DIALECTICAL SYSTEMS DESIGN AND BEYOND

©Kristo Ivanov. Permission to make digital/hard copy of this work for personal or educational use is granted provided that it is not done for profit or commercial advantage, and notice is given of the source.

1. Abstract

1.1. The contents of the series of seminars from which an appropriate selection will be made ad-hoc for each seminar are structured along the following main titles (1) this abstract itself: (2) introduction (3) the contribution, (4) the applications, (5) criticism of the contributions, (6) criticism of other alternatives and present trends, (7) the particular trend of design, (8) further and future contributions, (9) a future policy for the discipline, and (10) hand-outs for the seminars. I will describe the path of intellectual development of the discipline of information systems as observed from Scandinavia between 1970 and 2000, both from the point of view of my practice and research, combined with my teaching at universities. The purpose is to relate the whither of were we are going and where we ought to go to the why of where we start, that is the why we came to where we are. It will be seen that the beginning of the seventies was characterized by a conscientization of researchers that they belonged to the post-war mentality of logical positivism. This was followed by an ethical pathos expressed as a socialization or politization of research associated to the names of, say, Marx and Habermas. The eighties were characterized by a weakening of the political aspects towards an aesthetical pathos of design theories that ultimately, in the nineties took a postmodern or even a relativist twist. In the Anglo-Saxon sphere these intellectual tendencies were discussed for instance in works by Christopher Norris and Ernest Gellner. This criticism, however, did not eventually reach the mainstreams of our discipline where the issue was further confounded by the rise of, and merging with the hermeneutical, phenomenological and other approaches. In the meantime the practice of information technology, including games and multimedia communication, in parallel with the gradual deregulation of the market economy, followed the neo-liberal play, and "third way" of the so called global market as reported, for instance, in the insightful analyses of The Economist. This trend backs the claims that the Western post-industrial world is creating a new informational economic theory. My message will be that late development suggest an ethical crisis of our research which would benefit from a back-to-basics response. Some early hints on the direction of my search can be found in some recommended preliminary readings.

2. Introduction

2.1. This seminar (series):

2.1.1. I distribute this table of (commented) structured contents from which I will select appropriate items. Possible questions if not covered in my presentations can be addressed preferably at the end or by e-mail, unless they deal with the meaning of what is been said. Please consider that the text includes certain minor repetitions since it grew "organically" out of several part-seminaries and each part requires some autonomy with regard to references and such.

2.2. Personal and professional story

2.2.1. Is "history" important?

2.2.2. Industry 1961-1975, struggling with "Product Engineering", and "Manufacturing Engineering" in the communications and computer industry. Struggles with EC (Engineering Changes), and world-wide computerized data-bases, BM (Bill of Material) and Routing files, and eventually with errors in data-bases and "quality-control of information". "Coding" errors, errors, and what is an error? And truth?

2.2.3. Asst. prof. 1976, professor 1984, and dept. head 1986-1998

2.2.4. Today trendy international and multi-ethnical experience (and "tacit" knowledge): War and poverty, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Italy, Brazil, Sweden, France & USA. Catholicism, atheism, Protestantism, and back to Catholicism.

2.2.5. Background: EMPIRICAL, both technical and user-industrial, including economic-political. Electrical-electronic in the sixties when semiconductors substituted electron-tubes in laboratories and industry. Engineer + BA (Fill and) in psychology with statistics and political economy + minor in Industrial economics and organization

2.2.6. Both real technique and engineering, and human science (BS in statistics, political economy, psychology) plus Jung and philosophy starting with Churchman. Technique as other than pressing of buttons.

2.2.7. The typically "informatic" difficulty of grasping both technique and human science

2.2.8. My prejudices and intellectual context? Cf. interpretive research principles applied to my own statement and overview of my "perspective"?

2.3. "Thrown into the world" of computer industry: business practice

2.3.1. Business practice as fireman: paradoxical reliance on "improvisation-bricolage-shift-and-drift" which is trendy today

2.3.2. Research by "user-practitioner" - rare in academia

2.3.3. Relevance: the invented formulation of my discovered research topic

2.3.4. My exposure to relevant contexts (through the IBM of the sixties)

2.3.5. The discovery or decision that reality and practice are philosophical, as also found today in the pages of e.g. The Economist

3. The contribution

3.1. The experience of an "archetypal engineer"

3.1.1. The infological equation, hermeneutics, and Marxism

3.2. The experience of non-positivism

3.2.1. Ref. to Vitalis Norström, 1912, (below)

3.2.2. Pre-condition for framing the research question

3.3. *Quality-control of information

3.3.1. Ivanov, K. (1972). Quality-control of information: On the concept of accuracy of information in data banks and in management information systems . The University of Stockholm and The Royal Institute of Technology. (Doctoral diss. Nat. Techn. Info. Service NTIS order No. PB-219297 at fax +1 703 6056900, orders@ntis.fedworld.gov, http://www.ntis.gov/ordernow.)

3.4. *The Design of Inquiring Systems

3.4.1. Note: also " Basic principles of organization". Still today: best and most advanced theory of systems, information systems, and artificial arti-facts in context. How & why best? "On the shoulders of giants" and historical build-up upon philosophy, logic, statistics, military and industrial applications ("action" of OR/OA), and 68's political debate including the politics of science. Parallel branch of successful industrial and social (black ghetto) consultancy. Latest off-shots: Checkland's SSM and Ulrich's CSH (vs. for instance ANT)

3.4.2. My role: first introduction (Scandinavia) into computer- and information science of American pragmatism (cf. "use-users" in the version of W. James, beyond J. Dewey and later followers of D. Schön's "reflective practitioners") as applications of Singerian "experimental idealism", in the form dialectical social systems theory

3.4.3. Information as Fact nets, consensus, representations, dialectic, progress.

3.4.4. Perspectives as (1) Leibnizian fact-nets, (2) Kantian representations, (3) Hegelian dialectic of theses & Weltanschauung

3.4.5. Structure vs. function

3.4.6. See the closer context and developments in Churchman, C. W. (1968). Challenge to reason . New York: McGraw-Hill, Churchman, C. W. (1968). The systems approach . New York: Delta. (Page references are to the 2nd ed., 1979, and Churchman, C. W. (1979). The systems approach and its enemies . New York: Basic Books.

3.4.7. Development of systems conceptualization as following categories of the dialectical social systems approach: (1) Clients, purposes, measures of performance, (2) Decision makers, components, environment, (3) Planners, implementation, guarantor, and (4) Systems philosophers, enemies of the systems approach, significance. In Churchman, C. W. (1979). The systems approach and its enemies . New York: Basic Books.

3.4.8. Today http://www.isss.org/lumCWC.htm, http://haas.berkeley.edu/~gem/, http://www.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/chuindex.html

3.5. What(for) systems and information

3.5.1. Why inquiring systems vs. information systems, different conceptions of "information", and cf. networks

3.6. Dialectics, and Marxism

3.7. Pluralism vs. relativism

3.8. Individual vs. social learning

3.8.1. A matter of Leibnizian networking, Lockean degree and size of consensual community, or Hegelian conflict process

3.9. Rigor vs. relevance as precision vs. accuracy

3.9.1. With recognition of the role of power in the dialectic between power and knowledge, which is not often mentioned as per today

3.10. Sense-making as inquiry

3.10.1. As plain teleology: my basic attitude, of Platonic and Aristotelian heritage, as patent in Western ethics and law (responsibility)

3.10.2. As Leibnizian or Hegelian Weltanschauung

3.10.3. Interpretation of meaning possible through "epsilon-error"

3.11. Negotiations in actor-networks (ANT)

3.11.1. Actors=Roles, Network=System (or Leibnizian sub-nets)

3.11.2. Inscription≈morphology, translation≈functionality and teleology

3.11.3. "Closure refers to a state where the stability and durability of the network is relatively assured. The stabilization of a technology is the result of the controversy and strategy that surrounds technical change. Stabilization of a technology implies that its contents are black-boxed and are no longer a site for controversy"

3.12. Conversation vs. debate

3.13. "Management by deals"

3.13.1. (Ciborra in the context of infra-structure and strategy)

3.14. Infrastructure as system "environment"

3.14.1. general case of or analog to fixed or sunk costs in business economics

3.15. Change vs. improvement

3.16. Technology as resources

3.16.1. Cf. tools as means, and systemic means as resources

3.16.2. Tools vs. instruments (Koyré)

3.17. Aesthetics and postmodernism

3.17.1. Cf. progress vs. process

3.17.2. Cf. my "complementary word index" to the Design of Inquiring Systems

3.18. Creating bywords

3.18.1. Data-quality (information-knowledge)

3.18.2. Why not, or easy questions with difficult answers

3.18.2.1. The more difficult the answers become because of (too) easily formulated questions, and the fewer the number of knowledgeable potential answerers, the easier it will to disrupt the possible wisdom that has been accumulated in history and tradition

3.18.3. The Don Juan-syndrome

3.18.3.1. Relativistic postmodernism and "change-improvisation". Cf. the subtle "ethics" in Cottingham, J. (1998). Philosophy and the good life: Reason and the passions in Greek, Cartesian and psychoanalytic ethics . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

3.18.4. Learning is good vs. learning the good

3.18.4.1. Or "good learning" or "good knowledge". The lost Plato's insights (information for learning and knowledge)

3.18.5. I don't argue, I shoot - emphasis

3.18.5.1. In the context of "Popperian" discussions with Ian Jarvie, reference to ("Nietzschean") nazist, and easy reliance on language communication and science. Cf. need for Frankurt's critical school's reliance on psychoanalysis (shifted by Habermas upon language)

4. Applications

4.1. This seminar: "perspective" of or on informatics?

4.1.1. Leibnizian or Hegelian Weltanschauung, or in Singerian "sweep in"

4.2. The politics of research

4.2.1. Contribution identified with misunderstood isolated "quality" (rather than, as it was, "information system" and therefore politically unobstructed allowing for a subversive future oasis or niche, consolidated in the research-political struggle for a professor chair in Umeå Academic opportunity for non-positivism

4.2.2. The build-up of the department and its international network

4.2.3. Research and education (graduate education with the proposal of an ideal -type "E40-course" of readings)

4.3. The Umeå-school of informatics, or Berkeley on systems?

4.3.1. See end on Umeå-policy and the discipline

4.3.2. *Pre-condition for the establishment of non computer science and Umeå's informatics and design

4.3.3. Supporting the legitimation of IS as not exclusively technical (Klein & Hirschheim, and Lyytinen inclined to Habermas), Ehn's appointment in Lund, and Dahlbom at Tema in Linköping, further in Gothenburg. Also supporting Klein's & Hirschheim's successful "infiltration" of the field of I.S. in general and IFIP WG 8.2 in particular: Ivanov, K. (1984). Systemutveckling och ADB-ämnets utveckling [Systems development and the development of the discipline of informatics/ADP]. In H.-E. Nissen (Ed.), Systemutveckling, av vem, för vem och hur? [Systems development, by whom, for whom, and how?] (pp. 1-14). Stockholm: Arbetarskyddsfonden. (Report No. K4/84. Orig. also as report LiU-IDA-R-84-1, University of Linköping, Dept. of Computer and Information Science, 1984. The essay's diagram of key philosophers' names for information systems development is also found adapted by Hirschheim, R. A., 1985, Information systems epistemology: An historical perspective, in E. Mumford, et al., eds., Research methods in information systems, Amsterdam: North Holland, 1985, pp. 37-38. Reprinted in R. Galliers, ed., Information systems research: Issues, methods and practical guidelines, pp. 28-60, Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1992.)

4.3.4. Pragmatism's focus on "use" and "user" (actor, agent, brukare). Ex. address as systemic atom of information

4.3.5. Opening towards philosophy (practical philosophy including ethics in its relation to aesthetics, and theology)

4.3.6. Establishment of contacts and identity: Churchman, Ian Mitroff, Dick Mason (and visits), Harold Nelson for "design", Peter Checkland for soft systems methodology, and Werner Ulrich for critical systems thinking. Nevertheless: critical attitude to "followers" like in unsystematic Jung. Most serious active student of Churchman: Werner Ulrich (http://www.isss.org/lumCWC.htm)

4.4. System and information: thirty years of stability

4.4.1. Both concerning the follow-up and evaluation of ongoing research, and the undergraduate & graduate course on "Design of Inquiring Systems": because of the philosophical basis

4.5. The transient phase of my empirical research & consultancy

4.5.1. LIBRIS for scientific libraries

4.5.2. SCB-data quality

4.5.3. Privacy vs. participation (basic first discussions about the information society) and book about Systems Development and Rule of Law. Datainspektionen (Data Inspection Board) and privacy act: permission vs. inspection (tillstånd vs. tillsyn) and the nature of information

4.6. *Privacy and participation

4.6.1. Parliamentary (Kerstin Anér's book) contacts at the time of datalagen och medbestämmandelagen (data privacy and participation acts). Anér, K. (1975). Datamakt . Stockholm: Gummessons

4.6.2. Ivanov, K. (1986). Systemutveckling och rättssäkerhet : Om statsförvaltningens datorisering och de långsiktiga konsekvenserna för enskilda och företag [Systems development and rule of law]. Stockholm: SAF:s Förlag.

4.7. Design of arti-facts in context = of arti-ficial systems

4.8. *Work & design of artifacts , and Constructive systems development, and Hypersystems

4.8.1. In the seventies See Ivanov, K. (1995). A subsystem in the design of informatics: Recalling an archetypal engineer. In B. Dahlbom (Ed.), The infological equation: Essays in honor of Börje Langefors (pp. 287-301). Gothenburg: Gothenburg University, Dept. of Informatics.

4.8.2. Marxism: work or design. Scientific legitimation of politics for, and later criticism of Ehn, P. (1973). Bidrag till ett kritiskt socialt perspektiv på datorbaserade informationssystem (TRITA-IBADB-1020). Dept. of Information Processing, University of Stockholm, and, further Ehn's dissertation in 1988 (and Mathiassen)

4.8.3. Forsgren, O. (1988). Samskapande datortillämpningar [Constructive computer applications] (Doctoral diss., Report UMADP-RRIPCS-3.88). University of Umeå, Inst. of Information Processing. (In Swedish. Summary in English.)

4.8.4. Levén, P. (1997). Kontextuell IT-förståelse [Contextual IT-understanding] . Umeå: Umeå University, Dept. of Informatics. (Doctoral diss. ISSN 1401-4572.)

4.8.5. Whitaker, R. (1992). Venues for contexture: A critical analysis and enactive reformulation of group decision support systems . Umeå: Umeå University, Inst. of Information Processing. (Doctoral diss. UMADP-RRIPCS 14.92.)

4.8.6. Ivanov, K. (1993). Hypersystems: A base for specification of computer-supported self-learning social systems. In C. M. Reigeluth, B. H. Banathy, & J. R. Olson (Ed.), Comprehensive systems design: A new educational technology (pp. 381-407). New York: Springer-Verlag. (Also as research report, Umeå University, UMADP-RRIPCS-13.91, ISSN 0282-0579.)

4.9. Other uses and influences

4.9.1. Note 16 in Ivanov, K. (1995, above). A subsystem in the design of informatics: Recalling an archetypal engineer. In B. Dahlbom (Ed.), The infological equation: Essays in honor of Börje Langefors (pp. 287-301). Gothenburg: Gothenburg University, Dept. of Informatics.

4.9.2. Data quality programs of Agency for Administrative Development and Central Bureau of Statistics (Statskontoret and SCB)

4.9.3. "Co-constructive computer applications", and "Contextual IT-understanding"

4.9.4. Methods for the Swedish Agency for Administrative Development, and Central Bureau of Statistics

4.9.5. Adoption and criticism of soft systems methodology in Ivanov, K. (1991). Critical systems thinking and information technology. J. of Applied Systems Analysis, 18, 39-55. (Report UMADP-RRIPCS 11.90, Univ. of Umeå, Inst. of Information Processing. ISSN 0282-0579.)

4.9.6. My own development: Jung, I Ching, philosophy, theology (cf. Mitcham & Grote's "Theology and technology", & Lindbom on socialism, democracy, and cultural-moral crisis)

4.10. Comparisons with other taxonomies or "onto-epistemological frameworks"

4.10.1. Paradigms for qualitative research

4.10.1.1. Underlying "paradigms" for qualitative research: (1) Positivist, (2) Post-positivist, (3) Critical theory, and (4) Constructivist, according to Guba, E. G., & Lincoln, Y. S. (1994). Competing paradigms in qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin, & Y. S. Lincoln (Ed.), Handbook of Qualitative Research (pp. 105-117). Thousand Oaks: Sage

4.10.1.2. Or (1) positivist, (2) interpretive, and (3) Critical, in Orlikowski, W.J. & Baroudi, J.J. "Studying Information Technology in Organizations: Research Approaches and Assumptions", Information Systems Research (2) 1991, pp. 1-28, following Chua, W.F. "Radical Developments in Accounting Thought," The Accounting Review (61), 1986, pp. 601-632.

4.10.1.3. all the above as ref. in Myers, M. D. (1997). Qualitative research in information systems. MIS Quarterly, 21(2, June), 241-242. (Archival version June 1997 at http://www.misq.org/misq961/isworld, updated version at http://www.auckland.ac.nz/msis/isworld/ accessed 14 December 1999.)

4.10.1.4. Klein, H. K., & Myers, M. D. (1999). A set of principles for conducting and evaluating interpretive field studies in information systems. MIS Quarterly, 23(1), 67-93. (Pre-publication of the paper found at http://www.auckland.ac.nz/msis/isworld/MMyers/Klein-Myers.html, accessed 14 Dec. 1999.): Right away at least #1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7 out of (1) The fundamental principle of the hermeneutic circle, (2) Contextualization, (3) Interaction between researchers and subjects, (4) Abstraction and generalization, (5) Dialogical reasoning, (6) Multiple interpretations, (7) Suspicion

4.10.2. Contexts in place of systems, networks, infrastructure

4.10.2.1. Context and networks vs systems, infrastructure and activities vs. organization and mission. In Dahlbom, B. (1996). The new informatics. Scandinavian J. of Information Systems, 8(2), (http://iris.informatik.gu.se/sjis/magazine/vol8no2/Dahlbom.htm, accessed 9 Feb. 2000.)

4.10.3. Practitioners and customers

4.10.3.1. Questioning whether "the practitioner" is the "customer" of our research, and practitioners would not be the judge of the relevance of our research. Lee (1999) and Lyytinen (1999) below. Cf. other role denominations like "IS professionals" and "managers"

4.10.4. Process theory, and logics of change or opposition

4.10.4.1. Rethinking the link between IT and organizations with the use of (1) Process theory (to understand better how change occurs), (2) Different theoretical logics of change (motors of life cycle, teleology, evolution, and dialectics), and (3) Multi-level perspective (individual, team interdepartmental, and organizational; or institutional, managerial, and technical). In Robey, D., & Boudreau, M.-C. (2000). Organizational consequences of information technology: Dealing with diversity in Empirical research. In R. W. Zmud (Ed.), Framing the domains of IT management: Glimpsing the future through the past . Cincinnati, OH: Pinnaflex, forthcoming. No refs. to our local Scandinavian-anchored names like H.K. Klein, Latour, Ehn or Dahlbom

4.10.4.2. Cf. the above multi-level thinking with the more extense taxonomy of multi-modal systems thinking in de Raadt, D. (1998). A new management of life . New York: The Edwin Mellen Press.

4.10.5. Correspondence vs. coherence theories of truth

4.10.5.1. See the classification of correspondence (Anglo-Saxon, Logical empirical LE) vs. coherence (continental, hermeneutic-dialectical HD) theories of truth as adduced by e.g. Hans-Erik Nissen on the basis of Radnitzky, G. (1970). Contemporary schools of metascience . Gothenburg: Akademiförlaget. In HD theories the historical context of data plays a role

4.10.6. Teleological systems turned into existentialism

4.10.6.1. Ciborra (in the personally communicated manuscript "Hospitality and IT") suggests that in order to "make sense in a deep, existential way" or project goals or plans one must not disregard "the complex chemistry and alignment between the "because of" and "in order to" motives of action.

4.10.6.2. Ciborra's differentiation between the business view (global transactions, cross-border investments and data flows) vs. the global view (time more important than space and little moves having big effects, traditions, expert systems, side effects, risk, reflexivity) of globalization, where the so called global view with its purported recognition and acceptance of e.g. "side effects" amounts to a paradoxical call for a systems view

4.10.7. Systems as cooperation with no conflict

4.10.7.1. Computer Supported Cooperative Work or CS Collaborative Learning

4.10.8. Critical systems thinking

4.10.8.1. Critical systems theory CST support of justification break-offs and the challenging of boundary judgments or normative presuppositions in systems design: grouping 12 boundary questions in 4 classes, each comprising 3 kinds of categories: social roles, role-specific concerns, and key problems. The 4 classes ask for the normative ought of (a) the sources of motivation: clients, purpose-measure of performance, (b) sources of control: decision maker, components, environment, (c) sources of expertise: designer, expertise, guarantor, and (d) sources of legitimation: the affected people's witnesses, their emancipation, and their world views or Weltanschauung. The 12 ought questions above are then to be contrasted with the pertaining answer to the corresponding is question, laying open the normative basis of the planning system and its evaluation. From Ivanov, K. (1991). Critical systems thinking and information technology. J. of Applied Systems Analysis, 18, 39-55. (Report UMADP-RRIPCS 11.90, Univ. of Umeå, Inst. of Information Processing. ISSN 0282-0579.): Ref. to Ulrich, W. (1987). Critical heuristics of social systems design. European J. of Operational Research, 31, 276-283

4.10.9. Soft systems methodology SSM

4.10.9.1. Checkland's SSM "CATWOE" categories: (1) Customers, (2) Actors, (3) Transformation processes, (4) Weltanschauung, (5) Ownership of the system, and (6) Environment

4.10.10. Paradigms of I.S. development in postmodern formulation

4.10.10.1. Various paradigms of I.S. development to be described and interpreted in terms of the following categories: (1) Key actors (the "who" part of the story), (2) Narrative (the "what", or the key activities), (3) Plot ("why" did the action take place, akin to causes and purposes), (4) Assumptions (the fundamental beliefs or Weltanschauung, or epistemological-ontological assumptions). From Hirschheim, R., & Klein, H. K. (1989). Four paradigms of information systems development. Communications of the ACM, 32(10), 1199-1216.

4.10.11. Old Weick's social psychology of organizations in new form

4.10.11.1. Weick, K. E. (2nd ed. 1979). The social psychology of organizing. New York: McGraw-Hill, as used in Henfridsson, O. (1999). Adaptation as sense making: Inventing new meaning for technology in organizations . Umeå: Umeå University, Dept. of Informatics. (Doctoral diss.) pp. 41-42.

4.10.11.2. The transition from the phase of ambiguity about an IT-artifact to the phase during which it is used in a common-sensical way can be difficult to trace both in space and time. It is an organizational process, implying that it goes on in several places and over time. It involves many actors, pursuing different goals. Roughly speaking, however, I suggest that an IT-artifact becomes a natural part of an organization's daily activity as individual meanings, co-existing initially, solidify into collective and taken-for-granted interpretations, expressed and reinforced in organizational action as double interacts (interlocked behavior) . They consist of actions performed and maintained by people reducing ambiguity. These actions are highly skilled in that they are responsive to the imagined responses of other people. [cf. conflicts and "pathological narcissism" as described in Kernberg, O. Internal world and external reality: Object relations theory applied . New York: Jason Aronson, 1980, See esp. part III]. This is an intersubjective process in that it is defined in the relation between two or more actors. If the executed actions works well in terms of expectations, such confirmation maintains and reinforces the double interact as an element of order in the interpersonal relation. An organization would not exist without these interacts. They make the organizational world intelligible for those involved, and, thus, they also make IT-artifacts intelligible. The elements (enactments) of the transitional process can be described as identity-construction, self-fulfilling prophecies, and organizational defenses.

4.10.12. Moral Imagination

4.10.12.1. Johnson, M. (1993). Moral imagination: Implications of cognitive science for ethics. Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press, pp. 240-257. Recommended in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) by John Waterworth and Andreas Lund, Umeå university, dept. of Informatics,

4.10.12.2. We are in position to make some general claims about the nature of a reasonable and realistic human objectivity, as opposed to an impossible God's-eye-view objectivity. Human objectivity is what characterizes a reflective process by means of which we are able to take up multiple perspectives as a way both of criticizing and transforming our own views and those of others. Human objectivity can be characterized as a form of transperspectivity [ref. Steven Winter, "Bull Durham and the Uses of Theory", 685-686; cf. Ivanov's Hypersystems and Churchman's DIS chap. 7 and 9] which is the ability of a physically, historically, socially, and culturally situated self to reflect critically on its own construction of a world, and to imagine other possible worlds that might be constructed. Transperspectivity involves acts of imagination. To some it will seem strange and even inappropriate to combine objectivity and imagination. But forms [which other forms?] imaginative rationality are, in fact [define fact], what makes human objectivity possible. They are what permits us to take up various perspectives as a way of criticizing any given position, our own or others', by envisioning different framings and metaphorical structurings of situations, by empathetically taking up the part of others [cf. Christian charity] in order to understand what they experience and how various possible actions might affect them, and by exploring the range of possibilities for action open to us [cf. Kantian aesthetics].

4.10.12.3. Among the key Enlightenment assumptions, which also lie at the heart of the Moral Law folk theory, is that morality is a set of restrictive rules that are supposed to tell you which acts you may or may not perform, which you have an obligation to perform, and when you can be blamed for what you have done [and not have done?]. It is not fundamentally about how to live a good life [cf. Plato and Aristotle], or how to live well. Instead, it is only a matter of doing the right thing -- the one right thing required of you in a given situation. This drastic narrowing of the scope of morality has monumental consequences. Treating moral reasoning as if it consists only in discovering and applying moral laws ignores the imaginative structure of our moral concepts and reasoning, and thus excludes from consideration all of the evidence that would support the central role of imagination [or excludes all moral evidence that would be supported by imagination?].

