Cf. the reference later in this paper to the scandal on eugenic sterilization in favor of the beauty of the Swedish human material. Further, a claim has been raised by some that private rationality, that does not exist prior to action taking place, enhances the taking of personal responsibility since the individual cannot blame the public rationality of (moral) rules and methods that he otherwise would follow. In the absence of grand philosophical syntheses it is, however, easy to guess that the belief in a private "aesthetic" rationality can as well contribute to undermine personal responsibility, opening the way to a consequent care and hospitalization, or an equivalent dependency on the State. This would explain how an apparent freedom of citizens in a democratic society can go hand in hand with the surrender of the freedom of the subject. I will return to the matter in the conclusions of this paper.

[12]Some features of romanticism are found in the coming pages of the present text. Extensive characterizations of related post-modernism can be found in the polemics around it, as in Norris (1990) and Gellner (1992), as well as in encyclopedic dictionaries like Honderich (1995) where, for instance one reads the following:

In its broad usage, this is the "family resemblance" term deployed in a variety of contexts (architecture, painting, music, poetry, fiction, etc.) for things which seemed to be related - if at all - by a laid-back pluralism of styles and a vague desire to have done with the pretensions of high-modernist culture. In philosophical terms post-modernism shares something with the critique of Enlightenment values and truth-claims mounted by thinkers of a liberal-communitarian persuasion: also with neo-pragmatists like Richard Rorty who welcome the end of philosophy's presumptive role as a privileged, truth-telling discourse. There is another point of contact with post-modern fiction and art in the current preoccupation, among some philosophers, with themes of "self-reflexivity" [cf. autopoietic "fundamental circularity", self-organization, and self-reference, my remark], or the puzzles induced by allowing language to become the object of its own scrutiny in a kind of dizzying rhetorical regress [cf. post-modern deconstruction]. To this extent post-modernism might seem as a ludic [cf. bricolage] development of the so-called "linguistic turn" that has characterized much philosophical thinking of late.

[13]Possible examples are Longueness, (1993), Gramont (1996), Frank (1994), and Benoist (1996). As an indication of the relevance of Kant's third Critique to discussions on virtual reality (VR) in science, see the reference to Longuenesse in Jean-Michel Besnier's introduction to Cohen-Tannoudji (1995, p. 12). In its extension, and in the extensions of the present paper, we can envisage informed and advanced inquiries about, for instance, the role of hypermedial sensory stimulation for enhancing creativity and right intuitions in design and planning.

[14]Please note the possibility of defining a classical hermeneutics as opposed to a post-modern hermeneutics, that approaches pragmatism insofar it leads to a non-relative concept of culture, and to a cultural analysis that is as much action-oriented as the action science generated by pragmatism (cf. religious missionary activities).

[15]Cf. the reference, in the context of the systems approach, to Kant's reflective intuition as a commonly shared experience, and to the failure of the Kantian account of the given of experience in terms of a structured pure sensuous intuition followed by its possible "metaphorical" transformations (Churchman, 1971, p. 107, 145). Cf. further the Hegelian generation of a living conviction after having trained the mind by exposing it to a vast repertoire of events in literature, history (including art), philosophy and science (ibid., p. 170). Cf., further, the discussions of the creative act, anti-teleology, and "fourth-box imagery" (ibid., pp. 242-243, 247-257). In a more general discussion of systems and aesthetics (Churchman, 1979, pp. 188ff, esp. 193-194, ) the unfortunate idea is presented that religion, understood as "devotion - to a God, to wealth, to caring, to whatever", is rather obscure as an "approach" unless it uses politics as its aid. In contrast, aesthetics would be another matter, inasmuch it may not even be appropriate to call it an "approach" (an alternative to systems for the conduct of human affairs), because there are no rules, no consistencies: "And if intuition is close to aesthetics, then 'surprise' [cf. improvisation] may be the better expression [rather than 'approach']: to run your life through surprises." And the last words about the systems approach and its enemies are (ibid., p. 214): "That one can have glorious religious experiences without even considering the issue of a divine being's existence is the revelation of religion...And [one can] enjoy to its depth the aesthetic quality of our life without knowing what it means". I suspect that this is the aestheticist "Chinese" bankruptcy of the Kantian-pragmatist systems approach, to be countered by reinstating the systemic relevance of a theological aesthetics that Churchman himself certainly could have intuited through his frequently used knowledge of the New Testament.

¹⁶(Buchanan, 1995, in his references to George Nelson's "The enlargement of vision", in Problems of design, New York: Whitney, 1957, and "The design process" in Design Since 1945, ed. by Kathryn B. Hiesinger, Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1983, p. 10.; Ivanov, 1995; Lindbom, 1990, p. 105; Roberts, 1987, pp. 48, 191; Sherry, 1992). Please note that theological aesthetics that looks for a "principle of unity", as mentioned at the end of the paragraph, could also be reached within the philosophical and methodological frame of analytical (Jungian) psychology and its principle of "individuation" (Philipson, 1963). Aesthetic ambitions suggest the problem of integrating intuition and feeling into typically Western thinking and sensation. It is therefore especially interesting to explore the applications of such a frame to aesthetics, and to improved software design with consideration of psychological types as in an ongoing dissertation project of Thomas Ahlmark at our department of informatics.

¹⁷(Jung, 1953-1979, Vol. 7, in "The relations between the ego and the unconscious", esp. 221-406, integrates his own early neo-romantic penchants with a sound Kant-inspired critical attitude to the role of the ego.)

[18]This "rhetorical" dimension of design should not be forgotten, keeping in mind that one main historical source for the few IT-design theorists who care for history, if not philosophy, is Vitruvius (1960), Roman architect from the first century BC. In design theory it seems to be seldom understood, let be acknowledged, that his launching of the remarkably unchallenged, by now famous also the IT-community, trio form-function-structure was an application to architecture of Greek and Roman rhetoric, with all its hidden controversies and philosophical problems. This can be easily forgotten or ignored when discussing, for instance, the need for languages for sketching the first ideas of a design, as it is also forgotten to justify why just architecture should be much more relevant to IT than other arts. On what basis do IT-researchers suddenly turn to music, and to which music, when, for instance, architecture does not happen to accommodate the notion of improvisation? A consciousness of the historical role of rhetoric could indicate that semiotics has been and can be an already available sophisticated sketching language or notation for design, as it can be inferred in Buchanan (1995). This has indeed been already sensed in the IT-field in approaches that often stand remarkably unrelated to the currents considered here, as in Andersen (1990); compare with Lévy (1991), Sällström (1991), and Emmer (1993).