4.10.12.4. Where "moral laws" exist, they are best understood as capsule summaries of the collective wisdom we derive from our shared moral experience as a community [cf. "practice"]. But moral reasoning must not be discovering and applying such laws. They hide much of what matters. We need a different model of moral reasoning that encompasses the imaginative dimensions of conceptualization and thought. If you strip away all absolutistic metaphysical and epistemological supports, what is left of moral criticism is the basis for criticism that we had all along, namely transperspectivity. We can be critical through an ongoing dialectical process in which we bring different perspectives to bear on our present moral understanding to see what it entails for our lives, how it affects others, what it misses that might be significant, and how it might be changed. Criticism becomes a social practice in which individuals and entire groups subject their values, principles, and fundamental frames to continuous scrutiny.

4.10.13. Philosophy in the flesh

4.10.13.1. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought . New York: Basic Books. Recommended in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) by John Waterworth and Andreas Lund, Umeå university, dept. of Informatics, pp. 552-568.

4.10.13.2. We argue for an empirically responsible philosophy -- a philosophy informed by an ongoing critical engagement with the best [define] empirical science available. We are promoting a dialogue between philosophy and cognitive science [=empirical general science, =psychology?]. Philosophical sophistication is necessary if we are to keep science honest [define, vs. true, good, useful?]. Science cannot maintain a self-critical stance without a serious familiarity with philosophy and alternative philosophies. Scientists need to be aware of how a priori philosophical assumptions [and resulting empirical results? cf. metaphysics, and Capaldi] can determine their scientific results.

4.10.13.3. The traditional Western view of the person is at odds on every point with the fundamental results from neuroscience and cognitive science. An actual human being has neither a separation of mind and body, nor Universal Reason, nor an exclusively literal conceptual system, not a monolithic consistent world view, nor radical freedom. Our conceptual system is grounded in our perceptual and motor systems. Primary metaphor is the activation of neural connections allowing sensorimotor inference to structure the conceptualization of subjective experience and judgments. People cannot be self-interest maximizers, and there is no "Higher" Morality: our concepts of what is moral, like all our other concepts, originate from the specific nature of human embodied experience, and we each have within us a moral pluralism. There is no disembodied mind. Whether you call it mind or Soul, anything that both thinks and is free-floating is a myth [define myth]. It cannot exist. We then need an alternative conception of embodied spirituality that at least makes justice to what people experience. What embodied sense can be made of transcendence? How are we to understand our sense of being part of a larger all-encompassing whole, of ecstatic participation -- with awe and respect -- within that whole, and the moral engagement within such experience? Imaginative [cf. imagination] empathic projection is a major part of what has always been called spiritual experience. A mindful embodied spirituality is an ecological spirituality. It requires an aesthetic attitude to the world that is central to self-nurturance, to the nurturance of others [cf. Christian charity or social political solidarity], and to the nurturance of the world itself. It requires an understanding that nature is not inanimate and less than human, but animated and more than human. It requires pleasure, joy in the bodily connection with earth and air, sea and sky, plants and animals -- an the recognition that they are more than any human beings could ever achieve. Embodied spirituality is more than spiritual experience. It is an ethical [cf. the earlier mentioned aesthetic attitude] relationship to the physical world [ref. to Abram 1996, and Spretnak 1991 1997]. It is the body that makes spiritual experience passionate, that brings it intense desire and pleasure, pain, delight, and remorse. In the world's spiritual traditions, sex and art and music and dance and the taste of food have been for millennia forms of spiritual experience just as much as ritual practice, meditation, and prayer. The vehicle by which we are moved in passionate spirituality is metaphor. It is a neural mechanism that recruits our abilities to perceive, to move, to feel, and to envision in the service not only of theoretical and philosophical thought, but of spiritual experience. Cognitive science has given us the philosophy in the flesh.

4.11. Contribution of system science to I.S. research

4.11.1. Cf. with the kind of reasoning by Xu, L. D. (1995). Systems thinking for information systems development. Systems Practice, 8(6), 577-589, and Córdoba, J. R., & Midgley, G. (2000). Rethinking stakeholder involvement: An application of the theories of autopoiesis and boundary critique to IS planning. In S. Clarke, & B. Lehaney (Ed.), Human centered methods in information systems: Current research and practice (pp. 195-230). Hershey, USA: Idea Group

4.12. Miscellaneous

4.12.1. The fostering of philosophical consciousness (cf. hand-out for "Why Plato" seminar in 991208)

4.12.2. See System and IS as elements in actor-networks and not as elementary objects, and networks as generated in "patterned networks of diverse (not simply human) materials"..."structure of relationships in the flux of interactions"

4.12.3. Systems ≈ Focus only on organizational resources was unfortunate. Thus, it is critical for future developments also to include organizational objectives in the Powerplay IS.

4.12.4. Empirical industrial "tolerance" ranges vs economics-politics of scrap-rework. Cf. "stabilization vs. exclusion" in negotiation loops seen as "validations" in ANT's multipurpose networks

4.12.5. Objects as statements, artifacts, models, concurrent Leibnizian nets (cf. Plato)

4.12.6. The idea of "Shift & drift" of "inscriptions-translations" of technology corresponds to morphological vs. functional and teleological classes (as in decision model): "Purposes and functions of technologies can neither be read from their consequences, nor conversely"

4.12.7. "The elementary operation of translation [in ANT] is triangular: it involves a translator, something that is translated, and a medium in which the translation is inscribed": cf. the "semiotic" observer, observed, and measurement.

4.12.8. Note that Exploitation vs. triggered exploration of IT (by breakdown or power-politics) or "negotiation loops" in "evolving multipurpose networks" (EMN) and "windows of opportunity". "Cultivation" (of EMN) as balancing the dynamics between standardization and flexibility (Cf. Hegelian and Singerian IS). Identity arising from network of exchanges and relationships with others. Useful or pleasurable exchanges vs. friendship (identity as individuation)

4.12.9. The Stability vs. flexibility of an application, considered to have to do with contents vs. different uses of these contents, amounts to an implicit (positivistic) differentiation between database and use (management information system) of the database.

4.12.10. The logic of determination vs. the logic of opposition, can in an analog way be seen as simplifications of the positivistic "positive" Lockean determination vs. the Hegelian dialectic opposition in the so called logic of

4.12.11. [W]here different technological frames (cf. systems) between groups as managers, systems designers, and users exist, it is likely that the development and use of a particular IT-artifact is distorted

4.12.12. Note that Stabilization of an artifact through (1) Rhetorical closure (of the debate on it) changing or shaping the meaning that various social groups attach to it in order to enroll their support, or (2) Redefinition of the problem for which the artifact is then seen to be a solution, corresponds to the alternation between consensus and conflict (thesis, antithesis, synthesis)

4.12.13. The case of departmental subscription for the controversial Samtidsmagasinet-Salt (2000) vs "balance" and DN/SvD goal-clarity. In the field of media and communication one talks about "balance", which together with "neutral presentation" adds to "impartiality, and the latter added to matter-of-factness (Swedish saklighet) which consists of truth and relevance, constitutes media-objectivity.

4.12.14. The Power: negotiate only if one has to: consensus formation and sects seen as traditions

4.12.15. Ian Jarvie on Karl Popper and nazi-"I don't argue, I shoot" (Nietzsche-Spengler). Cf. grin of "What do you mean?" (about e.g. postmodernism or aestheticism) implying a displacement of burden of proof.

4.12.16. Cf. Peer-Review or Disputation of doctoral dissertations and grading committee

4.12.17. Note that Empiricism is consensus triggered: controllability in dissertations vs university research as a broker

4.12.18. Concerning Accuracy & precision. Cf. credibility=reliability+validity with reliability as "extent to which observations by multiple researchers studying the same phenomenon with similar purposes will yield approximately the same results" and validity "involves checking the credibility of knowledge claims". Cf. also "Criteria for convincing texts" (e.g. Walsham's ref. to Golden-Bidlle & Locke in Organization Science, No.. 4, 1993): Authenticity (the ability of the text to convey the vitality of everyday life as encountered in the field setting), plausibility (the ability of the text to connect to the personal and professional experience of the reader, and criticality (the ability of the text to actively press readers to consider their taken-for-granted ideas and beliefs)

4.12.19. Conflict between "traditions" of research: The example of availability of advisors for graduate students vs. need of instructors. Should a department accept a graduate student when no advisor is available who can support his choice of scientific or methodological school? Cf. why should anybody read Plato instead of Giddens?

4.12.20. Mature researchers tend to not care about each other. What makes a "community" our of a bunch of research groups?

4.12.21. The threatening stranger: right to visit ≠ right to stay (designer-user-sponsor). Hospitality ≈ Practice vs Methodologies and theories as commitments. Cf. my dissertation and "frames or rules of negotiations"

4.12.22. Cf. Identity as presuppositions or as rules of negotiation

4.12.23. What about symmetry between humans and non-humans

4.12.24. Consider History (old Plato) as dialogue-negotiation with the dead. Why many democrats and emancipators claim the importance and ethics of respecting the oppressed weak third parties, but do not respect the dead forefathers?

4.12.25. The RESEARCH process itself: Mainstream vs counterpoint (& Kuhn). And research "traditions" as "multipurpose networks" (in ANT)

4.12.26. Ultimately: East or West? Quality as Tao in Pirsig, R. (1974). Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance . New York: Bantam Books or as in Jullien, F. (1992). La propension des choses: Pour une histoire de l'efficacité en Chine [The propensity of things] . Paris: Seuil. (English trans. The propensity of things: Toward a history of efficacy in China. New York: Zone Books; Cambridge: distributed by MIT Press, 1995, or as an actualization of the classical Kantian-Hegelian issue of subjectivity and aesthetics (e.g. in Luc Ferry's Homo Aestheticus) introduced in IS by Churchman and now related to Plato), with alternative romantic, postmodern, or Whitehead-Lindbom religious terms (presentational immediacy, perceptions, feelings, judgments, decisions)

5. Criticism of my contribution

5.1. Self-criticism

5.1.1. Ivanov 1972 dissertation questioning the Churchman-basis

5.1.2. Svensson, O. (1998). En kritisk granskning av Churchman och hans kritiker . Umeå: Umeå University, Dept. of Informatics. (D1-uppsats, VT98.)

5.2. *The arrow-diagram of philosophical key-names

5.2.1. See in Ivanov 1984 (Mumford et al. 1985, Galliers 1992)

5.2.2. Everyone criticizes the others, especially if one does not envisage such a kind of network

5.3. Mainstream vs. counterpoint

5.3.1. Aant Elzinga's research on research, ex. of issue which is not considered in IT research

5.3.2. Cf. Kuhn's reference to revolutionary science (vs. normal science), and its political implications, especially for untenured university personnel

5.4. Weak empiricism and action-process

5.4.1. The technical and economic limits of the technology available at the time

5.4.2. No personal "use"

5.4.3. No institutional interest (as for labour unions with their money for "participation")

5.4.4. My experience of recurrent analog empirical "findings", while the difficult thing is to understand the acting forces in order to design future ethical action about them

5.5. Reaction to obsolete logical positivism

5.5.1. Today taken for granted: but from ashes into the fire of postmodernism? No pendulum

5.5.2. Vitalis Norström (1912) who wrote in a similar context: "Emellertid behöfver en filosofisk författare i våra dagar, som framträder med en definitiv åsikt, ingalunda vara en profet för att rätt klart kunna förutse sitt arbetes yttre öde. Yngre, lyckligare släkten, hvilka mödolöst insupa ett högre vetande med själfva den moderna kulturluft, som omsveper dem, skola nog frestas att gladeligen slå i vädret de resultat, hvartill en långsam och svår mogning har ledt. Redan åsiktens fasta skick måste bortstöta dem, som älska blott sväfvande, åt alla håll öppna möjligheter. Det är nästan, som om det – visserligen mycket relativa och hofsamma – anspråket på att vara färdig innebure ett attentat mot ungdomens egen framtid. Och de äldre vilja merendels ej veta af något annat än antingen hvad de i yngre dagar emottagit af vördade lärofäder eller hvad de själva anse sig ha åstadkommit. Mot sådana utsikter ämnar jag tillgripa endast en stillsam och enslig consolatio philosophica. Men ord har jag inga för det, som ligger bakom mitt verk och som drifvit det fram."

5.5.3. And, yet, much of today's attitudes are positivistic: (partial) consensus in sub-cultures, peer review, web-page hits, etc.

5.6. The gap to the researcher (≈duplicate below)

5.6.1. Vs. followers or practitioners, or managers

5.6.2. The expectations upon the mid-generation and the gap towards the younger and undergraduates. Irrelevance or rhetorical inability (or opportunism)?

5.6.3. Lack of cumulative research results (beyond "Co-constructive computer applications" and such)

5.6.4. The paradox is "solved" by T.S. Eliot? (See below ≈duplicate)

5.7. The design-doctrine and its criticism

5.7.1. Ehn, Stolterman, Dahlbom. Take the following example: "To a great extent the design process is reduced to inquiring and detached reflection by the designer. Users as clients and decision-makers are certainly involved, but it is the designer that, via reflection, identifies and describes the problems. Hence, he tends to neglect the non-explicit, practical understanding of the clients in the design process... The systems approach works in the world of ideas with breakdown and transcendence, but not with practice and understanding. Certainly Churchman's designer learns from experience, but in his idealistic conception of design (deeply rooted in the history of ideas) he foresees the social history of the labor process to be redesigned. Though humanistic in spirit, the systems approach provides no means for understanding the social and historical conditions for emancipatory design. Hence, in practice it may foster heroic designers to who no one listens, as well as narrow goal oriented designers that follow the methodology instrumentally, but leave the humanistic ethics behind. Socially, both are tragic results of a great idea." [Ehn, P. Work-oriented design of computer artifacts. Umeå-Stockholm: University of Umeå, Arbetslivscentrum and Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1988, p. 188.]

5.7.2. Cf. the above with Ciborra (in the paper "Hospitality and IT", personally communicated manuscript) stating that what is often carefully left out by the current approaches in IS design and management (both the more managerial or the more participatory ones is "human existence". In the participatory and ethnographic approaches such existential traits come before any functional description of practices and allocation of (democratic) roles in development and use. So even in these approaches closer to the everyday life and needs of people in organizations, the concern for existence is usually swept under the carpet

5.8. Low profile: conscious marginalization or fight windmills?

5.8.1. The "silencing criticism" or lack of civic courage or opportunistic careerism. A new seminar culture, looking for alliances with "winners" through internet networking instead of friendship. Blacklisting all critics.

5.8.2. Cf. the "pathological narcissism" portrayed in my chapter on "Cooperative work: Examples of problems" in Ivanov, K. (1991). Computer-supported human science or humanistic computing science? Steps toward the evaluation of a humanistic computing science (UMADP-WPIPCS-41.91:3). Umeå University, Inst. of Information Processing. Rev. ed. of paper presented at the Tenth International Human Science Research Association Conference, August 18-22, 1991, Gothenburg.

5.8.3. Guerilla against the "publish-perish" syndrome seen as the solution to the paradox of why (university) teaching today is undervalued as compared to "research"

6. Criticism of other alternatives and present trends

6.1. The dilution and re-framing of dialectical systems approach

6.1.1. Singerian hypersystem-interactivity turns into Internet activity, and postmodern "conversation" (Rorty)

6.1.2. Singerian sweep-in turned into conversation (and debate?)

6.2. The misunderstanding of systems as IS

6.2.1. The Design of Inquiring Systems DIS syndrome: lame citations and the equivalent of conspiracy of silence

6.2.2. The "new informatics", courting Aristotle's four causes ("efficient and final causes not dealt with") and the new "dialectical theory", theories of communication overload or overflow, etc. vs. the "Copernican syndrome" Truesdell, C. (1984). The computer: Ruin of science and threat to mankind. In C. Truesdell (Ed.), An idiot's fugitive essays on science (pp. 594-631). Berlin: Springer Verlag. What about "information overload-overflow" applied to the research process itself vs. the emphasis on updated empiricism?

6.2.3. "Once you have begun thinking about an organization as a system it becomes very difficult to see it as a process...the whole idea of systems thinking is to view the entity in isolation, to avoid having to consider a complex context...In contrast to systems thinking an Aristotelian theory of organizations may very well regard infrastructure and activities as more stable than organization and goals. We go on performing the same activities with a different organization and for a different reason." In Dahlbom, B. The new informatics. Scandinavian J. of Information Systems, 8(2), (http://iris.informatik.gu.se/sjis/magazine/vol8no2/Dahlbom.htm, accessed 9 Feb. 2000.) Cf. Churchman The Design of Inquiring Systems, chap. 3, and about "process" cf. Whitehead, A. N. (1978). Process and reality: An essay in cosmology . New York and London: The Free Press and Collier Macmillan. (Corrected edition of original from 1929. Ed. by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne.). Cf. also my concept of "Don Juan syndrome" and ambiguity of "reason" [Waterworth's hint on ethics]

6.2.4. "To stress the importance of activities and infrastructure over goals and organization will mean to argue in favor of networked organizations". In Dahlbom, ibid. Cf. networks as systems in Gras, A. (1997). Les macro-systèmes techniques . Paris: PUF. (Que Sais-Je series, No.3266, ISBN 2 13 048556 1. One chapter, in English, is found in Olivier Coutard, Ed., The governance of large technical systems.): networks should be seen as systems

6.2.5. The failure of seeing e-commerce as opposed to systems: the denial of core competence and the neglect of functions such as logistic, distribution, reimbursements, and, in general, handling of customer complaints or wishes

6.3. From Habermas to Foucault, Latour, Lakoff & Johnson, Weick, etc.?

6.3.1. Bloor, D. (1999). Anti-Latour. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 30(1), 81-112. Also found in www.sciencedirect.com (Feb. 2000)

6.3.2. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought . New York: Basic Books. Implications for HCI human-computer interaction (ref. Waterworth)

6.4. Dissertations-older: Hidden rationales and "design theory"

6.4.1. The source: Stolterman, E. (1991). Designarbetets dolda rationalitet: En studie av metodik och praktik inom systemutveckling [The hidden rationale of design work: A study in the methodology and practice of system development] . Umeå: Umeå University. (Doctoral diss. UMADP-RRIPCS 14.91.)

6.4.2. The post-romantic or postmodern intuition: Page 124 (my trans.) In the same way [a an improvising playing musician] a designer must dare to trust his right feeling [or "the intuitive", developed through prior training]. Therefore it is not plausible to require that the designer in each design occasion rationally shall be able to explain or argue for the design choice he has made. The arguments for just this specific design cannot be explained only with reference to this particular occasion. This because of two reasons: First, the action in a particular situation is to a great degree the result of earlier actions since the designer's aesthetics and figures of thought get formed and influenced during the accomplishment of many design processes, own and the study of others'. Second, the right feeling means indeed that an action if performed on the basis of a choice that is so complex that it very simply cannot be explained. A design process is therefore not rational only when is possible to argue explicitly for its performing.

6.5. Dissertations-recent: I.S. and multipurpose networks.

6.5.1. The source

6.5.1.1. What follows is from: Holmström, J. (2000). Information system and organization as multipurpose network. Umeå: Umeå University, Dept. of Informatics. (Doctoral diss. ISSN 1401-4572.).

6.5.2. Politics and ethics as Lockean communities or Hegel's absolute mind

6.5.2.1. Page 8 The actor-network model does not distinguish a priori between content and context or good and bad. The starting point is rather that it is impossible in advance to decide whether new technology will be a success or a failure. What is crucial to the result is whether the actors participating in the process of design and use of an IS manage to build a stable actor-network around the new IS...Actors are involved into..."trials of strength" in which they try to convince colleagues and outsiders that their contributions are valid and useful. A successful trial means that an outgoing concern has incorporated the contribution into its institutional set of practices.

6.5.2.2. Page 73 (Quoting M. Callon "Some elements of a sociology of translation", 1986). Why speak of enrollment? In using this term, we are not resorting to a functionalist or culturalist sociology which defines society as an entity made up or roles and holders of roles. Enrolment does not imply, nor does it exclude, pre-established roles. It designates the device by which a set of interrelated roles is defined and attributed to actors who accept them. Intressement achieves enrolment if it is successful. To describe enrolment is thus to describe the group of multilateral negotiations, trials of strength and tricks that accompany the intressements and enable them to succeed.

6.5.2.3. Page 75 Some people believe that by placing non-human actors on the same level as human actors is to inflate human value.

6.5.2.4. Page 77 Why follow some actors and no others? What about actors who never enroll? These are certainly important questions that need to be considered when using ANT as a theoretical perspective.

6.5.2.5. Page 183-184 Actor groups: Initiators, dept. controllers, technicians, and politicians. [And civil servants, and public?]

6.5.2.6. Page 212 Again, it is necessary to evaluate the network outcomes from an ethical perspective. Even though organizational members saw the Powerplay IS as a success, this focus only on organizational resources was unfortunate. Thus, it is critical for future developments also to include organizational objectives in the Powerplay IS...(Cf. also pp. 171-174, 218)

6.5.2.7. Page 221-222 However [allowing more organizational members to access more information on financial matters] does not necessarily eliminate imbalances of power between department controllers and other actor groups. Even though people in the organization were able to interpret the information in the light of their own unique situation, they still needed to rely on a professional controller who can interpret the information for them. This was due to the complexity involved with interpreting the information as well as using the application.

6.5.2.8. Page 226 In order to successfully adapt, an IS has to be consistent with the interests of the actors involved...I would not use the words "success" if it merely was a matter of a Machiavellian power-game, where actors with restricted resources were outflanked or excluded. When one actor's interests translates into an enroller's interest, this action does not replace the actor's interests with the enroller's interest. I believe that an actor-network can consist of several purposes and interests and that success is not confined to the interests of the initiators, but rather success encompasses a wider range of social phenomena. Thus...success is possible for all actors involved...

6.5.2.9. Page 227 A multipurpose network is an actor-network that has successfully enrolled new allies and aligned their interests to the actor network

6.5.2.10. Page 228 Multipurpose networks reward self-interest while simultaneously they promote collaboration...I argue that it is central to develop actor-networks that allow for different interests to co-exist.

6.5.3. The simplification of positivism and its dialectic alternatives

6.5.3.1. Page.11 The logic of determination underlies most IS research. This idea maintains that one variable accounts for or determines variations in another variable. By contrast theories that employ a logic of opposition explain organizational change by focusing on forces in opposition that promote and oppose social change. I agree that we need to make use of theories that employ a logic of opposition in IS research...

6.5.3.2. Page 84 I proposed the idea to the project manager that a successful adaptation of the Powerplay application would include a proper balance between stability and flexibility in the application. I suggested that the stability would have to do with the content, the data, in the application. Flexibility would mean that every department would be able to adapt the Powerplay application according to its special needs. This would mean that different departments would use different features in the application, but the "information core" would nevertheless be the same. [cf. stability≈database, flexibility≈use, as in Churchman. 1971, chap. 4 and tenets of positivism]

6.5.4. Non generalizability of qualitative research

6.5.4.1. Page 82...Qualitative research of this kind does not aim to end up with results that are independent of the researcher.

6.5.4.2. Page 95 An interpretive study relies heavily on the researchers own presuppositions and skills. Because of this, any other researcher would end up with very different results [including prescriptions, cf. accuracy, vs. precision]

6.5.4.3. Page 232 Because this thesis uses only one case study, the results in this study cannot be easily generalized to other settings. Since IS are context dependent, we should expect different results in other organizational contexts. A case study such as this is rather difficult to generalize to a wider theoretical domain. While more empirical work is necessary to elaborate and verify this approach to the interplay between IS and organization, it is believed that a useful beginning has been made.

6.5.5. Truth or relativism

6.5.5.1. Page 76 Latour..argues that "at the end of the process, there is indeed indisputable scientific facts, and free citizen". Latour makes this assertion to distance himself from absolute relativism and social constructivism. Thus, I think that it is fair to say that there is an important difference between the approach to technology proposed in the ANT perspective and that proposed by those whose view relies on relativism.

6.5.5.2. Page 82 The key to managing the unstable dialectical relationship between ethnographic observation and social critique is to re-conceptualize validity in terms of reflexive practice. Reflexivity refers to the researcher's conscious self-understanding of the research process...Are the respondents merely telling me what they think I want to hear or are they telling me their real understanding of the situation? Furthermore, the researcher must ask himself if he is merely seeing what he wants to see or is seeing the real situation as it unfolds in front of him?

6.5.5.3. Page 114 Two key problems served [whose, indeed?] as the starting point for the Powerplay project: the problem with untimely information for decision-making purposes and information overload. [Cf. the question of WHO]

6.5.5.4. Page 121 The main ambition from the initiators' side was to increase the quality in the accounting work.

6.5.5.5. Page 123 A central argument from initiators was that standardization of key ratio would lead to increased quality in financial analysis...(Cf. also p. 180, 186)

6.5.5.6. Page 125 People at the accounting department wanted the Powerplay application to be implemented so that politicians as well as municipal civil servants at the departments were provided with more timely and useable information. One of the initiators noted that the need for more timely information was evident among politicians

6.5.5.7. Page 186 An interesting dimension with the process of adapting the Powerplay IS to the organization was that the problems set up by the initiators as the problems to deal with were not really questioned.

6.5.5.8. Page 188 The problem with untimely information for decision-making purposes and information overload - were seen as problems that were better dealt with after the Powerplay application had become established in the organization.

6.5.5.9. Page. 212-213 However a sense of security is central for an effective organization. The main reason for the persistence of the budget's role in the management of municipal organizations lies in how it gives a sense of security to organizational members...One advantage with the Powerplay applications that larger departments appreciated was the security with using the cubes created by the project manager.

6.5.5.10. Page 223 The debates within the actor groups had been working well for a long time. Nevertheless, these debates were improved after the implementation of the Powerplay IS since the debates were based on more precise information concerning consumed resources in the organization.

6.5.5.11. Page 227 Powerplay's design encourages previously isolated actors to communicate and solve problems together. This allowed the actor-network to pursue more effectively the control over organizational resources.

6.5.5.12. Page 230 Standardizing financial data makes it possible to avoid unnecessary disputes over definitions and terminology [cf. my diss.]. In the municipal organization of Umeå, the standardization of key ratio discouraged quarrels over terminology and encouraged real and useful discussions on financial matters...The different actors could realize their own interests...The key to cultivating evolving multipurpose networks lies in balancing the dynamics between standardization and flexibility.

6.5.5.13. [Cf. all the above with a politician's accusation of a chief civil servant of the Social services and her response (newspaper VK 23 and 24 March 2000) for irresponsible disrespect of budgetary constraints. How would the researcher test his work against such "facts", against the inconsequential adduction of their precedents on pp. 167-174?]

6.5.5.14. [Cf. also with the adaptation of the university's press release in VK 8 April 2000, p. 6, on the disputation of April 13th: "Projektet beskrivs som framgångsrikt och visar hur Umeå kommun lyckats med att få fram information snabbare och bättre strukturerad till beslutsfattare". My English trans."The project is described as successful and shows how the Umeå country succeeded in securing information to its decision makers more rapidly/timely and better structured.]

6.6. Dissertations-recent : I.T. adaptation and sense making.

6.6.1. The source

6.6.1.1. What follows is from: Henfridsson, O. (1999). IT-adaptation as sensemaking: Inventing new meaning for technology in organizations . Umeå: Umeå University, Dept. of Informatics. (Doctoral diss. ISSN 1401-4572.)

6.6.2. Ethics in sense-making of exploration and exploitation phases

6.6.2.1. Page 29 The notion [by Orlikowski and Gash] of technological frames refers to "...that subset of members' organizational frames that concern the assumptions, expectations, and knowledge they use to understand technology in organizations...Where different technological frames between groups such as managers, systems designers, and users exist, it is likely that the development and use of a particular IT-artifact is distorted [cf. my diss.]...The articulation of the assumptions, expectations, and knowledge can avoid unnecessary misunderstandings when introducing new technology in organizations. Furthermore, this articulation can facilitate the way incongruent frames can come together into a congruent view of what the nature of a particular technology is, and what it should be used for.

6.6.2.2. Page 38 Response repertoires [ref. Mead, Weick] are the organized sets of responses that individuals use when monitoring the environment for stimuli. Confronted with the IT-artifact, it is natural to ask which are the good aspects and the bad aspects, the interesting parts, and the banalities. With no frame of reference against which to evaluate these questions, we would be unable to make any sense out of the new artifact. However, we usually have responses to new phenomena. The process of understanding IT is much about selectively picking out aspects ; we pick out features of the technology that we can recognize and relate to our response repertoires [cf. my diss. on who, and whose repertoires]. Without establishing this connection, meaning cannot be produced.[Cf. Leibnizian nets, deduction and induction]

6.6.2.3. Page 41-42 How can we understand the transition between the phase of exploration and the phase of exploitation...The question raised can be answered if we are able to describe and explore the transition from the phase of ambiguity about an IT-artifact to the phase during which the same artifact is used in a common-sensical way...The transition involves many actors, pursuing different goals. Roughly speaking, however, I suggest that an IT-artifact becomes a natural part of an organization's daily activity as individual meanings, co-existing initially, solidify into collective and take-for-granted interpretations, expressed and reinforced in organizational action as double interacts. Double interacts [by Weick] are the elements of order in organizing. They consist of actions performed and maintained by people reducing ambiguity. The actions are highly skilled in that they are responsive to the imagined responses of other people [cf. empathy vs. opportunism]. This is an inter-subjective process in that it is defined in the relation between two (or more) actors. If the executed action works well in terms of expectations [cf. ethics], such confirmation maintains and reinforces the double interact as an element of order in the interpersonal relation. An organization would not exist without these interacts. They make the organizational world intelligible for those involved, and, thus, they also make the IT-artifacts intelligible [cf. meaningful and sense-making].

6.6.2.4. Page 49 While the transition from exploration to exploitation results from a kind of natural attitude among organizational members to reduce ambiguity, the transition from exploitation to exploration requires triggers "external" to the IT-adaptation process. Whether a trigger occasions doubts about the meaning [cf. conflict] of the IT-artifact concerned depends on its strength in comparison to the degree of embeddedness of the double interact maintaining the shared meaning.

6.7. The new unconscious positivism

6.7.1. Conventional consensus

6.7.1.1. Conventional consensus, without emphasis on naive "hard facts", still can be sheer old positivism

6.7.2. The references to March & Simon

6.7.2.1. The references to March & Simon (e.g. by Dahlbom and Ciborra). Cf. the philosophy of the originality of the "design of the artificial" and Churchman, C. W. (1970). The artificiality of science: Review of Herbert A. Simon's book The Sciences of the Artificial. Contemporary Psychology, 15(6, June), 385-386.

6.7.3. The still relevant "Metaphysics of design"

6.7.3.1. Still relevant Ulrich, W. (1980). The metaphysics of design: A Simon-Churchman "debate". Interfaces, 10(2, April), 35-40.

6.8. Eclecticism is also an -ism, or a postmodern pluralism

6.8.1. The growing industry of research taxonomies

6.8.1.1. The increasing fragmentation of IT studies that are in need of a "Copernican revolution" in a badly understood "field" indicate that an increasing amount of researchers instead of doing own original research make a living out of writing handbook-surveys and taxonomies or classifications of what is going on, while neglecting history. This legitimates a "smorgasbord" mentality in younger generations of researchers who are encouraged to pick-up their occasional favorite approach among the trendy ones, and forcing everybody in the "publish or perish" business to dedicate an increasing amount of time to testify a familiarity with supposed "state of the art" while neglecting the lessons of history in the field. The ephemerality of this is illustrated for instance by how an "encyclopedic" work like Hirschheim, R., & Klein, H. K. (1989). Four paradigms of information systems development. Communications of the ACM, 32(10), 1199-1216, and of Hirschheim, R., Klein, H. K., & Lyytinen, K. (1996). Exploring the intellectual structures of information systems development: A social action theoretical analysis. Accounting, Management, and Information Technologies, 5, 1-64

6.8.1.2. has swiftly led to the encyclopedia of Klein, H. K., & Myers, M. D. (1999). A set of principles for conducting and evaluating interpretive field studies in information systems. MIS Quarterly, 23(1), 67-93. (Pre-publication of the paper found at http://www.auckland.ac.nz/msis/isworld/MMyers/Klein-Myers.html, accessed 14 Dec. 1999.)

6.8.2. Qualitative Research

6.8.2.1. Practically equivalent to confusing eclectical postmodern pluralism as e.g. in Klein, H. K., & Myers, M. D. (1999). A set of principles for conducting and evaluating interpretive field studies in information systems. MIS Quarterly, 23(1), 67-93. (Pre-publication of the paper found at http://www.auckland.ac.nz/msis/isworld/MMyers/Klein-Myers.html, accessed 14 Dec. 1999.): Edited quote: Qualitative, case, and interpretive research from the philosophical perspective of hermeneutics. The set of principles and guidelines (as standards against which such research is evaluated) is derived primarily from anthropology, phenomenology and hermeneutics. We are not dealing with many other forms of interpretivism which are not necessarily hermeneutic (such as postmodernism or deconstructionism) but only with evaluation of interpretive research of a hermeneutic nature (social construction, sense making and assignments of meanings, context and process). This is a conceptual papers drawing on work in anthropology and hermeneutics (Gadamer and Ricoeur). Our use of the word "principles" guards against the idea that their use is mandatory; rather, it is incumbent upon authors, reviewers and editors, to exercise their judgment and discretion in deciding whether, how and which of the principles should be applied and appropriated in any given research project.

6.8.3. Contradiction and logic of opposition

6.8.3.1. Instead of dialectics: cf. the recommendation of using different theoretical tools, as in Robey, D., & Boudreau, M.-C. (2000). Organizational consequences of information technology: Dealing with diversity in Empirical research. In R. W. Zmud (Ed.), Framing the domains of IT management: Glimpsing the future through the past . Cincinnati, OH: Pinnaflex, forthcoming. Or the reduction of dialectics to the incoherence of "contradictions" including multiple theories employing a "logic of opposition", and application of "multiple perspectives in the analysis of organizational cultures" in Robey, D., & Boudreau, M.-C. (1999). Accounting for the contradictory organizational consequences of information technology: Theoretical directions and methodological implications. Information Systems Research, 10(2), 167-184

6.8.4. Coordination Theory:

6.8.4.1. Practically equivalent to confusing eclectical postmodern pluralism is also organization and systems theory when suddenly renamed strategically as "coordination theory" in the foundation of the MIT Center of Coordination Science, with a research policy as defined in e.g. Malone, T. W., & Crowston, K. (1990). What is coordination theory and how can it help design cooperative work systems? In CSCW 90 Proceedings (pp. 357-370). New York: ACM Association for Computing Machinery, and in Malone, T. W., & Crowston, K. (1994). The interdisciplinary study of coordination. ACM Computing Surveys, 26(1), 87-119. This survey remarkably neglects the last thirty years of systems theory in general and dialectical social systems theory in particular, illustrating what was written above.

6.9. Postmodernism vs. relativistic pluralism

6.9.1. Represented in the IT-field by e.g. Coyne, R. (1995). Designing information technology in the postmodern age : From method to metaphor . Cambridge: MIT Press

6.9.2. Cf. the sharp criticism of the third way and Anthony Giddens at the London School of Economics: cf. Anonym. (1998). The third way revealed. The Economist, (19 September), and Anonym. (1999). The new establishment of Downing Street. The Economist, (4 September),

6.9.3. Gellner, E. (1992). Postmodernism, reason and religion . London: Routledge.

6.9.4. Norris, C. (1990). What's wrong with postmodernism: Critical theory and the ends of philosophy . New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. (Esp. pp. 16-30, 77-133, 263-282.)

6.9.5. Norris, C. (1993). The truth about postmodernism .

6.9.6. Relativism, and the difficulty of understanding its implications as on p. 101 in Bloor, D. (1999). Anti-Latour. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 30(1), 81-112.

6.9.7. Pluralism turned into relativism or "each work evaluated by the criteria of its own school". But "who is to get the job?", and what about life-commitment in war and science wars?

6.9.8. Flight from definitions, hypotheses, and conclusions: e.g. against information systems but no definitions of them

6.9.9. "Experimentation" understood as trial & error improvisation

6.10. Against relativism, for truth

6.10.1. Johnson, K. E. (1997). John Hick's pluralistic hypothesis and the problem of conflicting truth-claims : http://www.leaderu.com/wri/articles/hick.html, accessed 20 October 2000

6.10.2. Cleary, D. (2000). Antonio Rosmini: Introduction to his life and teaching . Durham, U.K.: Rosmini House. (ISBN 0 951 3211 61, http://www.rosmini-in-english.org/Weblife/Lifeconts.htm.)

6.10.3. Scruggs, S. (1996). Truth or tolerance? : http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/truthtol.html, accessed 26 October 2000

6.10.4. Seifert, J. (1997). From relativism and scepticism to truth and certainty : http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth14.html, accessed 26 October 2000

6.10.5. Ratzinger, J. (1996). Samvete och sanning [Conscience and truth]. Signum, (4 & 5). (Swedish trans. by Yvonne Werner, of an essay presented as a lecture at the American Bishops' Conference on moral theological questions in 1991. In "Wahrheit, Werte, Macht. Prüfsteine der pluralistischen Gesellschaft". Herder 1995, pp. 29-62. Italian trans. in "La Chiesa. Una comunità sempre in cammino. Edizioni Paoline, 1991, pp. 115-137.)

6.11. On postmodernism from Norris 1990

6.11.1. From Norris, C. (1990). What's wrong with postmodernism: Critical theory and the ends of philosophy . New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. (Esp. pp. 16-30, 77-133, 263-282.)

6.11.2. Page 131 Fish is certainly the cleverest sophist around, or the thinker who has most successfully revived the strain of all-purpose rhetorical professionalism that Socrates considered such a scandalous affair. [ref. to Stanley Fish, Is there a text in this class? The authority of interpretive communities. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980].

6.11.3. (page 269-270) Ref. to de Man's account of Schiller and his idea of 'aesthetic education' as a means of transcending the Kantian disjunction between knowledge (or cognitive truth claims) on the one hand and imagination (or the power of inward, sympathetic understanding) on the other. Such would be the end-point of Schiller's redemptive project: 'A wisdom that lies somehow beyond cognition and self-knowledge, yet can only be reached by ways of the process it is said to overcome'.[ref. to Paul De Man, Aesthetic formalization, in The Rhetoric of Romanticism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984, pp. 263-290, p. 265]. Aesthetics would thus become the natural home ground for a different, altogether 'higher' mode of awareness [cf. sense-making] that disowned the antinomies of Kantian critical reason and claimed to effect a reconciliation of the various faculties whose separate domains Kant had attempted to delimit. But the result...is a species of "aesthetic formalisation" which collapses the difference between ethics (practical reason) and phenomenal cognition, and thus makes reason entirely subject to the laws or dictates of natural necessity. The "state" that is being advocated [in Schiller's Letters on Aesthetic Education] is not just a state of mind or of soul, but a principle of political value and authority that has its own claims on the shape and the limits of our freedom [degrees of freedom, freedom of action]. And these claims are by no means a mere "aberration" or an isolated instance of aesthetic philosophy overstepping its legitimate domain. On the contrary..."aesthetic education by no means fails; it succeeds too well, to the point of hiding the violence that makes it possible"... It is specifically Heidegger's reading of Kant - a reading that elevates "productive imagination" to a status far beyond anything envisaged by Kant himself - that this error takes hold of and opens the way to all manner of aestheticist confusion.

6.12. On postmodernism from Norris 1994

6.12.1. Norris, C. (1994). Truth and the ethics of criticism . Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 22-23, 102-103, 108-109, 125:

6.12.2. Quote #1. On the [neo-]pragmatist account there is simply no difference – no difference that makes a difference – between truth as construed in relation to current societal or cultural norms and truth as the end-point of reasoned inquiry...It is within the reach of the larger question...how far reason can legitimately claim to contest or to criticize what is currently held as "good in the way of belief". Such criticism may assume a variety of forms....What unites them...is an argued and principles resistance to any version of the claim that truth comes down to a matter of local knowledge, consensus values, or cultural forms of life....This counter-argument can be set out very briefly as a series of propositions....from which follows...that argument doesn't have an end point of acknowledging diverse (incommensurable) language-games, paradigms, conceptual schemes, interpretive horizons, or whatever.

6.12.3. Quote #2. Of course one may argue, like Stanley Fish, that "theory" is an inconsequential activity; that it cannot do other than rhetorically endorse the views of some more-or less widespread "interpretive community"; and therefore that one might as well relinquish talk of reasons, principles, validating grounds etc. and settle for a straightforward [neo]-pragmatist appeal to what's good in the way of belief. [Cf. aesthetic intuition]. But his position looks plausible only if one starts out from something like the post-structuralist premise that discourse (or rhetoric) goes "all the way down", with the consequence...that henceforth all truth claims and subject-positions must be viewed as relative to the language-game in question, and thus as mere products of suasive contrivance of localized cultural consensus...Other philosophers...have likewise insisted on the close relation between ethical theory and practice, and on the fallacy involved in any thinking (like Hume's) that treats them as separate realms. For such thinking itself has consequences...it produces a generalized scepticism with regard to theory in whatever form, so that reason is regarded as a "slave of the passions", and ethics reduces to a matter of moral sentiment without need for any further (reasoned or principled) justification. One arrives at much the same position – vide Rorty – by pushing the linguistic turn to a point where high-toned talk about truth, justice, the "political responsibility of the intellectuals", and so forth shows up as just another transient contender for the role of "final vocabulary".

6.12.4. Quote #3. We are now better placed to understand why "theory" (or the version of it promoted by post-structuralists, Foucauldians, New Historicists and others) has fallen in so readily with this current of counter-enlightenment trend. By "decentering" [cf. "actor network" and hybrid humans in ANT] the subject to the point of non-existence – reducing it to a mere position within a discourse or a figment of the humanist Imaginary – post-structuralism has removed the very possibility of reasoned, reflective, and principled ethical choice. From Foucault comes the Nietzsche-inspired (but ultimately Hobbesian) notion that "subjectivity" and "subjection" are synonymous terms; that all truth-claims – including ethico-political ideas of reason – are reducible to effects of power/knowledge; and hence that we might as well abandon any hope of achieving progress through the exercise of reason in its enlightened (critical-emancipatory) role. New Historicism ends up advocating much the same attitude, despite its methodological verve and its resourcefulness in conjuring novel relations between literary texts (canonical or otherwise) and all manner of so-called "extraneous" source material. Where it joins the current litany of wanhope is in pushing this "strong" intertextualist argument to the point of collapsing all generic distinctions between literary and other types of discourse, whether historical, philosophical, anthropological, or whatever. This way cultural solipsism lies.

6.12.5. Quote #4. [T]here remain some unresolved tensions in Foucault's late move toward a partial rapprochement with Kant. Chief among them is his desire – shared with postmodernists like Richard Rorty – to aestheticize ethics by construing "autonomy" as a matter of private self-fashioning [cf. "design by designer"], a project carried on (or so it would seem) in virtual isolation from what Kant conceived as the public realm of collectively articulated reasons, motives, and interests.

6.13. On postmodernism from Honderich 1995

6.13.1. POSTMODERNISM from Honderich, T. (Ed.) (1995). The Oxford companion to philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 708: 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", or the puzzles induced by allowing language to become the object of its own scrutiny in a kind of dizzying rhetorical regress. To this extent post-modernism might seem as a ludic [cf. bricolage, my note] development of the so-called "linguistic turn" that has characterized much philosophical thinking of late.

6.14. Postmodern positivism and the "How" vs. "Why"

6.14.1. Case of "Churchman" as number of hits at web-page of journals' publisher (vs Latour and Callon) vs. talk on meaning and interpretation

6.14.2. "Statistical" peer-review (cf. counterpoint dissidence vs. mainstream). Cf. Jung vs. Freud, Bach after Mendelsson

6.14.3. "What-How" rather than "Why" (equated with causality)

6.14.4. University courses' quality = enrollment figures

6.14.5. Quality of department's home page = hits' statistics

6.14.6. Authors' quality = citation index (e.g. in IS Journal) = prospects for support for grant applications. Cf. case of citation of H. Simon because of outrage at "man vs. ant"

6.14.7. Graduate course on technique of getting oneself published

6.14.8. Career planning and alliances: winners vs. losers

6.14.9. Experimentation instead of experiments: trial and error, improvisation, shift and drift, bricolage, all equated to "empiricism"

6.15. "Multiple interpretations" vs. commitment? Understanding and sense-making (of "how" and of "multiple interpretations")

6.15.1. Cf. Noble and Winner on distance education and virtual universities:

6.15.1.1. Young, J. R. (2000). David Noble's battle to defend the 'sacred space' of the classroom: Jeremiads against online education attract followers; the critics say he's an ill-informed Luddite. The Chronicle of Higher Education, (March 21), (http://chronicle/com/free/v46/i30/30a00101.htm, with links to a colloquy live of March 30 2000 at http://chronicle/com/colloquylive/transcripts/2000/03/20000330noble.htm, and Noble's articles on Digital Diploma Mills, Part I-IV at http://www.communications.ucsd.edu/dl/ddm1.html - to ddm4.html. Accessed 31 March 2000.).

6.15.1.2. Cornford, J. (2000?). The virtual university is...the university made concrete . (Manuscript p:\virtuni\papers\jcla8.doc, available from james.cornford@ncl.ac.uk.).

6.15.1.3. Winner, L. (1997). Cyberlibertarian myths and the prospects for community. Computers and Society - ACM SIGCAS, 27(3, September), 14-19. (Special issue-section on Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry Conference CEPE'97.).

6.15.1.4. Winner, L. (1998). Meet the inventor! An interview with L.C. Winner, CEO of EDU-SHAM Inc : http://www.rpi.edu/~winner/wrpi1.html. (Radio interview broadcasted at 6:00 p.m. April 1, 1998 on the 'Blinded Science' program of WRPI, Troy, New York. Interview by Art Fricke, Rensselaer's dept. of science and technology studies.)

6.15.2. Klein & Myers on interpretive field studies

6.15.2.1. Source: Klein, H. K., & Myers, M. D. (1999). A set of principles for conducting and evaluating interpretive field studies in information systems. MIS Quarterly, 23(1), 67-93. (Pre-publication of the paper found at http://www.auckland.ac.nz/msis/isworld/MMyers/Klein-Myers.html, accessed 14 Dec. 1999.):

6.15.2.2. Orlikowski's (1991) research is concerned with "the extent to which information technology deployed in work processes facilitates changes in forms of control and organizational forms"

6.15.2.3. Klein & Myers (ibidem), What is at stake here is not the truth or untruth of the claims but the world of social relations between the planning staff and the other departments of city government

6.16. The Sokal affair, 1996 and "Science Wars"

6.16.1. Bricmont, J., & Sokal, A. (1997). What is all the fuss about? How French intellectuals have responded to accusations of science-abuse. The Times Literary Supplement, (17 October), (Concerning responses to the authors' book Impostures intellectuelles.)

6.16.2. Sokal, A., & Bricmont, J. (1998). Fashionable nonsense . Picador.

6.16.3. The Economist. (1997). You can't follow the science wars without a battle map. The Economist, (December 13th), 93-95.

6.17. Faster and faster

6.17.1. Obsolescence of research trends (Marx->Habermas->Design & Reengineering->SAP & Internet)

6.17.2. Situational flexibility and (theory of?) improvisation

6.17.3. The impossible extrapolation (e.g. product cycle or continuous education)

6.17.4. Sanne, C. (1995). Arbetets tid [Working hours in the age of work: Working time reforms and consumption in the welfare state] . Stockholm: Carlssons. (Doctoral diss. English summary and bibliography of about 300 entries, pp. 275-341.)

6.17.5. Burenstam-Linder, S. (1969). Den rastlösa välfärdsmänniskan: Tidsbrist i överflöd - en ekonomisk studie . Stockholm: Bonniers.

6.17.6. Rifkin, J. (1987). Time wars: The primary conflict in human history . New York: Simon & Schuster.

6.18. "Success": fads and the emperor's new designed clothes

6.18.1. Shapiro, E. (1995). Fad surfing in the boardroom: Reclaiming the courage to manage in the age of instant answers . New York: Addison-Wesley.

6.18.2. Shapiro, E. (1997). Managing the age of gurus: Book review of John Micklethwait and Adrian Woolridge - The witch doctors: Making sense of the management gurus. New York: Times Books, 1996. Harvard Business Review, (March-April), 142-147.

6.18.3. Cf. the latest business TV-gurus as showmen (local versions of Bill Gates)

6.18.4. Superficial views of "success" when it is proper to use the frame of randomness (Churchman's Design of Inquiring Systems, chap. 10, Carneadean imagery of probability)

6.19. Unconscious second-hand philosophy

6.19.1. Heidegger->Winograd & Flores->Ehn->Graduate students

6.19.2. Same for Nietzschean perspectives, Kantian aesthetic & romantic design, Heideggerian pre-Socratics

6.19.3. The superficiality of action-research and the failed dialectic between science and politics (control group for effects of participatory systems development?). Cf. Hannah Arendt on Labor, Work, and Action in Lilla, M. (1999). Ménage à trois. The New York Review of Books, (March 9), (Review of Briefe 1925 bis 1975 und andere Zeugnisse, by Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, edited by Ursula Ludz, publ. by Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann. Also at Also at http://www. nybooks.com/nyrev, accessed 3 March 2000.)

6.20. Unconscious first-hand philosophy?

6.20.1. The case with "also" Heidegger?

6.20.1.1. From Jung, C. G. (1953-1979). On the nature of the psyche. In Collected Works - Vol. 8 (pp. 159-234). Princeton: Princeton University Press. (R.F.C. Hull, trans. Orig. published in 1946.)

6.20.1.2. §358...[With the discovery of a possible unconscious psychic realm] the validity of conscious knowledge was questioned in an altogether different and more menacing way than it had ever been by the critical procedures of epistemology. The latter put certain bounds to human knowledge in general, from which post-Kantian German Idealism struggled to emancipate itself; but natural science and common sense accommodated themselves to it without much difficulty, if they condescended to notice it at all. Philosophy fought against it in the interest of an antiquated pretension of the human mind to be able to pull itself up by its own bootstraps and know things that were outside the range of human understanding. /The victory of Hegel over Kant dealt the gravest blow to reason to reason and to the further development of the German and, ultimately, of the European mind, all the more dangerous as Hegel was a psychologist in disguise who projected great truths out of the subjective sphere into a cosmos he himself had created. We know how far Hegel's influence extends today. The forces compensating this calamitous development personified themselves partly in the later Schelling, partly in Schopenhauer and Carus, while on the other hand the unbridled "bacchantic God" whom Hegel had already scented in nature finally burst upon us in Nietzsche.

6.20.1.3. §359 Carus' hypothesis of the unconscious was bound to hit the then prevailing trend of German philosophy all the harder, as the latter had apparently just got the better of Kantian criticism and had restored, or rather reinstated, the well-nigh godlike sovereignty of the human spirit--Spirit with a capital S. The spirit of medieval man was, in good and bad alike, still the spirit of the God whom he served. Epistemological criticism was on the one hand an expression of the modesty of medieval man, and on the other a renunciation of, or abdication from, the spirit of God, and consequently a modern extension and reinforcement of human consciousness within the limits of reason. Wherever the spirit of God is extruded from our human calculations, an unconscious substitute takes its place. In Schopenhauer we find the unconscious Will and the new definition of God, in Carus the unconscious, and in Hegel identification and inflation, the practical equation of philosophical reason with Spirit, thus making possible that intellectual juggling with the object which achieved such a horrid brilliance in his philosophy of the State. Hegel offered a solution of the problem raised by epistemological criticism in that he gave ideas a chance to prove their unknown power of autonomy. They induced that hubris of reason which led to Nietzsche's superman and hence to the catastrophe that bears the name of Germany. Not only artists, but philosophers too, are sometimes prophets.

6.20.1.4. § 360 I think that it is obvious that all philosophical statements which transgress the bounds of reason are anthropomorphic and have no validity beyond that which befalls to psychically conditioned statements. A philosophy like Hegel's is a self-revelation of the psychic background and, philosophically, a presumption. Psychologically, it amounts to an invasion by the unconscious. The peculiar high-flown language Hegel uses bears out this view: it is reminiscent of the megalomanic language of schizophrenics, who use terrific spellbinding words to reduce the transcendent to subjective form, to give banalities the charm or novelty, or pass off commonplaces as searching wisdom. So bombastic a terminology is a symptom of weakness, ineptitude, and lack of substance. But that does not prevent the latest [publication date 1946] German philosophy from using the same crackpot power-words and pretending that it is not unintentional psychology.

6.21. Unconscious economics

6.21.1. Cf. the "Quality of growth" and "Productivity" debates: relevance for poverty and development (and the issue of "IT for underdeveloped countries" as well as underdeveloped institutions in "developed" countries, such as old age care, hospitals, and disadvantaged:

6.21.2. http://www.worldbank.org/devforum/forum/qog_qog.html

6.21.3. http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/wdrpoverty/

6.21.4. http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/governance/

6.21.5. http://www.globkom.net/

6.21.6. Brynjolfson, E. (1993). The productivity paradox of information technology. Communications of the ACM, 36(12), 67-77

6.21.7. Anonymous. (1999). The new economy: Work in progress. On the surface, America's economy is changing dramatically, that much is plain. But just how deep the changes go, and what they imply for the country's growth in the long term, remains an open question. The Economist, (July 24th), 19-21. (See also the editorial in the same issue: "How real is the new economy?" pp.15-16.) Registered readers can also retrieve the article on the new economy assigned to the date 23 September 2000, http://www.economist.com/editorial/freeforall/20000923/index_survey.html

6.22. Questioning definitions, reality, and truth

6.22.1. Plato's struggle with the sophists

6.22.2. The body and the "edutainment" experiencing-industry. Cf. Plato's struggle with pleasure vs reason, today ignored or neglected as much as the role of the ethical will. Cf. below on the "philosophy in the flesh" and the encyclical Veritatis Splendor.

6.22.3. Cf. the seriousness of "error" in Clarence Lewis and in Ernst Mach

6.22.4. The neglect of essence and form (relevant for virtuality and imagery). Cf. Aveling, F. (1909). Essence and existence. In Catholic Encyclopedia: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05543b.htm, accessed 21 Nov. 2000

6.22.5. The new definitions of truth: compare to the old quest on error, accuracy and precision, or, reliability and validity. Cf. credibility=reliability+validity with reliability as "extent to which observations by multiple researchers studying the same phenomenon with similar purposes will yield approximately the same results" and validity "involves checking the credibility of knowledge claims". Cf. also "Criteria for convincing texts" (e.g. Walsham's ref. to Golden-Bidlle & Locke in Organization Science, No.. 4, 1993): Authenticity (the ability of the text to convey the vitality of everyday life as encountered in the field setting), plausibility (the ability of the text to connect to the personal and professional experience of the reader, and criticality (the ability of the text to actively press readers to consider their taken-for-granted ideas and beliefs)

6.23. The problems of empiricism and its practice

6.23.1. No less problems than classical idealism but more natural in the tradition of Anglo-Saxon Lockean culture: new forms of postmodern (e.g. ANT) or interpretivistic or ethnographic empiricism (Walsham, G.,1993, Interpreting information systems in organizations . Chichester: Wiley), as well as aestheticizing body-mysticism (as in Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M.,1999, Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought , New York: Basic Books). New forms of empiricism appeal to formalists or empiricists, mathematicians or experimental psychologists who feel an existential disappointment or disgust with the experienced barredness of their early training and commitments (scientific analog of ideological "new-age")

6.23.2. The burden of proof as instance of the demeaning of tradition at the same time as "new traditions" are recurrently announced as Klein & Myers on Walsham (1993 or 1995) and interpretive approaches to IS, or ANT, etc. Forgetting that "fact-nets" are as important as supposed (subjective) facts in that relations to and explanations or implications of old facts and others' facts (like those of tradition and love, or religious experience) also constitute the factuality and value of facts

6.23.3. The pressures exerted by the poorly financed expansion of universities and colleges, in that students and faculty, while motivated to free themselves from organizational bonds, are expected to show that they are "doing" something, and preferably for industry and commerce, or at legitimating personnel savings in public service by suggesting that the same amount or quality of service to citizens is attainable with less personnel (and more technical equipment). Students feel that being "empirical" allows them to fraternize with business sources of funding and allow them "access to field settings" about which they can report a supposed empirical external reality. Cf. the perverse phenomenon that, while not being prophet at home, one can attain the status of double-prophet by claiming to be a (research) theoretician in the business field, and a (business) practitioner in the university field, like a "spy" always knowing better than one's peers what is going on in the opposite field. Cf. the complications of self-knowledge that were well known in the British Tavistock tradition or organization studies like French, R., & Vince, R. (Ed.) (1999), Group relations, management, and organisations, Oxford: Oxford University Press, similar to Kernberg, O. (1980), Internal world and external reality: Object relations theory applied, New York: Jason Aronson, (see esp. part III. Swedish trans.: Inre värld och yttre verklighet: Tillämpad objektrelationsteori. Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 1986.). The rationale behind the triumph of superficial rhetoric under such labels as credibility, plausibility, authenticity. It is easier to just narrate facts and speculate about them if other requirements are neglected such as those of classical rhetoric in its relations to dialectic and logic, or those of statistical empiricism

6.23.4. The implications of management and research fads ("have you read", "have you studied empirically", e.g. Marx, Habermas, Foucault, Latour) while paradoxically ignoring (not asking about) older valuable results. Cf. examples of anti-Habermas and anti-Latour: van den Berg, A. (1989). Habermas and modernity: A critique of the theory of communicative action. Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 10, 161-193, and Bloor, D. (1999). Anti-Latour. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 30(1), 81-112. The implications of anti-Latour being analyzable in terms of Churchman's The Design of Inquiring Systems, chaps. 2, 3, 7 (monads and actants as system entities; assigned vs inherent purposes as a matter of Hegelian observer; making sense on p. 99 as attribution of purposes)

6.23.5. The cost of empirical evidence, and the resistance against the use of "secondary empiricism" despite the general disregard for source criticism and despite the lip service to ethnographic method (understood, however, as accepting on their face value opinion surveys and interview reports). My own example of "trivial" recurrent empirical findings where the difficulty at an early stage appeared to be to find theoretical and philosophical bases for their interpretation. Cf. Ivanov, K. (1977). Ekonomisk informationsbehandling för bibliotek: Ett praktikfall av integration mellan informationsbehandling och företagsekonomi; Informationsanalys för vetenskaplig dokumentation: Grunden för datastrukturer i databehandlingssystem, ett praktikfall; and Projektlogik i utveckling av informationssystem: Erfarenheter av datorbearbetningar för vetenskapliga bibliotek (Research reports). University of Umeå, Dept of Information Processing.

6.23.6. Richness and vitality of descriptive [cf. empirical!] research are in fact products of mirroring chaos and others' efforts for change for commercial "improvements". Much of today's "sophistication" in empirical research is a mirroring of the diffusion of capitalized high tech. Cf. David Noble on distance education. Cf. Young, J. R. (2000). David Noble's battle to defend the 'sacred space' of the classroom: Jeremiads against online education attract followers; the critics say he's an ill-informed Luddite. The Chronicle of Higher Education, (March 21), (http://chronicle/com/free/v46/i30/30a00101.htm. See also transcript of Colloquy live at http://chronicle/com/colloquylive/transcripts/2000/03/20000330noble.htm, and Noble's articles on Digital Diploma Mills, Part I-IV at http://www.communications.ucsd.edu/dl/ddm1.html - to ddm4.html. Accessed 31 March 2000.)

6.23.7. The claim that our research should be more "relevant" for "practice": cf. Lee, A. S. (1999). Rigor and relevance in MIS research: Beyond the approach of positivism alone. MIS Quarterly, 23(1), 29-34, and Lyytinen, K. (1999). Empirical research in information systems: On the relevance of practice in thinking of IS research. MIS Quarterly, 23(1), 25-28. Compare how research on IT-supported distance education missed the discussion of the customer of practice, according to Young, J. R. (2000), referenced above

6.23.8. The criticism of "it works" (John Dewey's aesthetics and Donald Schön)

6.23.9. Disciplinary empiricism does not even keep up to the level of The Economist's (empirical!) reports and analyses. It is not a question of writing such reports but at least being able to read and understand them.

6.23.10. The paradoxes of practice: my examples of (1) produced screws which do not fit tolerances and cannot be used, and therefore cannot be sold, leading to law suits, and (2) the production of a video-product by sheer recording people who just talk or sing. Cf. the commodization of teaching in courseware and the debate on internet-mediated distance education (David Noble)

6.23.11. The paradox of "improvisation" (of "From control to drift") compared with old good "management by exception", or relying on the accommodating and absorbing silent work by flexible underdogs who patch the side-effects of improvisation (example of taking care of unexpected guests). Cf. the need for the Copernican revolution (earlier ref. to Truesdell, 1984) as opposed to earlier complication and complicating improvisation. Note, further, that the call for improvisation presupposes often a homeostatic self-regulating "system" of creative fragments. Note also the reducibility of all this to iterative accommodations in Churchman's "Singerian inquiring systems". Cf. Plato's "Too many of our modern philosophers in their search after the nature of things, are always getting dizzy from constantly going round and round, and then they imagine that the world is going round and round and moving in all directions. And this appearance, which arises out of their own internal condition, they suppose to be a reality of nature; they think that there is nothing stable or permanent, but only flux and motion, and that the world is always full of every sort of motion and change." (Crat. 411b-c)

6.23.12. Cf. deeper criticism of "pragmatist" (ref. Donald Schön) action. Radhakrishnan, S. (Ed.) (1949). The Bhagavadgita. London: George Allen & Unwin. (IV "The way of knowledge", pp. 162-164, and XVIII "Conclusion", pp. 355-361). What is action, what is inaction – as to this even the wise are bewildered...One has to understand what action is, and likewise one has to understand what is wrong action and one has to understand about inaction. Hard to understand is the way of work...He who in action sees inaction, and action in inaction he is wise among men, he is a yogi and he has accomplished all his work...Having abandoned attachment to the fruit of works, ever content, without any kind of dependence, he does nothing though he is ever engaged in work...[L]earn of Me, these five factors for the accomplishment of all actions...The seat of action, and likewise the agent, the instruments of various sorts, the many kinds of efforts and providence being the fifth...Knowledge, the object of knowledge and the knowing subject, are the threefold incitement to action: the instrument, the action and the agent are the threefold composite of action...The understanding which knows action and non-action, what ought to be done and what ought not to be done, what is to be feared and what is not to be feared, what binds and what frees the soul...is of the nature of 'goodness'.

6.23.13. Further criticism of "pragmatist" action. Blondel, M. (1973). L'action: Essai d'une critique de la vie et d'une science de la pratique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. (Orig. published 1893.)

6.24. The cost of evidence

6.24.1. The "use" of ISAC systems development method

6.24.2. The "use" of Singerian vs. Internet interactivity

6.24.3. Parasitism: expensive empiricism with deterministically viewed technique, opportunistic military side effects, opportunistic business and services consultancy, neglecting earlier results as (for IT in government and administration) Hoos, I. R. (1983). Systems analysis in public policy: A critique (Rev. ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. (Page references to first 1972 ed.) or Bauer, R. A., (Ed.). (1966). Social indicators . Cambridge: The MIT Press

6.24.4. Chasing after practice rather than leading practice as suggested in Benbasat, I., & Zmud, R. W. (1999). Empirical research in information systems: The practice of relevance. MIS Quarterly, 23(1), 3-16, p. 6

6.25. Risk for careerism of new generations

6.25.1. The new graduate education and "positivistic" competition, combined with the "generation gap" which legitimizes the disregard of historical ties to seniors'. The trap of "my children". The example of cautionary (sedelärande) tales on old poor parents's sacrifice and smartaleck's disdain. The consciousness of "senex-puer" archetype

6.25.2. Arrogance: Cf. "insensitive to or uninterested of criticism" vs. "a genuine or assumed feeling of superiority that shows or is inclined to show itself in an overbearing manner or attitude or in excessive claims of position, dignity, or power or that unduly exalts one's own worth or importance". At the extreme: the borderline syndrome (Kernberg, and ref. Robert Maxwell) and my "cooperative work-examples of problems" in "Humanistic computing science".

6.25.3. Naivety or postmodern sensitivity to trends: e.g. the new research similar to the "new economy" of Birgersson & von Holstein (after Jan Carlsson) and "Newspeak" (kundnöjdhet, värdeskapande, meningsskapande, kuvöser, hybrider, affärslogik, bricks)

6.26. Peer review and publish-or-perish syndrome

6.26.1. General

6.26.1.1. The neo-positivism of superficial statistics (cf. web-statistics)

6.26.1.2. Cf. the discussion of the "citation index" and of universities' rating system

6.26.1.3. Peer review and concomitant publication seen mainly as a means for trendy networking (as evidenced by the avoidance of authors who are not already, yet, or anymore widely cited in the field). Lockean narrow "internet-communities", "own journal" or "own conference" for each swollen group in the information society's IT-explosion. Variant: "who cares", "who is bothered", or "who can afford to care for others", both in criticizing or taking into account criticism. Cf. relation to emphasis on empiricism which is essentially consensual-conventional and in that sense "subjective" instead of universal and "catholic". And therefore subsequent compensatory emphasis on the neo-romantic rhetoric of "credibility-plausibility-conviction" or appeals to "authenticity"

6.26.1.4. Explain how it comes that Harvard Business Review is not peer-reviewed

6.26.1.5. Measure of the amount of money which at every time (or in an earlier phase) is or was diverted to sectored research funds and to financing research positions (e.g. Ph.D. fellowships or post-doc fellowships) and travelling to conferences

6.26.1.6. Very different and rigid requirements of "scientificality" in Anglo-Saxon world until late seventies: technique (prototypes), formalization (logic), statistics (experiments)

6.26.1.7. Unconsciousness of "statistics" of publication per available productive time period and on the presupposition of 3-5 years' lead-time from inception to publication

6.26.1.8. Measure of the number of available journals (proliferation of IS journals) vs available researchers ≈ measure of the degree of competition at each time

6.26.1.9. Measure of the shares' and bonds' market of research and development. Cf. with NASDAQ IT-stock exchange

6.26.1.10. Measure of self-criticism: the more self-critical and conscious of the need of reading or using better and more advanced researchers, the less prone to submit own contributions. Cf. Socrates non-writing and ref. to the worst type of ignorance: "I do seem to myself to see one very large and bad sort of ignorance, which is quite separate, and may be weighed in the scale against all other sorts of ignorance put together. It is when a person supposes that he knows, and does not know; this appears to be the great source of all the errors of the intellect. And this is the kind of ignorance which specially earns the title of stupidity. The sort of instruction which gets rid of this is not the teaching of handicraft arts, but what, thanks to us, has been termed education in this part of the world." (Sophist 229c). Cf. also the paradox of low-prestige of teaching as compared to researching (publications): the more able to appreciate available knowledge, and the more prone to invest efforts in learning from it, the more you want to teach what you have understood and the less motivation, time and energy are left for writing and publishing in the publish-perish game.

6.26.1.11. Other reasons for not publishing (non-gratifying) even if it were feasible: "Since therefore when I speak on any occasion it is not with a view to winning a favor, but I aim at what is best, not what is most pleasant, and since I am unwilling to engage in dainty devices, I shall have nothing to say for myself in court....My trial will be like that of a doctor prosecuted by a cook before a jury of children. Just consider what kind of defense such a man could offer in such a predicament, if the plaintiff should accuse him in these terms: Children of the jury, this fellow has done all of you abundant harm, and the youngest among you he is ruining by surgery and cautery, and he bewilders you by starving and choking you, giving you bitter draughts and compelling you to hunger and thirst, whereas I used to feast you with plenty of sweetmeats of every kind. What do you think a doctor could find to say in such a desperate situation? If he spoke the truth and said, All this I did, children, in the interests of health, what a shout do you think such a jury would utter? Would it not be a loud one? (Gorgias 521d-522a)

6.26.1.12. Measure of selective availability of, and propensity to use, word processing

6.26.1.13. The ritualization of Ph.D. disputations, and why expert roles in task forces and in evaluations of applications for funds are experienced as decreasingly meaningful

6.26.1.14. Insensitivity to research politics, like Boffey, P. M. (1975). The brain bank of America: An inquiry into the politics of science . New York: McGraw-Hill.

6.26.1.15. The evolution of universities, e.g. Nisbet, R. (1971). The degradation of the academic dogma. The university in America, 1945-1970 . London: Heineman, and Ivanov, K. (1985). Universitetets bidrag till näringslivets och förvaltningens samhällsnytta. In C. Knuthammar, & E. Pålsson (Ed.), Vetenskap och vett: Till frågan om universitetets roll (pp. 52-62). Linköping: University of Linköping. (ISBN 91-7372-925-6. With a bibliography of 95 entries - pp. 124-127.)

6.26.2. Complementary literature

6.26.2.1. Anonymous. (1996). Re-engineering peer review. The Economist, (June 22nd), 98-99

6.26.2.2. Anonymous. (1997). Methodical progress: Applying the scientific method to the processes of science can be illuminating. The Economist, (September 27th), 93-94

6.26.2.3. Anonymous. (1998). American democracy: The show is on TV. Politics in America is not mainly about politicians. The last article in our series looks at the supplanting of elected representatives by media types. The Economist, (August 29th), 45-46

6.26.2.4. Anonymous. (1999). Amateurs on Amazon. Do-it-yourself literary criticism is more than just harmless fun. The Economist, (August 28th), 69-70

6.26.2.5. Anonymous. (2000). E-conomic publishing. The Economist, (August 5th), 71

6.26.2.6. Anonymous. (2000). Will journal publishers perish? The Internet is transforming the world of scientific journals. The Economist, (May 13th), 87-88

6.26.2.7. Van Wyk, G. C. B. (1998). Publish or perish: A system and a mess. Systems Practice and Action Research, 11(3), 245-257

6.27. Competence-inflation, and parasitary aestheticist ambitions

6.27.1. The gradual dilution of competence-requirements: scientific + pedagogical + managerial + fund rising

6.27.2. Risk for parasitic empiricism as vicious circle about "understanding" commercial exploitation of recurrently obsolete (USA) military innovations. "The less one understands the more one wants to know". The claims by aesthetic or postmodern aestheticism to grasp a gradually broader and socially fragmented image. Basically a spiritual-religious crisis along abused Kantian aesthetics and Nietzschean nihilism.

6.28. Ultimately

6.28.1. My conviction that most modern trends unconsciously and superficially follow Greek sophistry and German romanticism as formulated in Nietzschean thought, or Asian thought filtrated through Western secularization. A cultural and personal tragedy for well-meaning but seduced young ego-inflated arrogant researchers

6.28.2. My conviction that the "pendulum" model sometimes applied to the swinging between positivism vs. postmodernism is rather a "spiral" model that appears as a (decreasing) pendulum swing in cut-view

7. The particular case of the design trend

7.1. The syndrome of "definitions" and disparate fragmentation

7.1.1. Literature

7.1.1.1. Dubuisson, S., & Hennion, A. (1997). Le design: L'objet dans l'usage: La relation objet-usage-usager dans le travail de trois agences . Paris: Les Presses de l'École de Mines.

7.1.1.2. Wigley, M. (1998). Whatever happened to Total Design? Harvard Design Magazine, (Summer), 18-25.

7.1.1.3. Buchanan, R. (1995). Rhetoric, humanism, and design. In R. Buchanan, & V. Margolin (Ed.), Discovering design: Explorations in design studies . Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press. (Page ref. to text in the manuscript dated 1994.)

7.1.1.4. Flusser, V. (1999). The shape of things: A philosophy of design . London: Reaktion Books. (Trans. & introduction by Martin Pawley. ISBN 1 86189 055 9.). The most "theoretical" and deep-going work I know, but it is fragmentary, not "systematic"

7.1.2. Definitions from papers and conferences or workshops

7.1.2.1. Definitions in papers on design and in conferences or workshops:

7.1.2.2. A particular type of thinking (Peirce's abduction, vs. induction-deduction)

7.1.2.3. Design is a way of seeing problems

7.1.2.4. Viewing the problems or acting as though there is some ill-definedness in the goals, initial conditions or allowable transformations

7.1.2.5. The natural sciences are concerned with how things are, design with how they ought to be

7.1.2.6. Design is to focus the attention on an object, its environment and its interplay with environment [cf. "system"!]

7.1.2.7. Design research aims at precising the requirements on an artefact and to advise on how conflicting requirements can be balanced

7.1.2.8. Design is the interplay between form, function, and structure (proportio), symmetria, eurythmia,. (Vitruvius). Cf. E. Panofsky's Meaning in the Visual Arts, 1955, p. 68n.

7.1.2.9. Design is determining the space of possible actions (degrees of freedom)

7.1.2.10. Cf. Churchman's The Design of Inquiring Systems, pp. 5, 8, 14, 55, 258, 276

7.1.2.11. Design, guided by the designer's preparedness for action (Swedish: handlingsberedskap) and the "right feeling" (intuition) within his degrees of freedom (frihetsutrymme) is the determination of other's degrees of freedom of choice. (E. Stolterman, The Hidden Rationale of Design Work, pp. 61, 122, 124, 183)

7.1.2.12. "A dominant influence is exerted by initial design ideas on subsequent problem solving directions...Even when severe problems are encountered, a considerable effort is made to make the initial idea work, rather than to stand back and adopt a fresh point of departure." vs. the following:

7.1.2.13. "The premises that were used in initial concept generation often proved, on subsequent investigation, to be wholly or partly fallacious. Nevertheless, they provided a necessary starting point. The process can be viewed as inherently self-correcting, since later work tends to clarify and correct earlier work."

7.1.3. Definitions from Buchanan 1

7.1.3.1. From Buchanan, R. (1995). Rhetoric, humanism, and design. In R. Buchanan, & V. Margolin (Eds.), Discovering design: Explorations in design studies . Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press. (Page references to the manuscript, author at <buchanan@andrew.cmu.edu>)

7.1.3.2. What is needed to reduce the welter of products, methods, and purposes of design to an intelligible pattern is a new conception of the discipline as a humanistic enterprise, recognizing the inherently rhetorical dimension of all design thinking... (1)

7.1.3.3. There can be a discipline of design, but it must be different in kind from disciplines which possess determinate subject matters. Design is a discipline where the conception of subject matter, method, and purpose is an integrated part of the activity and of the results. On the level of professional practice, the discipline of design must incorporate competing interests and values, alternative ideas, and different bodies of knowledge....[T]he subject matter of design is indeterminate – potentially universal in scope, because design may be applied to new and changing situations, limited only the inventiveness of the designer – then the subject matter of design studies is not products, as such, but the art of conceiving and planning products...(3-4)

7.1.3.4. [D]esign is inquiry and experimentation in the activity of making, since making is the way that human beings provide for themselves what nature provides only by accidents...(8-9)

7.1.3.5. [An] architectonic master art that guides all the diverse forms of making which are central to human culture. (14)

7.1.3.6. A revolutionary vision of rhetoric to match the revolutionary vision of making. This would be rhetoric as a broad intellectual discipline, expanded from an art productive of words and verbal arguments to an art of conceiving and planning all the types of products that human beings are capable of making...integrating design and making with science and practical action. (18)

7.1.3.7. [D]esign is an instrument of power. It is the art of inventing and shaping two-, three-, and four-dimensional forms that are intended to satisfy needs, wants, and desires, thereby effecting changes in the attitudes, beliefs, and actions of others.(24)

7.1.3.8. [D]esign, by its very nature, has more enduring effects than the ephemeral products of the media because it can cast ideas about who we are and how we should behave into permanent and tangible form. [Quoted from Adrian Forty] (29)

7.1.3.9. There are three basic elements that contribute to the development of design in the contemporary world...The first element is the technique or technology of craft production, supported by a gradual accumulation of scientific understanding of the underlying principles of nature that guide construction...The second element is our understanding of the psychological, social, and cultural needs that condition the use of products...The third element is awareness of the aesthetic appeal of forms. (32)

7.1.3.10. Designers construct objects to satisfy fundamental human needs that are susceptible to some level of scientific or engineering analysis. However, the constructions are inevitably complicated by arbitrary factors of taste and preference which the designer is often able to address only by emotional sensitivity and intuitive understating. Design is based on science, but it extends its reach in addressing emotional needs through aesthetics. (35)

7.1.3.11. [T]he designer as an artist in the Platonic sense, an enlightened practitioner seeking unity and harmony among the disparate elements of every product...Products which internally achieve harmony and balance serve the ethical life of human beings, who are actively seeking their own place in a unity of social experience and nature – precisely at a time when culture appears to be disintegrating. [Referring to George Nelson's view in the essay "The design process", in Problems of Design, New York: Whitney, 1957] (37)

7.1.4. Definitions from Buchanan 2

7.1.4.1. The ultimate purpose or function of design in society is to [make] products which express and, necessarily, reconcile human values concerning what is good, useful, just, and pleasurable. However, these terms no longer possess fixed and generally accepted meanings...
The result of the new discipline of design thinking is typically not agreement on an ideology that may stand behind a new product. Instead, the result is an agreement that this or that is what shall be done today, so that ideological disagreement may be suspended and production move forward with the support of all of those involved in the planning process.
(Richard Buchanan, from "Branzi's dilemma: Design in contemporary culture", The Italian journal Modo, http://www.focusing.org/postmo13.htm)

7.1.5. Definitions from course on design methodology

7.1.5.1. Design science is the science of design processes (defining the product characteristics such that the product will fulfil all specified properties) and design objects (a product or a machine defined by a list of characteristics).
(From the graduate course on Design Methodology – Konstruksjonsmetodik – spring 1997, at the Trondheim institute of product design, NTNU Norges tekniske og naturvitenskapelige universitet, c/o Jóhannes B. Sigurjónsson, johannes@design.ntnu.no)

7.1.6. Definitions from Cross and Lundequist

7.1.6.1. Design thinking and theory, three generations (1962-1982) surveyed by Kristo Ivanov's in the hand-out for the seminar of 20 December 1995 at the dept. of Informatics at Umeå University and emerging from (among others) (1) Cross, N. (1992). Design ability. Nordisk Arkitekturforskning, (4), 19-25, and (2) Lundequist, J. (1992). Om designteorins uppkomst. Nordisk Arkitekturforskning, (4), 7-18.

7.1.6.2. Design methods (C. Alexander, C. Jones): analysis-synthesis-evaluation ("systematic"?). Product-context, fit-misfit

7.1.6.3. Wicked problems (Horst Rittel): bearing ideas (visions) & modifying factors (to operative image); vague relation between means and ends, and initially vague ends; design as negotiation, rather than "decisions"; study of thinking-learning; start of empirical studies with interviews of practitioners

7.1.6.4. Restauration: empirical studies, and central concepts: inborn cognitive and perceptual schemata, early obtained structures, a priori for pre-structuring of problems [cf. Jungian "archetypes" and Churchman The Design of Inquiring Systems, chap. 6 on Kantian "representations"]; "codes" linking of artefacts to their use instead of study of procedural questions; importance of first vision and outline-proposal; dialectics between technical rationality and creative reflection-in-action, dialogue between designer and design situation

7.1.7. Definitions from Webster's

7.1.7.1. From Webster's Third New International Dictionary:

7.1.7.2. To conceive and plan out in the mind

7.1.7.3. To create, plan, or calculate for serving a predetermined end

7.1.7.4. To plan and plot out the shape and disposition of the parts of and the structural constituents of

7.1.7.5. To plan or produce with special intentional adaptation to a specific end

7.1.7.6. To conceive a plan for making something

7.1.7.7. The process of selecting a means and contriving the elements, steps, and procedures for producing what will adequately satisfy some need

7.1.7.8. Synonyms: see intention, plan (not "method"; cf. Paul Feyerabend's Against Method, 1975, and SvD 18/12-95)

7.1.8. Definitions from Winograd & Flores through Ehn

7.1.8.1. From Ehn, P. (1988). Work-oriented design of computer artifacts. (Doctoral diss.) . Umeå-Stockholm: University of Umeå, Arbetslivscentrum and Almqvist & Wiksell International.

7.1.8.2. Page 158-159 In defining design T. Winograd and F. Flores [in their Understanding computers and cognition: A new foundation of design, Ablex: Norwood, 1986 p. 4] argue that "it constitutes an intervention in the background of our heritage, growing out of our already-existent ways of being in the world, and deeply affecting the kinds of beings that we are. In creating [designing, circularily, my note] new artifacts, equipment, buildings, and organizational structures, it attempts to specify in advance how and where breakdowns will show up in our everyday practices and in the tools [circularily, above, my note] we use, opening up new spaces in which we can work and play. Ontologically oriented design is therefore necessarily both reflective and political, looking backwards to the tradition that has formed us but also forward to as-yet-uncreated transformations of our lives together. Through the emergence of new tools, we come to a changing awareness of human nature, and human action, which in turn leads to new technological development. The designing process is part of this 'dance' in which or structure of possibilities is generated...We address the broader question of how a society engenders inventions whose existence in turn alters that society. We need to establish a theoretical basis for looking at what the devices do, not just how they operate.

7.1.8.3. As one of the consequences I see the need for two kinds of theories in a science of design. We need instrumental theory on how to do design. [Cf. engineering, my note] This aspect is characteristics to design science as opposed to natural, social, and human sciences in general. But as in any other science we also need substantial theory about the phenomenon of design, about e.g. what kind of social, historical, scientific, artistic, and technical activity design is. Especially, we need approaches that integrate instrumental and substantial theories. Winograd and Flores's 'definition' of design...constitutes the Heideggerian approach. In a similar way the Marxist and Wittgensteinian approaches have been developed by the architect Jerker Lundequist.

7.1.9. Definitions from Dahlbom

7.1.9.1. From Dahlbom, B. The new informatics. Scandinavian J. of Information Systems, 8(2), (http://iris.informatik.gu.se/sjis/magazine/vol8no2/Dahlbom.htm, accessed 9 Feb. 2000.)

7.1.9.2. ...Design oriented. We are interested in the use of technology because we are are interested in changing and improving that use...Unlike the natural sciences with their explicit interest in nature, the subject matter of informatics is the world we live in, the world of artifacts, an artificial world. Unlike the humanities with its interest in understanding the past, informatics is interested in designing the future...an interest in the contingent and exceptional more than in the general, in local design principles more than in general laws, in patents more than in publications, in heuristics and innovations more than in methods and proofs, in the good and beautiful more than in the true...[C]ompanies would do well to adjust more quickly to the demands of a postindustrial service society.

7.1.10. Definitions from ANT actor network theory

7.1.10.1. From a review of ANT in "What is Actor-Network Theory?" http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc/ant_dff.html, accessed 26 January 2000

7.1.10.2. Design is the act of translating perceived needs into an inscribed solution. In such a translation, or design, process, the designer woks out a scenario for how the system will be used. This scenario is inscribed into the system. The inscription includes programs of action for the users, and it defines roles to be played by users of the system. In doing so she is also making implicit or explicit assumptions about what competencies are required by the users as well the system. In ANT terminology, she delegates roles and competencies to the components of the socio-technical network, including users as well as the components of the system. By inscribing programs of actions into a piece of technology, the technology becomes an actor imposing its inscribed program of action on its users

7.1.11. Definitions from Seymour&Powell in the TV-series on "Better design"

7.1.11.1. From: Tjulin, K. (2001). Målet är att göra vardagen enklare [The goal is to simplify the daily living]. Avisen, (24 Februari), 19. (Interview with Dick Powell who together with Richard Seymour made the TV-series "Better Design"). Author at karin.tjulin@avisen.com). My translations

7.1.11.2. It is not possible to say what good design is. Design is actually a process for making something better. It is a question of making things better for manufacturers och clients, for everybody. And the products must be be attractive, for those who buy them.

7.1.11.3. The most important thing in design it to think in a different way. It is indeed the case that we do not see things as they are but on the basis of our experiences. A designer must take a step back, see the whole picture and provoke with radically different solutions. In order to succeed one must not be afraid of failing.

7.1.11.4. It is necessary to change the type of task all the time. It is like oxygen for a designer, in order to keep the overview and breadth.

7.1.12. And from "The Advanced Design Institute"

7.1.12.1. Anonymous. (2001). Glossary and definitions of advanced design : http://www.advanceddesign.org/glossary.html, updated September 2000, accessed 30 Jan. 2001

7.1.12.2. Advanced Design. A way of employing symbiont [sic] interaction with client using inquiry, creative processes, and the whole system approach to intentionally innovate synergetic strategies to engage complex issues. Advanced design is engaged in the processes necessary for bringing forth something that was previously unknown.

7.1.12.3. Design. A plan, scheme or idea, intended to be put into action. Design can be conceived on many different levels of complexity and for a variety of purposes. Design has always been the domain under which we as a species have brought about change. We have used design to interface with our environment with the expectation of improving the human condition in some form. As the world has evolved into a more complex system over time the design process has become more complicated as well. Advanced design has come about to more effectively address these more complex issues.

7.1.13. From a roundtable with known designers

7.1.13.1. Antonelli, P., Parsey, T., Ferren, B., Pearlman, C., Wild, L., Norman, D., Birsel, A., Viemeister, T., Kelley, D., Selker, T., Riley, R., Adigard, E., Betsky, A., Brunner, R., Creed, T., Fisher, G., Proehl, A., Sottsass, E., Thackara, J., Valicenti, R., Wurman, R. S., & Yalavich, S. (2001). A conversation about the good, the bad, and the ugly. Wired, (January), 176-183. (A roundtable about design, moderated by Chee Pearlman.):

7.1.13.2. Ettore Sottsass: For me, design is simply that human activity that sometimes--rarely--is able to communicate.

Gary Fisher: Design is something I can grow old with. It's home, it's me.

Erik Adigard: Design is everything we make, but it's also between those things. It's a mix of craft, science, storytelling, propaganda, and philosophy. At a meta level design connects the dots between mere survival and humanism. Looked at another way, it's a discipline that's been increasingly commodified.

Ayse Birsel: To say that something is designed means it has intentions that go beyond its function. Otherwise it's just planning.

Ted Selker: When you give engineers control over design, you get the effect where mechanics is aesthetics. That you see is how it works.

Paola Antonelli: Design is not style. It's not about giving shape to the shell and not giving a damn about the guts. Good design is a renaissance attitude that combines technology, congnitive science, human need, and beauty to produce something that the world did'nt know it was missing.

John Thackara: Pervasive computing and experience design are accelerating the transformation of what we mean by design. Distinguishing between hard and soft design--the object and the experience-- simply does'nt work anymore.

Tim Parsey: Our opportunity, as designers, is to learn how to handle the complexity, rather than to shy away from it, and to realize that the big art of design is to make complicated things simple.

Bran Ferren: The question is exactly when do you freeze a design. And the answer is determined by the corporate structure. In a requirement organization, there is a team whose job is to produce a document that completely describes what their product needs to be. They do focus groups, look at prototypes, the whole bit. They produce the document and submit it to senior management, which summarily rejects it because it's too expensive and takes too long. They then revert to "value engineering"--code for "You can't have what you wanted: what can you live with?" Eventually it's approved, and the project goes forward: The document is tossed over the transom to manufacturing, which tosses the product over another transom to sales. This is how 90 percent of products are designed in bit American corporations.

Bran Ferren and David Kelley: And the other 10 percent come out of big ideas organizations. Those are the ones that don't believe in talking to the customer. It you listen to the customer, they can't tell you anything. You have to watch the customer to really learn something. That's how you get at what they think and feel. Big-idea companies are run by passionate maniacs who make everybody's live miserable until they get what they want. The challenge is we're reaching a point at which most projects are so complex they require both: You have to start with a big idea--the vision--and then the transition to a requirement process. Because when it comes to technically complex machinery, the building process requires so many trades, so many disciplines, and so many vendors. That's the next generation of design.

Lorraine Wild: When you talk about creativity in the corporate world, at a certain point the issue becomes organizational innovation.

John Thackara and Bruce Sterling: Designing with people, not for them, brings the whole subject of user experience to life. Success will come to organizations with the mos creative and committed customers. I would like to see a direct relationsship between the designer and the consumer, and I think that's very likely to happen. Digital networks will make it happen. We have to disintermediate the production process. Designers should focus on global domination. Designers are being sucked to the fore by a general power vacuum.

Gary Fisher: In the past, the technology was so exciting that looks were secondary. Now, standing out in the marketplace requires design.

John Thackara: Design matters, but so does technology and the value proposition. All these factors interact in ways too complex to measure financially, so I say that design contributes to the triple bottom line of environmental impact, social quality, and business profitability.

Lorraine Wild: History is full of consciously designed consumer objects that, however flawed, convey poetry and inspire delight. Our challenge, as least one of them, is to transfer those qualities of beauty, personality, laughter, and even surprise to the more complex design problems we now face.

Richard Saul Wurman: The fundamental failure of most graphic, product, architectural, and even urban design is its insistence on serving the God of Looking-Good rather than the God of Being-Good. Think of postmodern architecture, 95 percent of all product-instruction books, all VCRs, and CD packaging with its unoperable shrink wrap.

7.2. In informatics

7.2.1. Literature

7.2.1.1. Coyne, R. (1995). Designing information technology in the postmodern age : From method to metaphor. Cambridge: MIT Press.

7.2.1.2. Winograd, T. A., & Flores, F. (1986). Understanding computers and cognition: A new foundation for design . Norwood, N.J: Ablex.

7.2.1.3. Winograd, T. (Ed.) (1996). Bringing design to software. New York: ACM Press Books

7.2.1.4. Heim, M. (1993). The metaphysics of virtual reality . Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press

7.2.1.5. Churchman, C. W. (1970). The artificiality of science: Review of Herbert A. Simon's book The Sciences of the Artificial. Contemporary Psychology, 15(6, June), 385-386.

7.2.1.6. Stolterman, E. (1991). Designarbetets dolda rationalitet: En studie av metodik och praktik inom systemutveckling [The hidden rationale of design work: A study in the methodology and practice of system development] . Umeå: Umeå University. (Doctoral diss. UMADP-RRIPCS 14.91.)

7.2.2. Merging with "Virtuality"

7.2.2.1. In a e-call for papers on 17 November 2000 on "Social Implications of Virtual Worlds" (From: colin <su1620@eclipse.co.uk>, Reply-To: c.beardon@plym.ac.uk):

7.2.2.2. The journal 'Digital Creativity' invites contributions to a special issue on 'Applications and Social Implications of Virtual Worlds'. Immersive technologies (head-mounted displays, CAVEs, etc.) provide one model of virtuality, while the virtual organisation, virtual city or virtual university present a different one. Nor are these the only ways of comprehending this new phenomenon. In this special issue we will look at some of the ways in which virtuality might affect our everyday lives, and the options that we face in exercising human choice over its development. Any article addressing these core concerns will be considered. Virtuality cannot be defined in terms of any particular technology, but among those that facilitate it are 3D modelling, digital video, animation, the Internet, head-mounted displays, and CAVEs. The application of such technologies affects fields such as diverse as education (e.g. virtual campus), industry (e.g. using simulation), and the local community (e.g. digital cities)...We anticipate that many papers will be interdisciplinary involving, for example, art, design, film, cultural studies, computer science, philosophy, human-machine interaction, sociology or technology assessment... Notes for Contributors can be found on the journal's website <http://www.swets.nl/sps/journals/dc1.html>...collaboration with the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 9.5 (http://www.lrv.ufsc.br/IFIP-WG-9.5).

7.2.3. And from "The Advanced Design Institute"

7.2.3.1. Stolterman, E. (2001). New worlds to design : http://www.advanceddesign.org/ link to http://www.informatik.umu.se/~erik/worlds.html, dated 20 Dec. 2000, accessed 30 Jan. 2001:

7.2.3.2. With the computer we can create new virtual environments almost a copy of our real physical surroundings or we can create something completely different. In the first case the design will be based on our knowledge about how our world works. Design is based on how things "are". We can even talk about that design as being correct or wrong. But if we want something different, we can create a world where no known physical law exists, except for those we put there by design. These laws can be new, never seen before, and we can create a world radically different from anything we are used to experience. In this case design will not be based on understanding on how things "are". Instead design will be a result of what we "want" or desire.

7.2.4. And "Digital Creativity"

7.2.4.1. Criticism from manuscript by Ivanov, K. (2001). The systems approach to design, and inquiring information systems. Information Systems Frontiers, 3(1). (In press.)

7.2.4.2. It is said that digital information and communication technology change our understanding of time and space. The walls are there, but somewhere else. Time is also interactive and fluid as in a narrative where the reader, the observer, the consumer and the user participate in its creation. Software inherently becomes codes of values, aesthetic ideals, ethics and politics. Uses will be found for knowledge from aesthetic areas such as theatre, film, music, literature, architecture, painting, sculpture and graphical and industrial design. And this postmodernist language continues, promising a new modernism that will be a comprehensive sensuality in the design of meaningful interactive and virtual stories and environments, a critical and creative aesthetic-technical production orientation that unites modern information and communication technology with design, art, culture and society, and at the same time places the development of the new mediating technologies in their real everyday context of changes in lifestyle, work and leisure. And new promises are envisaged of a Scandinavian design that unites democratic perspectives emphasizing open dialogue and active user participation with the development of edifying cultural experiences and the production of useful, interesting, functional and maybe even beautiful and amusing everyday things and experiences for ordinary people. And humanistic and user oriented competence to design, compose, and tell stories using the new mediating technology, creating meetings between constructive, aesthetic, and analytical-critical knowledge. Research studios will educate people to meet the coming blend of fact and fiction, providing "set pieces" and "propos" for their continuous construction of ever changing lived-in worlds. Increasing cultural pluralism, a changing relationship towards concepts of authority, power, and nationality as well as the postmodern sense of "meaning" as something being continuously related and constructed will eventually let a new set of aesthetic principles emerge. The boundaries between artists and audiences will become blurred and the significance of the individual artistic fingerprint will grow less important, as in sampling and hybridization. There will also be a stronger emphasis on the different and changing contexts of the narratives, on the story commenting upon itself, and narratives and new media will become means of creating syntheses in a constantly changing society.

7.2.5. From a roundtable with known designers

7.2.5.1. Antonelli, P., Parsey, T., Ferren, B., Pearlman, C., Wild, L., Norman, D., Birsel, A., Viemeister, T., Kelley, D., Selker, T., Riley, R., Adigard, E., Betsky, A., Brunner, R., Creed, T., Fisher, G., Proehl, A., Sottsass, E., Thackara, J., Valicenti, R., Wurman, R. S., & Yalavich, S. (2001). A conversation about the good, the bad, and the ugly. Wired, (January), 176-183. (A roundtable about design, moderated by Chee Pearlman.):

Bran Ferren and David Kelley: 10 percent of the products designed in big American corporations come out of big ideas organizations. Those are the ones that don't believe in talking to the customer. It you listen to the customer, they can't tell you anything. You have to watch the customer to really learn something. That's how you get at what they think and feel. Big-idea companies are run by passionate maniacs who make everybody's live miserable until they get what they want. The challenge is we're reaching a point at which most projects are so complex they require both: You have to start with a big idea--the vision--and then the transition to a requirement process. Because when it comes to technically complex machinery, the building process requires so many trades, so many disciplines, and so many vendors. That's the next generation of design.

Lorraine Wild: When you talk about creativity in the corporate world, at a certain point the issue becomes organizational innovation.

7.3. Promising attempts: Some ultimate recommendations

7.3.1. Literature: Churchman

7.3.1.1. (1971). The design of inquiring systems: Basic principles of systems and organization . New York: Basic Books. Out of print.

7.3.2. Literature: Ferry

7.3.2.1. From Ferry, L. (1990). Homo aestheticus: L'invention du goût á l'age démocratique . Paris: Grasset. (English trans.: Homo aestheticus : the invention of taste in the democratic age, trans. by Robert de Loaiza. Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 1993.)

7.3.2.2. This work shows the deep cultural and philosophical bias of the late interest in "design" as emphasis on a particular conception of aesthetics and as an attempt to face the issue of subjectivity in a secular frame of mind, with very problematic relations to politics and democracy (not to mention ethics). For Swedish readers this book is a perfect complement to Lindbom, T. (1999). Västerlandets framväxt och kris . Skellefteå: Norma. (ISBN 91 7217 017 - 4.), an author whose thought English readers can get familiar with through the translated Lindbom, T. (1996), The myth of democracy . Gran Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, (Swedish orig. Demokratin är en myt. Borås: Norma, 1991). Ferry's Homo aestheticus together with Lindbom'sVästerlandets framväxt och kris and Fallet Tyskland . Borås: Norma, 1988, provide an almost seemless perfect complement to the cultural and philosophical framing of information systems and IT-artifacts in the earlier mentioned The design of inquiring systems, by C.W. Churchman

7.3.3. Literature: Flusser

7.3.3.1. From Flusser, V. (1999). The shape of things: A philosophy of design . London: Reaction Books. (Trans. & introduction by Martin. ISBN 1 86189 055 9.) to be compared with (ref. above) "maximal a priori" in his Kantian inquiring systems, chap. 6:

7.3.3.2. Pages 27-29 [Artificial images] make the question of the relation between material and form a 'burning issue' for the first time today. What is at issue is the technical equipment allowing one to display algorithms (mathematical formulae) as colour (and possibly moving) images on screens. This is different from designing canals on Mesopotamian tablets, different from designing cubes and cones is Cubist paintings even different from designing plausible aeroplanes by the use of calculations. Because in the first case, it is a matter of designing forms for materials in which they will be encapsulated in the future (the form of canals, of Demoiselles, of Mirage jets), and in the second case it is a matter of 'pure' Platonic forms. The factual equations, for example, that are displayed on screens as little gingerbread men lack material (even if they can be filled with material such as mountain ranges, storm-clouds or snowflakes). Such artificial images can be referred to (mistakenly) as 'immaterial', not because they show up in the electromagnetic field but because they display material-free, empty forms. The 'burning issue' is therefore the fact that in the past (since the time of Plato and even earlier), it was a matter of forming the material to hand to make it appear, but now what we have is a flood of forms purring out of our theoretical perspective and our technical equipment, and this flood we fill with material so as to 'materialise' the forms. In the past, is was a matter of giving formal order to the apparent world of material, but now it is a question of making the work appear that is largely encoded in figures, a world of forms that are multiplying uncontrollably. In the past, it was a matter of formalising a world taken for granted, but now it is a matter of realising the forms designed to produce alternative worlds. That means an 'immaterial culture', though it should actually be called a 'materialising culture'. What is at issue is the concept of in-formation. In other words, imposing forms on materials. This has been apparent since the Industrial Revolution. A steel tool in a press is a form, and it in-forms the flood of glass or plastic flowing past it into bottles or ashtrays. In the past, it was a question of distinguishing between true and false information. True information was when the forms were discoveries, and false information was when the forms were fictions. This distinction is becoming pointless since we have started to see forms neither as discoveries () nor as fictions, but as models. In the past there was a point in distinguishing between science and art, and now this has become pointless. The criteria for criticizing information is now more like the following questions: To what extent are the forms being imposed here capable of being filled with material? To what extent are they capable of being realised? To what extent is the information practical or productive? It is therefore not a question of whether images are the surfaces of materials or the contents of electromagnetic fields. But a question of the extent to which they arise from material, as opposed to formal, thinking and seeing. Whatever 'material' may mean, it cannot mean the opposite of 'immaterial'. For the 'immaterial', or, to be more precise, the form is that which makes the material appear in the first place. The appearance of the material is form. And this is of course a post-material claim. [cf. pragmatism & sophistry].

8. *The particular case of the phenomenology

8.1. Heidegger in Interpretive Systemology

8.1.1. Heidegger-phenomenological approaches, besides those mentioned elsewhere in this paper such as those associated with the names of Ehn, Winograd-Floors, and Ciborra: see the following items:

8.1.2. Fuenmayor, R., & López-Garay, H. (1991). The scene for interpretive systemology. Systems Practice, 4(5), 401-418. (St article of four in same issue.) (p. 415:) "Soft" systems practitioners propose a different view of intervention. The design of organizational modifications must involve discussions of ends and means. The role of the systems is also modified in light of such a view. The practitioner must go beyond the role of an "expert" whose technical knowledge is used to design and efficient and effective systems of means. The systems practitioner must now become a "facilitator", rather than an expert, able to appropriate conditions for organizational actors and even for those affected by the organization, in order to learn about the moral and factual implications of different end-means possibilities. The question of participation then becomes paramount...the basic conditions for participation must be such that the less privileged participants, both in power and in ability to express their points of view, can be aided, thereby counterbalancing such disadvantages. (p. 416:) The problem of disclosing and denouncing such structures of societal domination has become of paramount concern for the group [of Interpretive Systemology].

8.1.3. Fuenmayor, R. (1991). The roots of reductionism: A counter-ontoepistemology for a systems approach. Systems Practice, 4(5), 419-447. (2nd article of four in same issue.). (p. 427, cf. Plato's Sophist, 237a, 241d ff., 258d ff.:) The only possible path offered to thought, says Parmenides, is "that which affirms that Being is and Non-Being is not. This is the way of persuasion--since it accompanies Truth." Those who, like Heraclitus and much later Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre, and others, have been concerned with dialectically explaining Being from Non-Being, would then go by a path of thought which "offers nothing to knowledge." At least, if would offer nothing to that sort of knowledge which can be communicated to others so that they can be persuaded by it. A notion of truth and knowledge, or rather a normative notion of knowledge which pretends to be true, decides in advance that Non-Being, and with it the ground from which any being is possible, have to be disregarded. What notion of true knowledge is that which Parmenides relates to persuasion? (p. 439-441:) Let essential recursiveness be illustrated by the amazing "Drawing Hands" of Escher. When we look cursorily at the drawing we see two hands. (This first look is a first holistic perception.) "One" is drawing "the other". "The other" is drawing the "one"!. (We have performed a diachronic analysis.) "Going back in time" we ask who drew one of them in order to draw the other. (This question triggers off the synthesis that brings about the paradox.) The astonishing answer is that "the other" drew "the one" in order to draw "the other". (Notice that the difference between "the one" and "the other" becomes blurred within the recursive loop.) These hands seem to be outwitting the concept of causation. These hands seem to be outwitting the concept of causation. A "first look" at the "Drawing Hands" revealed just two hands. At that moment we still had not realized what was occurring. Nevertheless, after observing them more carefully, we fail into a paradoxical closed loop. These are two questions that conduct this process of analysis-synthesis and which makes manifest the recursive form: (1) What are the hands doing? and (2) How did one of the hands come to be? Observe that we first saw two things. In that first look we did not identify, a priori, a perceptual unity as it occurs in most perceptions. In the first moment we see two hands, but at the same time, a quick insight says that they belong to something which still is not clear. Such intuition -- perhaps triggered by what the hands are doing -- puzzles us, so that the analytical exam is performed on each hand. An attempt is made to discover what they are doing. We seem thus to be searching for a "process" which might discover the unity to which the hands belong. However, this process is not searched for as unitary process from the beginning: we start by observing two things.. That is, we arbitrarily split a priori the synchronism of the whole process into an analytical diachronism...[being] condemned to fall into a paradoxical trap...The way out of the trap is to gain awareness of our own state of mind. We must have the "shape of the trap in our minds". This means...to earn to observe its shape as a holistic and essentially dynamic process, as an essential recursive form. Such learning will enable us to recognize a priori the transcendental unity -- the new logical form -- to which the structure belongs..."The Logic of Essential Recursiveness"...a two-sided unitary situation in which each one of the sides is ontologically and essentially founded on the other. Such a foundation is rooted in the situation as a whole, the "sides" are not elements with independent existences. However it is always possible, through a "timeless" and "apparent" look, to see each side as an "element of a set".

8.1.4. Fuenmayor, R. (1991). The self-referential structure of an everyday-living situation: A phenomenological ontology for interpretive systemology. Systems Practice, 4(5), 449-472. (3rd article of four in same issue.) (p. 451) A fundamental difference between Phenomenology and other scientific or philosophical attempts is that things are not simply in themselves, nor do they exist "out there" independently from us. Their being is always constituted by a "showing themselves to us", and by our way of access to them...The present Indo-European languages are, in varying degrees, constructed on the grounds of Eleatic ontology, which, in turn, is reinforced by our thinking through those languages. In order to break with such an ontology, it is necessary to sabotage the English language a little: so, the reader is asked not to be normatively horrified with some clumsy expressions, but just to be carried by them. (p. 454) Intentionality or the principle of action can be understood as a sort of readiness for action (for perceiving, knowing, changing, maintaining). Every situation is recognized, appreciated, felt, placed, controlled, communicated, acted upon, etc., on the basis of such a "readiness", the acting being the dynamic connotation of the word "readiness". Under this perspective, being-previous is that which is ready in readiness/intentionality. That which becomes present is that for which readiness/intentionality is ready. (p. 455-461) Intentionality is a sort of active mode of self. The feeling of my self cannot, however, be merely reduced to such an active mote of self. There is also a sort of passive mode of self, which points to the unity of the being-previous. Manifested intentionality is always will. and will is always will to power (ref. Heidegger on Nietzsche). The persistence that characterizes will provides the possibility for the persistence and identification of the self. But I would not feel an identity, a self, if "the others" were not there who can see me and see that which is not me. I myself and the other are then recursive sides of an essential recursive form. The answer to the old question "What am I?" is therefore: I am the unitary notion/label/feeling of being-previous manifested as a unity through the essential recursive phenomenon "I myself <-> the others", and which is continually being thrown into what is present through intentionality. [Cf. manifestation as unity of a "teleological object", ex. submarine]. The action of moral conscience is the most clear possibility for encountering an authentic "I myself". The call of conscience can be taken as a trial that takes place in the individual conscience when the notion of "the other" is summoned in order to be the jury at such a trial. This constitutes the basis from which a theory of practical reason [cf. ethics] can be developed on the grounds of the ontology of interpretive systemology. (p. 463) The action of intentionality brings about a distinction, and from the noetic point of view, the distinction is a sort of severance that is performed on the noematic ground that can be called otherness [cf. Churchman The Design of Inquiring Systems, chap. 4, 5, and 9 on partitioning for measurement, on error as coupling to the larger system, and on environment as a sort of "scenario"]. (p. 468-469) Reductionist science conceives of the world as a connection of connected objects as bodies presenting a common phenotypic property (extension) and a common genotypic (or metaphysical) property (atomic constitution). Bodies present a regular "behavior" given primarily in reference to an external space-time grid. "Emergent property" means those features which emerge from the interconnected behavior of already existing parts and which are not exhibited by any of the parts in isolation...Under the light of the systemic phenomenological ontology "emergent properties" are neither emergent nor properties. Holistic transcendence, implied in emergent property, is explained by means of the concept of situation and its essential recursive sides: distinction and intentionality. In this way holistic transcendence finds an ontological answer which is to lay the ontological foundation of a systems approach conceived as a new ontoepistemological paradigm.

8.1.5. Fuenmayor, R. (1991). Truth and openness: An epistemology for interpretive systemology. Systems Practice, 4(5), 473-490. (4th article of four in same issue.) (p. 473-474) Four different moods which drive intentionality are (ref. to Merleau-Ponty): the perceptual, the cognitive, the affective, and the practical. In the cognitive mood, two subtypes are the spontaneously cognitive, in which knowledge is not purposefully searched, and the cognoscitive in which it is purposefully searched for under a pretension of validity, being dominant in scientific and philosophical activities. Under a phenomenological attitude, although a cognoscitive mood is dominant in ontological thinking, such cognoscitively driven thinking attempts to mirror itself beyond itself, to transcend the frontiers of cognoscitively driven situations to any possible situation. This strife to mirror itself beyond itself is precisely the core of ontology within interpretive systemology, it is a strife for understanding the possibility of what-ever-is-the-case also in "everydayness". (p. 480-482, cf. Churchman DIS chap. end of chap. 5 to 7 or 9) Truth implied doubt. Doubt is openness for what may be. Doubt is contingency...Truth is the essentially recursive accordance between "distinction" and "scene". Although it is not possible to reveal the instantaneous scene of a present distinction in an absolute way, it is possible to revise the scene by means of an interpretive process which enriches it. A teacher of physics enters a classroom with F=ma written on the blackboard, and a 10-year-old boy enters the "same" classroom and sees the 'same" thing. Interpretive understanding is an attempt to open the scene of the distinction, and interpretive method is a controlled process of making distinctions "around" the original distinction. (p. 483-484) The inexhaustibility of the interpretive inquiring process which pretends to open the scene, and the possibility of unfolding the scene, faces us with the possibility of truth about a particular phenomenon. Truth is then not a static status that can be reached and then frozen, but it is an essentially dynamic process which cannot be finished or stopped because it would turn into the opposite of truth. The search for truth then has to be orchestrated within a multiple interpretive process which bases a debate among different interpretations according to their diverse contextual systems. The knowledge of things in their holistic transcendentality is the openness of their scene. This is the search for comprehension within an interpretive purview. The result of thematic comprehension does not have to be an agreement. The result is a state of enriched consciousness about the possibilities of the phenomenon. It is not, then, an explicit result. What is explicit is the discussion, not the enrichment derived from it.

8.1.6. López-Garay, H. (1999). Interpretive systemology and systemic practice. Systems Practice and Action Research, 12(1), 3-13 (p. 6-7) The authors are not seeking the true particular historical situation of Venezuela. According to interpretive systemology's theoretical foundations, there is no such thing. An historical account is always an interpretation, so what they pursue is the construction of two historical interpretive contexts which, using the "logical" contexts, allow a richer discussion about public health services in Venezuela...Other authors are not asking what it is in the sociocultural environment that is causing prisons and the state to be perceived as schizophrenic or as problematical. They are asking about contexts of meaning where such behavior makes sense. It is though they wanted to find a ground where the phenomenon could "speak" for itself and tell the story of how it has become what it currently is. (p. 8) We are not saying that the research process just mentioned will give us greater visibility of the "background" or a better articulation of the sense (unity) of the phenomenon. When we say that the articulation of sense (or unity) is not better, we mean that the unity of a phenomenon is not something static and predefined waiting to be uncovered by successive approximations, each one "better" than the previous one.[cf. Churchman DIS, chaps. 7 and 9, and Ivanov's Hypersystems]. (p.11) This story of the regressive narrative of progress of the Enlightenment project and its idea of progress, that we are telling, and which today is seen by European philosophers as close to the truth [cf. paradox against earlier text sample] is, we believe, the narrative that if told throughout the world, could break the spell, the paradox of the modernization of the non-modern countries. (p. 12) That which is most essential to a university, the search of truth, is in great peril of becoming merely a consulting outfit for big business or, perhaps, even worse, of becoming big business [cf. paradox of "truth" and of Heidegger's "inescapability" from technique.]

8.1.7. Fuenmayor, R., & Fuenmayor, A. (1999). Researching-acting-reflecting on public health services in Venezuela: I. A conceptual framework. Systems Practice and Action Research, 12(1), 35-53. (1st article of two.) (p. 44) The discourses of the interpretive contexts might be presented from the inside, as though they were delivered by an imaginary advocate or defender of that particular interpretive context, in what we call an internal discourse.[cf. Churchman, The Design of Inquiring Systems, DIS, 1971, chap. 8 on Hegelian inquirers illustrated.]

8.1.8. Fuenmayor, A., & Fuenmayor, R. (1999). Researching-acting-reflecting on public health services in Venezuela: II. Community action and critique. Systems Practice and Action Research, 12(1), 55-75. (2nd article of two.) (p.66-67) Is there a problem with being engaged? Can we continue to assume that we are disengaged subjects from the cultural reality we belong to? Can we continue entertaining the illusion woven by the radical Enlightenment (woven by thinkers such as Bentham, Holbach, and Helvetius, with thread furnished by Locke and with wool given by Descartes) that we are only an instrumental rational being at the service of our natural (biological) impulse to seek happiness. No we can no longer continue believing the story about the disengaged Lockean subject. [cf. Churchman DIS, vs Hegel, and Marx]. We have he hope that the activities of the Health Defense Committee have contributed towards enriching the "political conscience" of the people so as to open the possibility of an institutional change which could mean an improvement in health services for the population that cannot pay for them. Enriching political conscience means opening other interpretive possibilities, different from those of the dominant discourse, concerning the matter of public health services, and affording other ways for an articulation that legitimates those critical possibilities, all with the hope of attaining a better quality of justice. (p. 71) To modernize ourselves, in the strict sense of the word, would mean, first, to free ourselves from the desire to modernize ourselves, in the twisted sense of the word -- that is, in the sense of copying the form of social order that arouse from European modernization -- and, second, to allow that particular historical process of liberation to give rise to a particular form of social order of its own. In this manner, the new order would be quite different from the social order known as modern. (p. 74-75) All this leads us to think of a new educational project which could re-constitute our lives in terms of that new history, or "regressive history", with regress as an opposing alternative narrative to that of progress. invented by the Enlightenment at the end of the 18th century Europe [cf. Christian theology.] That regressive history will give us a basis for thinking about and acting on our immediate problems, for example, health. In the meantime what can we do concerning the injustice in health care? Perhaps not much in terms of immediate results, but we can start to structure the discourse on the health problem, not in terms of a "modernization" project, but in terms of that "regressive" history.

8.1.9. López-Garay, H. (1999). The holistic sense of prison phenomena in Venezuela: I. Understanding and comprehending "schizophrenic" institutions. Systems Practice and Action Research, 12(1), 77-94. (p. 78, cf. Hegelian Inquiring Systems:) We began to design different interpretive contexts, which could help us to gain further systemic understanding and comprehension of prisons and their social sense in general. (p. 82 Cf. Leibnizian I.S.:) And when an individual, an institution, or a country is perceived as acting incoherently and contradictorily, the adjective that comes to mind to quality such behavior is insane, or "schizophrenic". (p. 86, cf. T.S. Eliot on systems so perfect:) The pre-modern and corrupt power system that disguises itself in different ways in order to hold on to its power.

8.1.10. Suárez, R. T. (1999). The holistic sense of prison phenomena in Venezuela: II. Toward a profound unveiling of the "background". Systems Practice and Action Research, 12(1), 95-113. (p. 102 Cf. the whole issue of ethics, law, and theodicy) The problem that emerges here is: how can bad actions be prevented? This problem, in turn, leads to another: Why does someone act wrongly? (p. 112-113:) The reflections developed in this article show that the source of the prison problem seems to be at a much deeper level than administrative adjustments. What sustains it as such is a certain order of fragmented meaning that harbors, at its center, irreconcilable contradictions...Accordingly, the only possibility of solving the prison problem lies in the remaking of a unitary holistic sense of ourselves and society. Reflecting on "how to think" and on "what to think about" will have to be the first step toward a genuine solution to the schizophrenia of our times.

8.1.11. López-Garay, H., & Suárez, R. T. (1999). The holistic sense of prison phenomena in Venezuela: III. The unity of the research. Systems Practice and Action Research, 12(1), 115-136. (p.127) The relationship between a particular piece of research and the conceptual framework of IS [interpretive systemology] is not one of logical conformity, but of dialectical opposition, thanks to which the conceptual framework plays a critical role with respect to research, impelling it and thrusting it toward new stages. What gives unity to such research is the leading thread of this process, that is, the narration of the journey followed by the research. (p.131) We defined problematization as an act of distinction which at the same time creates both what-is-a-problem (i.e. something distinguished as undesirable, e.g. "schizophrenic jails" and for-whom-it-is-a-problem (or the background from which such distinction is made). These are merely a particular case of the figure-gound unity whose sides are dialectically interrelated. Accordingly, we do not solve problems; rather, we seek to understand how that which is distinguished as a problem "fits" into its background. In the same manner, we seen to understand (i.e., see the situation under a "stand" or context of meaning) and comprehend (see it from different "stands") problematizations....Dealing with problematizations is then closer to problem-unsolving than problem-solving. In fact, we have argued that dealing with phenomena from the perspective provided by interpretive systemology is akin to unfolding the enfolded nature of the mystery which surrounds being.. (133) Now, if "social reality" is not a given, but is...the changing product of a continual intersubjective discourse, then intervention must mean...entering a conversation, and becoming part of a "form of life". Intervention is then related to helping to generate new conversations in the domain or network of "conversers" one has stepped in. Hence, changing social reality is generating new conversations about reality, i.e., changing our way of understanding and comprehending reality. (p. 132). A "problem" is a current issue or situation that is annoying to us...In short, a problem is something that is not wanted." .(p. 135) This is the reason why we talk about "problem-unsolving". To "solve" means to release, to let go. Here to "unsolve" means to resist, to not release our will to fragment reality and deal only with fragments. Problem-unsolving is thus about paying heed to a call, a systemic (holistic) will to grasp the mystery of life in its fullness, a call to a non-fragmented understanding of all of life's situations. Seen in a more general light, it is a call to intervene in order to recover our sense of wholeness. Paradoxically, problem-unsolving is then a call to solve the major problem of the present: not knowing how to deal meaningfully with our never-ending quest.

8.1.12. Dávila, J., & Ochoa-Arias, A. (1999). Birth and demise of a social protection organization in Venezuela. Systems Practice and Action Research, 12(1), 15-34. (p. 30) As can be seen the ISSS [integral social security system] Law...assumes that, in relation to the coverage of social risks, it is possible to "integrate" the most unequal conditions in the population into a social protection "system", in which...one side is a consciousness that would arise from a profound conviction in the principle of individual moral responsibility...the other side would arise from a profound belief in the principle of fraternity. Curiously, in the ISSS Law, the conjugation of this two-sided consciousness eliminates the need of a State to assure the solidarity that is the essence of the model for a Welfare State.

8.1.13. Fuenmayor, R. (2001?). The oblivion of Churchman's plea for a systems approach to world problems: I. The inseparability of systems thinking and world issues in the modern epoch. Systems Practice and Action Research, In print. (1st article of three. Page ref. to manuscript of Oct 2000) (p 4, cf. "we" in Churchman 1979, The Systems Approach and Its Enemies) What happened to the idea of facing humanity's problems, which Churchman defended within the pragmatist tradition, a fundamental belief informing modern thought for the last 200 years suddenly collapse? Rorty offers two arguments for the collapse. First that we know that it is not possible to increase the living standards of the poor part of the human lot without taking away part of the wealth of the rich portion who, having absolute power, will not give away their wealth. The second argument tells us that we do not believe any more in this notion of a universal "we" represented by "humanity", The more comprehensive "we" that can be constituted today is that of the powerful, who, with a merciful attitude, are ready to see who else can be comprehended in their we, i.e. who else can be saved. According to Rorty the notion of a universal we represented by humanity is a consequence of the question "what are we", that has been substituted by the question "who are we?", which, in moral terms, means: "Who can be saved?". (p.5) The discoursive form of this writing is that of a "path of thinking", such that the concepts and conceptual schemes emerging from the text do not necessarily remain fix (and in this way remain unquestionable paradigms). On the contrary, they may be reshaped and enriched or just disregarded along the path of the discourse.

8.1.14. Fuenmayor, R. (2001?). The oblivion of Churchman's plea for a systems approach to world problems: II. The rise of the modern constellation. Systems Practice and Action Research, In print. (2nd article of three. Page ref. to manuscript of Oct. 2000) (p. 8) One could ask why is "thought" more fundamental to the essence of the human being than, say, feelings like love, hate, pity, or aesthetical sensibility? (p. 10-15) According to Kant, reason is impelled by a tendency of its nature to go beyond the field of its empirical employment, and not to be satisfied save through the completion of its course in the apprehension of a self-subsistent systematic whole, an endeavor having its source exclusively in the practical interests of reason ( ref. to Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B825). This "tendency" is nothing more than the "will to systems" of reason. However, we did not discuss why Kant thought that the will to systems is a "natural" tendency of reason. Now we are in a position to better understand how the type of will to systems that Kant had in mind, far from being a "universal" tendency of human reason was just another feature of the new constellation of Modernity, driven by the will to liberation. In modern philosophy the will to systems is nothing but the will to construct the self-certain foundation for liberation from his self-incurred tutelage, caused not by lack of reason but by lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. (p.16-17) Autonomy of the will is the property that the will has of being law to itself, independently of any property of the objects of volition. The principle of autonomy is this: Always choose in such a way that in the same volition the maxims of the choice are at the same time present as universal law (ref. to Kant's Metaphysics of Morals). This practical rule is the categorical imperative of morality, and the force that reason exerts on man in order to conduct his action as participation in the universal order, a participation that does not violate the principle of universality. Such principle, in a similar way to the case of natural sciences, means that the human action should be valid for all and in all times. The categorical imperative is thus the rational principle of universal human justice, and therefore the source of the dignity of humanity. And the dignity of humanity consists just in its capacity to legislate universal laws, though with the condition of humanity's being at the same time itself subject to this very same legislation (ref. to Kant, ibidem). The reduction of the "what" question to the "who" question is meaningless, because the moral law cannot be satisfied with a local sense of justice. As a consequence, the reduction of humanity to those who can be saved violates the very basis of the moral law, and is immoral.

8.1.15. Fuenmayor, R. (2001?). The oblivion of Churchman's plea for a systems approach to world problems: III. The fall of the modern constellation. Systems Practice and Action Research, In print. (3rd article of three. Page ref. to manuscript of Oct 2000) (p. 3) The will of emancipation from revelational truth will last as long as revelational truth holds sway. This means that if by any chance the inner source of power of Church domination and its revelational truth -- together with its basic assumptions concerning the necessary link between truth, morality, and freedom of action -- would disappear, then the will to autonomy, systems thinking, man conceived as the knowing subject, the notion of the world ("world picture") -- in a phrase, the new constellation of the realm of being --would also disappear or at least suffer profound changes. (p. 4-7, cf. Kant's Critique of Judgment, and Aubenque,1963/1993, La prudence chez Aristote, avec un appendice sur la prudence chez Kant : Quadrige/PUF.) Because fact and value were not separated before Modernity, to decide what to do was necessarily linked to deciding about what is good and what is bad. As a consequence, although the new constellation created the separation between fact and value, the necessary link between decision-making and moral decision-making was taken for granted all along modern philosophy, at least until Hegel. The state of disorder of our present discourse on morality, and its invisibility is reinforced by the dominant view of moral philosophy in our days, (ref. to 8.1.16. MacIntyre "After Virtue", 1985, p. 55-59) called "emotivism". It does not see any such disorder in the incommensurability of rival moral arguments [cf. postmodernism] since their essence is seen as an expression of an arbitrary feeling and emotion [cf. Kant's third Critique]. The notion of "man" arisen from the modern constellation (in the eighteenth century, Kant, Hume, Smith, etc.) inherited set of moral injunctions that were discrepant with their new conception of human nature. Their notion of "man" was that of an abstract de-socialized "individual prior to and apart from all social roles". On the contrary, the notion of "man" embedded in the old order, from which the moral injunctions that the modern injunctions that the modern constellation wanted to justify came, was as old as the ancient Greek tradition prior to Aristotle, where man is to fill a set or roles with its purpose: member of a family, citizen, soldier, philosopher, servant of God. The present state of disorder of moral discourse well represented by emotivism, it a consequence of the contradiction. The failure of the practical side of the project of the Enlightenment was a consequence of the separation between a practical and a theoretical side, separation based on the radical separation between facts and feelings, true and not true, right (good) and wrong (bad), fact and feelings, on the onto-epistemological basis centered on the fundamental dualism subject-object. Values become mere tastes. (p. 9-11) The "Platonic" supremacy of the suprasensory over the sensory, characterized in the modern epoch by the supremacy of the subject over the object (the ought of the categorical imperative as opposed to the being of nature), begins to fade away in the nineteenth century. The priority is passed to the sensory. The notion of "value" plays e significant role in this overturning. The new predominance [why?] of the sensory (ref. to Heidegger An Introduction to Metaphysics, 1953) endangered the ought in its role as standard and criterion, and it was compelled to bolster up its claim by seeking ground in itself. It could emanate only from something which in itself raised a moral claim, which had an intrinsic value, which was itself a value. The values as such, with their questionable origins now became the foundation of morality. But since the values are opposed to the being of essent in the sense of facts, they themselves cannot be. (This dubious character of values is at the root of what MacIntyre calls emotivism.) The suprasensory is transformed into an unstable product of the sensory, and its debasement does away with the essence of the sensory and with the distinction between the two, culminating in meaninglessness [cf. postmodernism] (ref. to Heidegger's The Age of the World Picture, 1952). In summary: due to the very nature of the "will to liberation" the subject, and hence [?] the suprasensory had a supremacy over the sensory, a supremacy that was a new adaptation to the same [?] hierarchy already defined since Plato. However, the inner contradiction of the new constellation, together with the domination [why?] of technology, brings the deposing of such hierarchy. Modern man (ref. to Foucault, The Order of Things, 1966) becomes the murderer of God and of the very essence of the subject, becoming his own murderer. In this postmodern or high-modern constellation Churchman's plea for a systems approach can hardly be heard. To this new constellation belongs Rorty's proposition to perform economic triage. (p. 12) In order to see the blurred boundaries of Modernity, we need a contrasting interpretive context for the modern constellation and, hence, for the postmodern one. This not-modern and not-postmodern [cf. Latour ANT] constellation could be the ancient pre-Socratic way [cf. Sophists] of experiencing Being attempted by Heidegger, or that of any other culture which could have been free from Western influence [cf. China, Jung, and what about Christianity?]. The ontology of our present has to have the shape of particular attempts or inquiring paths (journeys), starting from particular regions where the boundaries between constellations seen to cross each other [? cf. Ivanov's Hypersystems].

8.2. Phenomenology in Catholic metaphysics

8.2.1. From Capaldi, N. (2001). Catholic metaphysics in the wake of the collapse of the enlightenment project. In Proc. of the Rome Metaphysics Forum 2000. URL http://www.onelist.com/community/RomeMetaphysicsRorum, and see also http://www.arsap.net/metafisica:

8.2.2. Waning of Catholic Metaphysics: Catholics have been restricted by an officially sanctioned metaphysics that shares too many of the same assumptions of scientism. The great roadblock to the future of Catholic metaphysics is Leo XIII's Aeterni Patris (1879) in which he ordered a return to Scholastic philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas.

8.2.3. Where did traditional-official Catholic metaphysics go wrong: The Thomistic-Aristotelian [Thomistic=Aristotelian?] conception of metaphysics is defective for a number of reasons. First, Aristotelian metaphysics is rooted in a particular scientific conception of the world in which the categories of teleological biology are primary. Once science departs from that model and embraces another, such as Newtonian mechanism, or even indeterminism, the metaphysics has become anachronistic [=metaphysics conditioned by sciences "embraces"? Cf. Churchman's DIS, chap. 10 on consistency and interdependence of mechanism, teleology, and probability]. Reintroducing teleology becomes a form of metaphysical slight-of-hand, in practice a form of obsessive natural theology condemned to potentially endless embarrassment, and intellectually a transparent anthropomorphic projection [cf. C.S. Lewis on anthropomorphism]. Second, revived Thomism [Aristotelianism?], especially in the works of Maritain and Gilson, blocked serious consideration of the Copernican turn so prominent in nineteenth and twentieth century German Catholic thought. Because of Thomistic Aristotelianism's [cf. Aristotelian Thomism] intransigent objection to the Copernican revolution in philosophy, many important contributions of post-Kantian German Catholic philosophy, especially phenomenology [names? Heidegger?], have been marginalized. It has thereby blocked adequate consideration of interiority of the inner domain [defined?]. Third, the Thomistic-Aristotelian conception of metaphysics obfuscates the very nature of metaphysical discourse. In a kind of authoritarian and imperialistic way [defined "imperialism"? cf. the Catholic view on "authority"] it declares itself [the Church declares it] the hegemonic proprietor of the very term "metaphysics" so that not to be a Thomist is not to have a metaphysics at all. Much of the value in the Augustianian-Platonic and neo-Platonic tradition has been neglected. Even the term "metaphysics" is difficult to divorce from substantive metaphysical [and theological doctrinal?] positions.

8.2.4. Rediscovery of a Richer Metaphysical Tradition: In the Platonic tradition (e.g. Plato, Plotinus, Augustine, Descartes, Leibiniz) it is claimed that how we understand ourselves is fundamental and different from how we understand the world, which then is derivative. Hence, the world of everyday experience cannot be understood on its own terms. As a consequence, a distinction is introduced between the world of appearance (or everyday experience) [=equivalent?] and ultimate reality [=truth?]. Platonic metaphysics is marked by a series of derivative dualisms, essence (meaning) and existence (reference), subject and object. This Platonic version of metaphysics has a great advantage over the Aristotelian in that it places the emphasis on the person, [=?] on how we understand ourselves. Unfortunately, its great disadvantage is that it cannot characterize ultimate reality except in empty tautological fashion [examples, quotations, arguments? Better in phenomenology?]. This sterile metaphysics originates in Parmenides and is the original sin of metaphysics. The first great divide is between those who are blind to the pre-conceptual and those who recognize the pre-conceptual. The second great divide is between those who think they can conceptualize the pre-conceptual itself [like the authors of this kind of metaphysical essays?] and those who realize that the pre-conceptual cannot be conceptualized [cf. Romantic aesthetics and the post-Kantian philosophy of the unconscious of Eduard von Hartmann and K.G. (C.G.) Carus [C.G. Jung]]. The trouble with both Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics is that they both attempt [like this essay in place of pure Catholic profession of faith?] to conceptualize the pre-conceptual, that is, they come to think that ultimate reality is itself a structure [define?] or abstraction of some kind. It is also to believe that reason can be autonomous, that there is a dichotomy between intellect and will, to misconceive the relationship between an authoritative theory autonomous of practice, and to believe in a dichotomy between reason and faith. The third divide is that to the Copernican metaphysics or Copernican revolution in philosophy, as introduced by Hume and Kant [also Kant?]: the ultimate source of reality and intelligibility is neither the experience of external physical objects not a supersensible conceptual world, but rather the everyday pre-theoretical world constituted by the interaction of human beings with each other. Unlike Platonism, the subject is seen as rooted [define?] in the pre-theoretical world of everyday practices. In the twentieth century, the reassertion of the Copernican revolution against positivism is to be found in Wittgenstein's later work, and the reassertion against neo-scholasticism and Husserlian transcendental idealism (another form of realism) is to be found in Heidegger who is engaged in the same epistemological enterprise as Wittgenstein. The insistence on the final, definitive theory led to endless theological controversy and to religious wars. The root of the contemporary problems and moral crisis is the Aristotelian realism or the insistence that ethics is a matter of having the right theory first, and then conforming practice to it.

8.2.5. Retrieving a Catholic Vision of Metaphysics and Morality: We do so by embracing the Copernican revolution: how we understand ourselves is fundamental; how we understand the world is derivative. We understand ourselves as derivative beings with no direct self-consciousness. It is the product of a pre-conceptual transcendent domain, and any account of our genesis out of such domain can only be an imaginative and analogical act of reconstruction, and often best expressed in poetic and contemplative [cf. Kantian or post-Kantian, vs. Platonic] aesthetic terms. We understand ourselves as self-conscious being, as persons interacting with other persons; instead of attuning ourselves to an invisible and impersonal order, Christians open themselves to the revelation of God's grace. All such understanding is dialogic: reading, writing, praying, conversing, thinking by internal conversation. The appropriate metaphor for all forms of intercourse is the conversation. To learn is to be initiated into a conversation in which we either recognize or imaginatively reconstruct the voice of others. This requires us to learn to listen, to express ourselves appropriately, to enter into the thoughts of others, even to submit to censure [cf. earlier reference to "authoritative imperialistic"]. We understand ourselves as practical beings. Practice [define?] does not consist of conformity to a theory. Practice precedes theory. Theory can at best only be an imaginative explication of the norms inherent in the practices with the hope of guiding future practice. There can be no rules for the application of rules. Morality is not, then, a set of rules deduced from a metaphysical theory. The inherent norms are themselves another manifestation of the pre-conceptual. Reason always presupposes faith, which is the ground of reason. There is no strict dichotomy of faith and reason or of philosophy and theology [cf. earlier on St. Thomas]. What connects metaphysics, the account of the pre-conceptual, to morality, the explication of practice, is a narrative.

8.2.6. Saving and Explicating the Phenomena of Christianity: Explication is a mode of understanding [any other modes besides "ordinary" below?] social practices. It presupposes that all social practices function with implicit norms and that to explicate a practice is to make explicit the inherent norms. In explication we try to clarify that which is routinely taken for granted, namely our ordinary understanding of our practices [cf. others' understanding of our practices], in the hope of extracting from our previous practice a set of norms that can be used reflectively to guide future practice. Explication attempts to specify the sense we have of ourselves when we act and to clarify that which serves [others too?] to guide us. We do not change our ordinary understanding but rather come to know it in a new and better way [knowledge does not change understanding?]. Explication is a way of arriving at a kind of practical knowledge that takes human agency as primary [and what is secondary?]. It seeks to mediate practice from within practice itself [auto-poiesis?]. Explication is a form of practical knowledge [which are all other forms] but it is not Aristotelian phronesis, for Aristotle presumes that practical knowledge ultimately presupposes theoretical knowledge. No practice can be judged by norms external to the practice except when those norms are themselves recognized as part of a more encompassing practice [cf. then the need of a system-subsystem relationship as in Churchman's DIS, chap. 3]. Metaphysically, such a norm reflects a universal insofar as persistent or enduring norms reveal something universally true about ourselves. It is the recognition of some [some?] universality that saves explication from the threat of nihilism or the charge of historicist relativism. Explication, then, presupposes the existence of a cosmic order [which order?]. Explication is an intrinsically historical activity because practice is an ongoing historical event, and it sees the present as a development out of the past. It does not see the present as an imperfect vision of the future. It sees the evolution of practices not the progress of practices, or, alternatively, it is a progress "from" not a progress "to". To believe in "progress to" it is to be concerned with the alleged existence of how the world [and moral value system?] "really" is independent of us whereas to believe in "progress from" is to be concerned with how the world is relative to ourselves, and this cannot be understood independent of our interaction with the world, and how we have acquired along the way our way of thinking and acting. The application of a norm to novel circumstances requires a consensus [cf. consensus vs. conflict in Churchman's DIS chap. 5 and 7] among the practitioners, and the cultural activity by which we work toward achieving this consensus among practitioners is itself a practice informed by the norms of the highest order....We can never definitively circumscribe the concepts [define] we use [ref. Wittgenstein], and we must distinguish between a rule and the principle [define] of application, In addition norms can conflict, however the conflict can only be discovered retrospectively [cf. Hegel, Marx, and Churchman DIS chap. 7]. Even the resolution of the conflict can only be by reference to other implicit norms, not by appeal to anything outside of prior practice. The logic of explication if inherently conservative, for the explication of practice is parasitic [tautological-paradoxical? define] upon practice itself. Concerning the practices of Christianity: whereas the discovery of the psyche by the classical Greeks led them to seen attunement with an invisible and impersonal order [cf. "of practices"?] beyond the visible order, Christians went beyond that in opening themselves to the revelation of God's grace [cf. the text of this essay compared with mystics']. From the beginning then, it can be said that Christianity distanced itself from Greek philosophy [cf. Plato's vs Heidegger's own distance from Christianity]. Christianity's natural allies in contemporary moral debate, namely fundamentalists [define], Orthodox Jews, Muslims [cf. orthodox Jews and Palestina conflict], and Orthodox Christians all eschew the classical philosophical context [cf. Heidegger's own position in this respect, and in respect to Nazism]. In summary, explication of the practices identifies norms, the norms are rooted in originating experiences and events (revelations) and constitute the pre-conceptual [is the pre-conceptual made explicit in norms?]. Here we are confronted with a puzzle: if there are no external structures, and no hidden "structure" to practice [undefined norm is no structure] then how can reason perform the explication? The answer is that we have an impoverished conception of reason then it is not possible to understand the process of explication. The explication is an imaginative act. One presumes here that God [and human?] has an imagination as well as counterparts to the more traditional faculties of reason and will. [cf. Johnson, M. Moral imagination: Implications of cognitive science for ethics . Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press, 1993, and the "philosophy in the flesh"]. Prior to the eighteenth century the imagination was considered a negative faculty as opposed to reason as the positive faculty for grasping an independent structure. But the practices are re-created through appropriation. One of the post important ways in which we utilize our imagination is in reconstructing the thought of others who engaged in that practice [cf. Jungian archetypes]. The philosophical account of the pre-conceptual domain of transcendence, beginning with practice, reveals the existence of the pre-conceptual domain. It discovers that the pre-conceptual is the domain of the person [cf. of God]. It recognizes that personhood is a product of communication and that communication [and/or poetry and love?] is an imaginative act. This is where the philosophical account comes to an end, and is succeeded by the poetical account [cf. the priority between art or aesthetics, and religion in Ivanov, K. (1997). Strategies and design for information technology: Eastern or neo-romantic wholes, and the return to Western systems . Umeå: Umeå University, Dept. of Informatics, (http://www.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/chinese.html. For a shorter revised version cf. Ivanov, K., & Ciborra, C. East and West of IS. In W. R. J. Baets (Ed.), Proc. of the Sixth European Conference on Information Systems ECIS'98, University of Aix-Marseille III, Aix-en-Provence, June 4-6, 1998. Vol. IV (pp. 1740-1748). Granada & Aix-en-Provence: Euro-Arab Management School & Institut d'Administration des Entreprises IAE, 1998]. Imagination goes beyond reason in the narrow sense, and, properly understood it is not sheer autonomous creativity (which only God can possess) but it is the source of the discovery of objective reality. [cf. German post-Kantian Romanticism vs. von Hartmann's philosophy of the unconscious]. It is though the transcendental that we arrive at the transcendent.

8.2.7. The Eplicatory Moment in Contemporary Catholic Metaphysics. The practical domain [cf. "practice"] is not the only or even the most important domain of human existence. By stressing the extent to which the transcendent is also apprehended in a poetic act of contemplation, we escape the illusory domination of our practical concerns. The transcendent as pre-conceptual norm within practice can be a form of revelation [was there Christian practice before revelation?]. What connects the account of expression of the pre-conceptual to our practices is a narrative [or rather the Christian revelation renamed to be a narrative among others?]. How we understand ourselves is primary, and how we understand the world [or practice?] is derivative. We cannot understand ourselves without a an historical or genealogical narrative [where our choice happens to be the Christian one?]. The Christian narrative is re-enacted in the practices of the Christian community, of which the most important is the Mass [narrative vs. myth vs. ritual: define and cf. Jung, and on mythopoieic thought in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary]. Metaphysics as narrative is the search for analogical unity [cf. "system"] amidst the diversity and plurality o historical situations. The resultant narrative does not entail specific duties; rather, our duties can only be determined through conversational reappropriation of the institutions within which we ["we"] live. A most promising contemporary narrative is the transformation of spirit into freedom [vs. human freedom into God's spirit?]. The traditional meaning of freedom is autonomy meaning self-rule or self-governance. Adherents of traditional Aristotelian [or Thomist?] metaphysics see too easily in this only the sin or self-assertion or self-definition. On the contrary, self-rule is still possible but it is not to be understood as following specific timeless and contextless [cf. context vs. system] dictates [cf. norms]. Rather, it is a matter of consistency and coherence with what it means to be free [define, and cf. principle of contradiction and Churchman DIS chap. 2]. It can mean infusing the work of the world with a spiritual dimension [define spirit]. It is not (exactly) we who are free, rather it is freedom [Freedom?] which is lodged is us, compatible with, and requiring God's grace. This view of freedom is the presence of the divine in the culture of the Germanic invaders in the form of Geist. It is what has enabled those invaders to reinfuse the divine in the Latin culture of the Mediterranean [cf. Nazism].

8.2.8. Comments on Capaldi: On Friday, 06 October 2000 10.55 +0330 "David G. Murray" <metaphysics@rome.com> wrote: From: EDWARD ALAM <edwardja@usa.net> Notre Dame University, Lebanon. Subject: Reaction to Professor Capaldi's text above. The presuppositions of the so-called "roadblock" encyclical do not have anything in common with the assumptions of scientism, as he claims. I would like to know precisely "where" the assumptions of scientism are in the encyclical? I cannot see them, and apparently the present Pope doesn't see them, either. Moreover, the Professor is wrong when he says that there has been an "Official Catholic Metaphysics." There has never been any such thing. In fact, there is an "official" teaching which clearly states that the Catholic Church can have no "official" philosophy or metaphysics. These are the weaknesses of the paper in my judgment, and, quite frankly, the are serious errors--ones that could not have been made if the essence of Fides et Ratio had been firmly grasped.

8.2.9. Comments on Capaldi On Friday, 06 October 2000 13.47 +0330 "David G. Murray" <metaphysics@rome.com> wrote: From: "Alastair Beattie" <beattie@cantv.net> To: <metaphysics@rome.com>. Subject: Comment to the Collapse of the Enlightenment Project in Capaldi's text above The so called "Thomistic-Aristotelian conception of metaphysics" was hindered by this departure from Plato. And then, again, historically later according to Professor Capaldi: "As in Platonism, the Copernican metaphysicians insist upon the distinction between, and the irreducibility of, subjects to objects, but unlike Platonism, the subject is seen rooted in the pre-theoretical world of everyday practice." The hindrance of "Aristotelian naturalism" once more makes its appearance. This concept of "everyday practice" has a definite resonance with Aristotle's naturalism-his insistence on the particulate-for surely practice as rooted in socio-historical knowledge must by definition indicate the phenomenal rather than noumenal or nonparticulate, as the momentum of the progressive wave in the Schrodinger equation is nonparticulate. Practice, as defined, is a reduction to the mundane everyday. It is a sort of taking stock or measurement which results in the collapse of its matrix. Practice may be pre-theoretical, which is to say that like the chambered nautilus it makes its own theories as it goes along, but the enlargement of its chambers may well offer no space for the pre-conceptual. As distinct from "the pre-theoretical world of everyday practice," the "transcendental pre-conceptual" world must exist for us as a potential, even an Aristotelian potential (for Aristotle is not closed to the mythos of the supernatural), but the transcendental pre-conceptual cannot exist phenomenally. The higher spheres of intuition advocated since the Egyptians and explored by Plotinus, Llull, Bruno, and Bohm are ansate keys to the potentials which give us veiled glimpses of these spheres-their "aletheia". The best expression of an immediate intuitive mythos, as Professor Capaldi so nicely intimates, may be concealed by the exacting focuses of philosophy.

8.3. Heideggerian phenomenology and Christianity in Macquarrie

8.3.1. Macquarrie, J. (1994). Heidegger and Christianity: The Hensley Henson Lectures 1993-94 . London: SCM Press

8.3.2. There is little doubt (p. vii, preface) that at the present time the temporal and the historical have acquired a new importance in human thinking. There is a tendency to see everything as swept along in the flux of becoming [cf. Plato]. Nothing remains static. Thus we find the theologian Friedrich Gogarten asserting that whereas in earlier centuries, the events of history were supposed to take place on, so to speak, a permanent stage provided by metaphysics, that situation has now been reversed. The permanent framework has disappeared, and metaphysical systems are themselves regarded as products of history. One way of exploring whether everything is then plunged into a thorough relativism or even that nihilism [cf. postmodernism] that Nietzsche foresaw will be to take the work of Martin Heidegger. We may then learn something of the impact on Christianity of the contemporary concern of time [cf. impact of Christianity on the contemporary concept of time].

8.3.3. The German philosopher Karl Löwith (p. 6, ref. to "From Hegel to Nietzsche", Garden City: Doubleday, 1967, p. 207), former student of Heidegger, has written that Heidegger's philosophy "is in its very essence a theology without God".

8.3.4. Perhaps (p. 13) we should think not just of one turn in Heidegger's thought but of several turns. A first turn would be away from Catholicism to a kind of independent Protestantism in Heidegger's early years of teaching at Marburg. Then there was the turn to something close to atheism or even nihilism extending perhaps through the time of his involvement with National Socialism [nazism]. But already during these years there are hints of a "return" -- not indeed to his original Catholicism, but to what has been called "Heidegger's private religion" which was perhaps as much derived from Greek sources as from biblical ones.

8.3.5. The point that being is not predicate (p. 17) had been made by Kant, though Kant is not mentioned by Heidegger. But it does not need much reflection to realize that when one lists the predicates of anything, nothing is added to the description by saying that it is real and exists [cf. Churchman DIS, chap. 5, pp. 122-123]. To say that something exists is quite different kind of assertion from saying it is red or material. Heidegger points out that in medieval ontology, the universality of "being" led it to be designated a "transcendens", going beyond even the most extensive generic concepts [cf. Plato's Sophist, 237a, 241d ff., 258d ff.].

8.3.6. Heidegger's remarks (p. 25) on the categories of Kant will have prepared us for his denial that there are any "eternal truths". He declares "the contention that there are 'eternal truths'...belongs to those residues of Christian theology within philosophical thought which have not as yet been radically extruded." (ref. to Being and Time, 1962, p.262)

8.3.7. It is Heidegger's policy (p. 26) to bring together what has been, as he believes, erroneously separated in the history of philosophy. A further example of this is his insistence that understanding and sense-perception belong together...As he had already said, "Even simple perception, which is often called sense-perception, is clearly intrinsically pervaded by categorial intuition". [cf. "categorial intuition", define intuition, and cf. Lakoff & Johnson's "philosophy in the flesh" in virtual reality VR-research].And this is related closely also to Heidegger's doctrine that all understanding includes interpretation. Understanding always has an "-as-structure", which means that we see the things of the environment as doors, or as tables or as whathever they may be. [cf. Fuenmayor's (above) recurring "whatever-is-the-case", Northrop, F. S. C. (1959). The logic of science and the humanities . New York: Meridian, 1947/1959, Churchman DIS, chap. 6 on minimal vs. maximal a-priori].

8.3.8. Heidegger in his Being and Time (p. 26) seems to evade making any ethical judgment, and this is typical...So, in shying away from ethical judgment he is merely trying to preserve the neutrality of the phenomenological method. He may also be trying to distance himself from any theological implications.

8.3.9. Heidegger's (p. 37) distancing his thought from its earlier Christian associations are confirmed when we go on to the second phase in his deepening of the existential analytic, namely, when he describes Dasein in its authentic as opposed to its everyday mode of existence [cf. Capaldi's "practice"]. A way to escape from inauthenticity is willingness to listen to conscience. From where does this call of conscience come? It is not just the voice of society that we hear, not a superego imposed by parents and teachers. In fact, the call of conscience summons us away from the judgment of the "they". Nor is conscience the voice of God, and we need not suppose anything supernatural about it. Conscience arises from Dasein itself. Dasein is summoned by its own potentiality for authentic existing. "In conscience, Dasein calls itself". To listen to the call of conscience is to accept one's responsibility for one's existence. But to accept this is at the same time to become guilty. This, of course, is a point at which the existential analysis may have taken a religious turn. In Paul, and in many other Christian writers, the sense of human weakness was a prelude to faith and reliance on divine grace. But there is nothing of this in Being and Time. [? cf. Nazism and Ratzinger J. Samvete och sanning. Signum, Nos. 4 & 5, 1996, Swedish trans. by Yvonne Werner, of an essay presented as a lecture at the American Bishops' Conference on moral theological questions in 1991.]

8.3.10. There is a sense (p. 46) in which Dasein is sent into life and at the same time into death. Is the sender quite anonymous? A Christian would say that God is the sender, Heidegger does not say that, and he was determined to keep God out of his descriptions. Does it matter whether we say God or use only the vague expression "fate"? Where we talk of the "destinies" of great masses of people, we are on dangerous ground. The destiny of the German people was one of the driving ideals in National Socialism [Nazism], and it was not a destiny of which God, if understood in Christian terms, could have approved.

8.3.11. Apart (p. 56) from his early enthusiasm for Catholic thought, Heidegger had a strangely ambiguous attitude toward theology, what might properly be called a "love-hate" relationship. Theological questions obviously fascinated him, and he touches on them frequently. Yet he interpreted his vocation as philosopher or thinker as demanding that he must steer clear of any theological involvement [cf. metaphysics].

8.3.12. The relation (p. 58) between Being and the "ought" or Being and obligation, is one that we would very much like to hear about, for it seems to promise an ethical dimension to Heidegger's philosophy. Yet he devotes to it only a couple of pages (in the Introduction to Metaphysics, 1959, p. 203) that do not seem to say very much.

8.3.13. Heidegger (p. 69-70) is ambiguous about the way in which technology has gained its hold upon humanity. People are already in it, and have to make the best of it. But how did they get into it? Was that the result of some initial decisions in the past? Heidegger seems to suggest (ref. Basic Writings, 1977, pp. 300, 306) that the technological era is a destiny which Being sends on the human race. "Enframing send into a way of revealing." We have already met this notion of destiny in Heidegger, and I think we should feel uneasy about it. But after saying that "destining holds complete sway over men", Heidegger suddenly changes course, and tells us: "That destining is never a fate that compels. For man becomes truly free only is so far as he belongs to the realm of destining and so becomes one who listens, though not one who simply obeys." Can we disentangle some reasonably clear teaching about technology from the obscurities, ambiguities, and paradoxes which Heidegger has employed in expounding his ideas on the subject?...We need more clarity about goals, but these are not fixed by technology. At this point, however, we might blame Heidegger himself for never having developed an ethical side to his philosophy. Indeed, it could be complained with some justice that from his early thinking onward, he consistently avoided ethical questions.

8.3.14. Heidegger (p. 78) excludes the theologian from the rank of thinkers. For the true thinker, everything is -- and remains -- problematical. But, in Heidegger's view, the theologian believes that he has attained to secure knowledge through revelation. Heidegger has a curiously restricted understanding of theology. In denying that the theologian is also a thinker, he is contradicting his own pronouncement that there is a thinking and questioning elaboration of the world of Christian experience, that is, of faith, that this enterprise is theology, and that it has a "true greatness".

8.3.15. A way (p. 82) of understanding the question "what is called thinking?" asks about its meaning in the tradition of Western thought. This tradition, especially in modern times, seems very different fro what Heidegger has been talking about. Pascal, it seems, lost his battle to maintain the reasons of the heart as against the omnipotent rationalism of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. For the mainstream of philosophical thinking, the one which Heidegger thinks is drying up) took its clue about the essential nature of thinking not from the German words denken/danken but from the Greek Logos, and it made "logic" the yardstick for thinking. This is a different and independent tradition, and it is obviously the one that has been essential for the rise of Western science and technology. It obviously has its own right, and no one can reject it, not even the sceptic or the deconstructionist who, in abolishing truth and logic, thereby abolishes also his or her own claim to be heard as a serious disputant. How this other tradition of thinking can be reconciled with the one advocated by Heidegger, or it is can be so reconciled, is a question that remains unanswered. To the other form of understanding the question, which asked about the prerequisites for correct thinking, Heidegger does not appear to give any clear answer.

8.3.16. Heidegger attempts (p. 88) to derive philosophical points from etymological or other linguistic considerations may be compared to the fascination of some Anglo-Saxon philosophers with "ordinary language" [cf. Wittgenstein, Austin]. However differently Heidegger and these philosophers apply the principle, they seem to be agreed that there are hidden stores of wisdom in the way we talk. Yet on both sides there is agreement that language is very fallible and may conceal more than it reveals.

8.3.17. Although Heidegger (p. 89-92) sometimes speaks as if he was referring to poetry in general, he was in fact mainly taken up with the poetry of one man -- Friedrich Hölderlin -- (1770-1843). This German poet, a contemporary of Hegel, had been stricken in his thirties by schizophrenia. For both Hölderlin and Heidegger, the poet is a go-between -- he converses with the gods and then comes back with his message to the people [cf. Jung]. This is the same pattern that we see in prophets and founders of religions -- a revelation, perhaps in itself ineffable, which the bearers break down into language. In Heidegger and Hölderlin, the function is transferred to poets [cf. vs. Plato]. They operate in the region between gods and men. [Piece of poetry by Hölderlin]. But what seems to be missing in such poetic account of revelation is any ethical content. The poet names the holy, opens up truth and beauty, but where is the call to righteousness and love that we find in Jesus or Moses or Mohammed or the Buddha? [Cf. with the "warning" at the beginning of the Italian translation of 1987 of Heidegger's "Pathmarks": Quanto alla traduzione, essa ha dovuto affrontare le ben note difficoltà che presenta la versione di un linguaggio come quello heideggeriano, che gioca spesso sugli etimi del tedesco e sulla loro plurivocità, che impiega concetti correnti in significati tecnici particolari, che crea nuovi termini, che compone e scompone a piacimento le parole nelle loro radici per estorcere al linguaggio una confessione filosofica. Si è cercato di risolvere tali problemi senza cedere agli esoterismi linguistici dello heideggerismo, senza seguire, se non per pochissimi casi, l'uso ormai generalizzato di trapuntare ogni pagina di espressioni tedesche tra parentesi, e senza arrivare, come spesso succede, a una traduzione che, per avere troppo giocato a ricalcare i termini tedeschi, risulta alla fine comprensibile solo a chi già conosce il tedesco. Un altro problema di non poco conto è stato quello di mantenere una uniformità terminologica coerente e continua per tutti i quattordici saggi della raccolta, tenendo nello stesso tempo conto delle variazioni del vocabolario heideggeriano durante i tre decenni circa lungo i quali si collocano i vari saggi. In generale, compatilmente con la tematica e con lo stile degli scritti heideggeriani, si è aspirato a fornire un testo italiano che risultasse nello stesso tempo fedele, leggibile e comprensibile, anche senza la concoscenza dell'originale. Cosa che nondimeno, considerando la particolarità di una scrittura come quella heideggeriana, non può che essere raccomandata].

8.3.18. It would be wrong (p. 108) to claim that Heidegger's philosophy is a Christian philosophy -- perhaps there is no such thing as a Christian philosophy. But it can be interpreted in a way that is compatible with Christian faith, and it can yield important insights into the faith. [cf. Capaldi, above, and Encyclical "Aeterni Patris" http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_04081879_aeterni-patris_en.html, and Fides et Ratio http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_15101998_fides-et-ratio_en.html, and http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_06081993_veritatis-splendor_en.html]

8.4. Encyclical on Faith and Reason

8.4.1. From John Paul II. (1998). Fides et Ratio. Encyclical letter . Rome: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_15101998_fides-et-ratio_en.html

8.4.2. Paragraphs 31-33. Human beings are not made to live alone. They are born into a family and in a family they grow, eventually entering society through their activity. From birth, therefore, they are immersed in traditions which give them not only a language and a cultural formation but also a range of truths in which they believe almost instinctively. Yet personal growth and maturity imply that these same truths can be cast into doubt and evaluated through a process of critical enquiry. It may be that, after this time of transition, these truths are “recovered” as a result of the experience of life or by dint of further reasoning. Nonetheless, there are in the life of a human being many more truths which are simply believed than truths which are acquired by way of personal verification. Who, for instance, could assess critically the countless scientific findings upon which modern life is based? Who could personally examine the flow of information which comes day after day from all parts of the world and which is generally accepted as true? Who in the end could forge anew the paths of experience and thought which have yielded the treasures of human wisdom and religion? This means that the human being—the one who seeks the truth—is also the one who lives by belief. In believing, we entrust ourselves to the knowledge acquired by other people. This suggests an important tension. On the one hand, the knowledge acquired through belief can seem an imperfect form of knowledge, to be perfected gradually through personal accumulation of evidence; on the other hand, belief is often humanly richer than mere evidence, because it involves an interpersonal relationship and brings into play not only a person's capacity to know but also the deeper capacity to entrust oneself to others, to enter into a relationship with them which is intimate and enduring. It should be stressed that the truths sought in this interpersonal relationship are not primarily empirical or philosophical. Rather, what is sought is the truth of the person—what the person is and what the person reveals from deep within. Human perfection, then, consists not simply in acquiring an abstract knowledge of the truth, but in a dynamic relationship of faithful self-giving with others. It is in this faithful self-giving that a person finds a fullness of certainty and security. At the same time, however, knowledge through belief, grounded as it is on trust between persons, is linked to truth: in the act of believing, men and women entrust themselves to the truth which the other declares to them... Step by step, then, we are assembling the terms of the question. It is the nature of the human being to seek the truth. This search looks not only to the attainment of truths which are partial, empirical or scientific; nor is it only in individual acts of decision-making that people seek the true good. Their search looks towards an ulterior truth which would explain the meaning of life. And it is therefore a search which can reach its end only in reaching the absolute. Thanks to the inherent capacities of thought, man is able to encounter and recognize a truth of this kind. Such a truth—vital and necessary as it is for life—is attained not only by way of reason but also through trusting acquiescence to other persons who can guarantee the authenticity and certainty of the truth itself. There is no doubt that the capacity to entrust oneself and one's life to another person and the decision to do so are among the most significant and expressive human acts. It must not be forgotten that reason too needs to be sustained in all its searching by trusting dialogue and sincere friendship. A climate of suspicion and distrust, which can beset speculative research, ignores the teaching of the ancient philosophers who proposed friendship as one of the most appropriate contexts for sound philosophical enquiry. From all that I have said to this point it emerges that men and women are on a journey of discovery which is humanly unstoppable—a search for the truth and a search for a person to whom they might entrust themselves.

8.4.3. Paragraph 46-47. As a result of the crisis of rationalism, what has appeared finally is nihilism. As a philosophy of nothingness, it has a certain attraction for people of our time. Its adherents claim that the search is an end in itself, without any hope or possibility of ever attaining the goal of truth. In the nihilist interpretation, life is no more than an occasion for sensations and experiences in which the ephemeral has pride of place. Nihilism is at the root of the widespread mentality which claims that a definitive commitment should no longer be made, because everything is fleeting and provisional. It should also be borne in mind that the role of philosophy itself has changed in modern culture. From universal wisdom and learning, it has been gradually reduced to one of the many fields of human knowing; indeed in some ways it has been consigned to a wholly marginal role. Other forms of rationality have acquired an ever higher profile, making philosophical learning appear all the more peripheral. These forms of rationality are directed not towards the contemplation of truth and the search for the ultimate goal and meaning of life; but instead, as “instrumental reason”, they are directed—actually or potentially—towards the promotion of utilitarian ends, towards enjoyment or power.

8.4.4. Paragraph 48. This rapid survey of the history of philosophy, then, reveals a growing separation between faith and philosophical reason. Yet closer scrutiny shows that even in the philosophical thinking of those who helped drive faith and reason further apart there are found at times precious and seminal insights which, if pursued and developed with mind and heart rightly tuned, can lead to the discovery of truth's way. Such insights are found, for instance, in penetrating analyses of perception and experience, of the imaginary and the unconscious, of personhood and intersubjectivity, of freedom and values, of time and history. The theme of death as well can become for all thinkers an incisive appeal to seek within themselves the true meaning of their own life. But this does not mean that the link between faith and reason as it now stands does not need to be carefully examined, because each without the other is impoverished and enfeebled. Deprived of what Revelation offers, reason has taken side-tracks which expose it to the danger of losing sight of its final goal. Deprived of reason, faith has stressed feeling and experience, and so run the risk of no longer being a universal proposition. It is an illusion to think that faith, tied to weak reasoning, might be more penetrating; on the contrary, faith then runs the grave risk of withering into myth or superstition. By the same token, reason which is unrelated to an adult faith is not prompted to turn its gaze to the newness and radicality of being.

8.4.5. Paragraph 49-50. The Church has no philosophy of her own nor does she canonize any one particular philosophy in preference to others. The underlying reason for this reluctance is that, even when it engages theology, philosophy must remain faithful to its own principles and methods. Otherwise there would be no guarantee that it would remain oriented to truth and that it was moving towards truth by way of a process governed by reason. A philosophy which did not proceed in the light of reason according to its own principles and methods would serve little purpose. At the deepest level, the autonomy which philosophy enjoys is rooted in the fact that reason is by its nature oriented to truth and is equipped moreover with the means necessary to arrive at truth. A philosophy conscious of this as its “constitutive status” cannot but respect the demands and the data of revealed truth. Yet history shows that philosophy—especially modern philosophy—has taken wrong turns and fallen into error. It is neither the task nor the competence of the Magisterium to intervene in order to make good the lacunas of deficient philosophical discourse. Rather, it is the Magisterium's duty to respond clearly and strongly when controversial philosophical opinions threaten right understanding of what has been revealed, and when false and partial theories which sow the seed of serious error, confusing the pure and simple faith of the People of God, begin to spread more widely. In the light of faith, therefore, the Church's Magisterium can and must authoritatively exercise a critical discernment of opinions and philosophies which contradict Christian doctrine. It is the task of the Magisterium in the first place to indicate which philosophical presuppositions and conclusions are incompatible with revealed truth, thus articulating the demands which faith's point of view makes of philosophy. Moreover, as philosophical learning has developed, different schools of thought have emerged. This pluralism also imposes upon the Magisterium the responsibility of expressing a judgement as to whether or not the basic tenets of these different schools are compatible with the demands of the word of God and theological enquiry. It is the Church's duty to indicate the elements in a philosophical system which are incompatible with her own faith.

8.4.6. Paragraph 52. If the Magisterium has spoken out more frequently since the middle of the last century, it is because in that period not a few Catholics felt it their duty to counter various streams of modern thought with a philosophy of their own. At this point, the Magisterium of the Church was obliged to be vigilant lest these philosophies developed in ways which were themselves erroneous and negative. The censures were delivered even-handedly: on the one hand, fideism and radical traditionalism, for their distrust of reason's natural capacities, and, on the other, rationalism and ontologism because they attributed to natural reason a knowledge which only the light of faith could confer. The positive elements of this debate were assembled in the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius, in which for the first time an Ecumenical Council—in this case, the First Vatican Council—pronounced solemnly on the relationship between reason and faith. The teaching contained in this document strongly and positively marked the philosophical research of many believers and remains today a standard reference-point for correct and coherent Christian thinking in this regard.

8.4.7. Paragraph 54-55. in his Encyclical Letter Humani Generis, Pope Pius XII warned against mistaken interpretations linked to evolutionism, existentialism and historicism. He made it clear that these theories had not been proposed and developed by theologians, but had their origins “outside the sheepfold of Christ”. He added, however, that errors of this kind should not simply be rejected but should be examined critically: “Catholic theologians and philosophers, whose grave duty it is to defend natural and supernatural truth and instil it in human hearts, cannot afford to ignore these more or less erroneous opinions. Rather they must come to understand these theories well, not only because diseases are properly treated only if rightly diagnosed and because even in these false theories some truth is found at times, but because in the end these theories provoke a more discriminating discussion and evaluation of philosophical and theological truths”. In accomplishing its specific task in service of the Roman Pontiff's universal Magisterium, the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith has more recently had to intervene to re-emphasize the danger of an uncritical adoption by some liberation theologians of opinions and methods drawn from Marxism....Surveying the situation today, we see that the problems of other times have returned, but in a new key. It is no longer a matter of questions of interest only to certain individuals and groups, but convictions so widespread that they have become to some extent the common mind. An example of this is the deep-seated distrust of reason which has surfaced in the most recent developments of much of philosophical research, to the point where there is talk at times of “the end of metaphysics”. Philosophy is expected to rest content with more modest tasks such as the simple interpretation of facts or an enquiry into restricted fields of human knowing or its structures.

8.4.8. Paragraph 74. The fruitfulness of this relationship [between theology and philosophy] is confirmed by the experience of great Christian theologians who also distinguished themselves as great philosophers, bequeathing to us writings of such high speculative value as to warrant comparison with the masters of ancient philosophy. This is true of both the Fathers of the Church, among whom at least Saint Gregory of Nazianzus and Saint Augustine should be mentioned, and the Medieval Doctors with the great triad of Saint Anselm, Saint Bonaventure and Saint Thomas Aquinas. We see the same fruitful relationship between philosophy and the word of God in the courageous research pursued by more recent thinkers, among whom I gladly mention, in a Western context, figures such as John Henry Newman, Antonio Rosmini, Jacques Maritain, Étienne Gilson and Edith Stein and, in an Eastern context, eminent scholars such as Vladimir S. Soloviev, Pavel A. Florensky, Petr Chaadaev and Vladimir N. Lossky. Obviously other names could be cited; and in referring to these I intend not to endorse every aspect of their thought, but simply to offer significant examples of a process of philosophical enquiry which was enriched by engaging the data of faith. One thing is certain: attention to the spiritual journey of these masters can only give greater momentum to both the search for truth and the effort to apply the results of that search to the service of humanity. It is to be hoped that now and in the future there will be those who continue to cultivate this great philosophical and theological tradition for the good of both the Church and humanity. [Cf. Capadli; no reference to Heidegger].

8.4.9. Paragraph 75-76. the demand for a valid autonomy of thought should be respected even when theological discourse makes use of philosophical concepts and arguments. Indeed, to argue according to rigorous rational criteria is to guarantee that the results attained are universally valid. This also confirms the principle that grace does not destroy nature but perfects it: the assent of faith, engaging the intellect and will, does not destroy but perfects the free will of each believer who deep within welcomes what has been revealed. It is clear that this legitimate approach is rejected by the theory of so-called “separate” philosophy, pursued by some modern philosophers. This theory claims for philosophy not only a valid autonomy, but a self-sufficiency of thought which is patently invalid. In refusing the truth offered by divine Revelation, philosophy only does itself damage, since this is to preclude access to a deeper knowledge of truth. A second stance adopted by philosophy is often designated as Christian philosophy. In itself, the term is valid, but it should not be misunderstood: it in no way intends to suggest that there is an official philosophy of the Church, since the faith as such is not a philosophy. The term seeks rather to indicate a Christian way of philosophizing, a philosophical speculation conceived in dynamic union with faith. It does not therefore refer simply to a philosophy developed by Christian philosophers who have striven in their research not to contradict the faith. The term Christian philosophy includes those important developments of philosophical thinking which would not have happened without the direct or indirect contribution of Christian faith. Christian philosophy therefore has two aspects. The first is subjective, in the sense that faith purifies reason. As a theological virtue, faith liberates reason from presumption, the typical temptation of the philosopher. Saint Paul, the Fathers of the Church and, closer to our own time, philosophers such as Pascal and Kierkegaard reproached such presumption. The philosopher who learns humility will also find courage to tackle questions which are difficult to resolve if the data of Revelation are ignored—for example, the problem of evil and suffering, the personal nature of God and the question of the meaning of life or, more directly, the radical metaphysical question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”. The second aspect of Christian philosophy is objective, in the sense that it concerns content. Revelation clearly proposes certain truths which might never have been discovered by reason unaided, although they are not of themselves inaccessible to reason. Among these truths is the notion of a free and personal God who is the Creator of the world, a truth which has been so crucial for the development of philosophical thinking, especially the philosophy of being. There is also the reality of sin, as it appears in the light of faith, which helps to shape an adequate philosophical formulation of the problem of evil. The notion of the person as a spiritual being is another of faith's specific contributions: the Christian proclamation of human dignity, equality and freedom has undoubtedly influenced modern philosophical thought. In more recent times, there has been the discovery that history as event—so central to Christian Revelation—is important for philosophy as well. It is no accident that this has become pivotal for a philosophy of history which stakes its claim as a new chapter in the human search for truth.

8.4.10. Paragraph 78. It should be clear... why the Magisterium has repeatedly acclaimed the merits of Saint Thomas' thought and made him the guide and model for theological studies. This has not been in order to take a position on properly philosophical questions nor to demand adherence to particular theses. [Vs. Capaldi] The Magisterium's intention has always been to show how Saint Thomas is an authentic model for all who seek the truth. In his thinking, the demands of reason and the power of faith found the most elevated synthesis ever attained by human thought, for he could defend the radical newness introduced by Revelation without ever demeaning the venture proper to reason.

8.4.11. Paragraph 80. Christians have come to an ever deeper awareness of the wealth to be found in the sacred text. It is there that we learn that what we experience is not absolute: it is neither uncreated nor self-generating. [Cf. Capaldi's "practices"] God alone is the Absolute. From the Bible there emerges also a vision of man as imago Dei. This vision offers indications regarding man's life, his freedom and the immortality of the human spirit. Since the created world is not self-sufficient, every illusion of autonomy which would deny the essential dependence on God of every creature—the human being included—leads to dramatic situations which subvert the rational search for the harmony and the meaning of human life.

8.4.12. Paragraph 81-83 One of the most significant aspects of our current situation, it should be noted, is the “crisis of meaning”. Perspectives on life and the world, often of a scientific temper, have so proliferated that we face an increasing fragmentation of knowledge. This makes the search for meaning difficult and often fruitless. Indeed, still more dramatically, in this maelstrom of data and facts in which we live and which seem to comprise the very fabric of life, many people wonder whether it still makes sense to ask about meaning. The array of theories which vie to give an answer, and the different ways of viewing and of interpreting the world and human life, serve only to aggravate this radical doubt, which can easily lead to scepticism, indifference or to various forms of nihilism. o be consonant with the word of God, philosophy needs first of all to recover its sapiential dimension as a search for the ultimate and overarching meaning of life...Yet this sapiential function could not be performed by a philosophy which was not itself a true and authentic knowledge, addressed, that is, not only to particular and subordinate aspects of reality—functional, formal or utilitarian—but to its total and definitive truth, to the very being of the object which is known. This prompts a second requirement: that philosophy verify the human capacity to know the truth, to come to a knowledge which can reach objective truth by means of that adaequatio rei et intellectus to which the Scholastic Doctors referred...A radically phenomenalist or relativist philosophy would be ill-adapted to help in the deeper exploration of the riches found in the word of God. Sacred Scripture always assumes that the individual, even if guilty of duplicity and mendacity, can know and grasp the clear and simple truth. The Bible, and the New Testament in particular, contains texts and statements which have a genuinely ontological content....Wherever men and women discover a call to the absolute and transcendent, the metaphysical dimension of reality opens up before them: in truth, in beauty, in moral values, in other persons, in being itself, in God. We face a great challenge at the end of this millennium to move from phenomenon to foundation, a step as necessary as it is urgent. We cannot stop short at experience alone; even if experience does reveal the human being's interiority and spirituality, speculative thinking must penetrate to the spiritual core and the ground from which it rises. Therefore, a philosophy which shuns metaphysics would be radically unsuited to the task of mediation in the understanding of Revelation.

8.4.13. Paragraph 85-87. I wish to reaffirm strongly the conviction that the human being can come to a unified and organic vision of knowledge. This is one of the tasks which Christian thought will have to take up through the next millennium of the Christian era. The segmentation of knowledge, with its splintered approach to truth and consequent fragmentation of meaning, keeps people today from coming to an interior unity...This insistence on the need for a close relationship of continuity between contemporary philosophy and the philosophy developed in the Christian tradition is intended to avert the danger which lies hidden in some currents of thought which are especially prevalent today. It is appropriate, I think, to review them, however briefly, in order to point out their errors and the consequent risks for philosophical work. The first goes by the name of eclecticism, by which is meant the approach of those who, in research, teaching and argumentation, even in theology, tend to use individual ideas drawn from different philosophies, without concern for their internal coherence, their place within a system or their historical context. They therefore run the risk of being unable to distinguish the part of truth of a given doctrine from elements of it which may be erroneous or ill-suited to the task at hand. An extreme form of eclecticism appears also in the rhetorical misuse of philosophical terms to which some theologians are given at times. Such manipulation does not help the search for truth and does not train reason—whether theological or philosophical—to formulate arguments seriously and scientifically. The rigorous and far-reaching study of philosophical doctrines, their particular terminology and the context in which they arose, helps to overcome the danger of eclecticism and makes it possible to integrate them into theological discourse in a way appropriate to the task. Eclecticism is an error of method, but lying hidden within it can also be the claims of historicism. To understand a doctrine from the past correctly, it is necessary to set it within its proper historical and cultural context. The fundamental claim of historicism, however, is that the truth of a philosophy is determined on the basis of its appropriateness to a certain period and a certain historical purpose. At least implicitly, therefore, the enduring validity of truth is denied. What was true in one period, historicists claim, may not be true in another. Thus for them the history of thought becomes little more than an archaeological resource useful for illustrating positions once held, but for the most part outmoded and meaningless now. On the contrary, it should not be forgotten that, even if a formulation is bound in some way by time and culture, the truth or the error which it expresses can invariably be identified and evaluated as such despite the distance of space and time. In theological enquiry, historicism tends to appear for the most part under the guise of “modernism”. Rightly concerned to make theological discourse relevant and understandable to our time, some theologians use only the most recent opinions and philosophical language, ignoring the critical evaluation which ought to be made of them in the light of the tradition. By exchanging relevance for truth, this form of modernism shows itself incapable of satisfying the demands of truth to which theology is called to respond. Another threat to be reckoned with is scientism. This is the philosophical notion which refuses to admit the validity of forms of knowledge other than those of the positive sciences; and it relegates religious, theological, ethical and aesthetic knowledge to the realm of mere fantasy. In the past, the same idea emerged in positivism and neo-positivism, which considered metaphysical statements to be meaningless. Critical epistemology has discredited such a claim, but now we see it revived in the new guise of scientism, which dismisses values as mere products of the emotions and rejects the notion of being in order to clear the way for pure and simple facticity. Science would thus be poised to dominate all aspects of human life through technological progress. The undeniable triumphs of scientific research and contemporary technology have helped to propagate a scientistic outlook, which now seems boundless, given its inroads into different cultures and the radical changes it has brought.

8.4.14. Paragraph 91. Our age has been termed by some thinkers the age of “postmodernity”. Often used in very different contexts, the term designates the emergence of a complex of new factors which, widespread and powerful as they are, have shown themselves able to produce important and lasting changes. The term was first used with reference to aesthetic, social and technological phenomena. It was then transposed into the philosophical field, but has remained somewhat ambiguous, both because judgement on what is called “postmodern” is sometimes positive and sometimes negative, and because there is as yet no consensus on the delicate question of the demarcation of the different historical periods. One thing however is certain: the currents of thought which claim to be postmodern merit appropriate attention. According to some of them, the time of certainties is irrevocably past, and the human being must now learn to live in a horizon of total absence of meaning, where everything is provisional and ephemeral. In their destructive critique of every certitude, several authors have failed to make crucial distinctions and have called into question the certitudes of faith. This nihilism has been justified in a sense by the terrible experience of evil which has marked our age. Such a dramatic experience has ensured the collapse of rationalist optimism, which viewed history as the triumphant progress of reason, the source of all happiness and freedom; and now, at the end of this century, one of our greatest threats is the temptation to despair. Even so, it remains true that a certain positivist cast of mind continues to nurture the illusion that, thanks to scientific and technical progress, man and woman may live as a demiurge, single-handedly and completely taking charge of their destiny.

8.4.15. Paragraph 97-98. If the intellectus fidei wishes to integrate all the wealth of the theological tradition, it must turn to the philosophy of being, which should be able to propose anew the problem of being—and this in harmony with the demands and insights of the entire philosophical tradition, including philosophy of more recent times, without lapsing into sterile repetition of antiquated formulas. Set within the Christian metaphysical tradition, the philosophy of being is a dynamic philosophy which views reality in its ontological, causal and communicative structures. It is strong and enduring because it is based upon the very act of being itself, which allows a full and comprehensive openness to reality as a whole, surpassing every limit in order to reach the One who brings all things to fulfilment. In theology, which draws its principles from Revelation as a new source of knowledge, this perspective is confirmed by the intimate relationship which exists between faith and metaphysical reasoning. These considerations apply equally to moral theology. It is no less urgent that philosophy be recovered at the point where the understanding of faith is linked to the moral life of believers. Faced with contemporary challenges in the social, economic, political and scientific fields, the ethical conscience of people is disoriented. In the Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, I wrote that many of the problems of the contemporary world stem from a crisis of truth. I noted that “once the idea of a universal truth about the good, knowable by human reason, is lost, inevitably the notion of conscience also changes. Conscience is no longer considered in its prime reality as an act of a person's intelligence, the function of which is to apply the universal knowledge of the good in a specific situation and thus to express a judgment about the right conduct to be chosen here and now. Instead, there is a tendency to grant to the individual conscience the prerogative of independently determining the criteria of good and evil and then acting accordingly. Such an outlook is quite congenial to an individualist ethic, wherein each individual is faced with his own truth different from the truth of others”.

8.4.16. Paragraph 105. Let theologians always remember the words of that great master of thought and spirituality, Saint Bonaventure, who in introducing his Itinerarium Mentis in Deum invites the reader to recognize the inadequacy of “reading without repentance, knowledge without devotion, research without the impulse of wonder, prudence without the ability to surrender to joy, action divorced from religion, learning sundered from love, intelligence without humility, study unsustained by divine grace, thought without the wisdom inspired by God”...Scientists are well aware that “the search for truth, even when it concerns a finite reality of the world or of man, is never-ending, but always points beyond to something higher than the immediate object of study, to the questions which give access to Mystery”.

8.5. 8.5.Encyclical on the Splendor of Truth

8.5.1. From John Paul II. (1993). Veritatis Splendor. Encyclical letter . Rome: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_06081993_veritatis-splendor_en.html

8.5.2. Paragraph 29. Certainly the Church's Magisterium does not intend to impose upon the faithful any particular theological system, still less a philosophical one. Nevertheless, in order to "reverently preserve and faithfully expound" the word of God, the Magisterium has the duty to state that some trends of theological thinking and certain philosophical affirmations are incompatible with revealed truth.

8.5.3. Paragraph 32. Certain currents of modern thought have gone so far as to exalt freedom to such an extent that it becomes an absolute, which would then be the source of values. This is the direction taken by doctrines which have lost the sense of the transcendent or which are explicitly atheist. The individual conscience is accorded the status of a supreme tribunal of moral judgment which hands down categorical and infallible decisions about good and evil. To the affirmation that one has a duty to follow one's conscience is unduly added the affirmation that one's moral judgment is true merely by the fact that it has its origin in the conscience. But in this way the inescapable claims of truth disappear, yielding their place to a criterion of sincerity, authenticity and "being at peace with oneself", so much so that some have come to adopt a radically subjectivistic conception of moral judgment. As is immediately evident, the crisis of truth is not unconnected with this development. Once the idea of a universal truth about the good, knowable by human reason, is lost, inevitably the notion of conscience also changes. Conscience is no longer considered in its primordial reality as an act of a person's intelligence, the function of which is to apply the universal knowledge of the good in a specific situation and thus to express a judgment about the right conduct to be chosen here and now. Instead, there is a tendency to grant to the individual conscience the prerogative of independently determining the criteria of good and evil and then acting accordingly. Such an outlook is quite congenial to an individualist ethic, wherein each individual is faced with his own truth, different from the truth of others. Taken to its extreme consequences, this individualism leads to a denial of the very idea of human nature. These different notions are at the origin of currents of thought which posit a radical opposition between moral law and conscience, and between nature and freedom.

8.5.4. Paragraph 35-36. some present-day cultural tendencies have given rise to several currents of thought in ethics which centre upon an alleged conflict between freedom and law. These doctrines would grant to individuals or social groups the right to determine what is good or evil. Human freedom would thus be able to "create values" and would enjoy a primacy over truth, to the point that truth itself would be considered a creation of freedom. Freedom would thus lay claim to a moral autonomy which would actually amount to an absolute sovereignty...The modern concern for the claims of autonomy has not failed to exercise an influence also in the sphere of Catholic moral theology. While the latter has certainly never attempted to set human freedom against the divine law or to question the existence of an ultimate religious foundation for moral norms, it has, nonetheless, been led to undertake a profound rethinking about the role of reason and of faith in identifying moral norms with reference to specific "innerworldly" kinds of behaviour involving oneself, others and the material world. It must be acknowledged that underlying this work of rethinking there are certain positive concerns which to a great extent belong to the best tradition of Catholic thought. In response to the encouragement of the Second Vatican Council, there has been a desire to foster dialogue with modern culture, emphasizing the rational — and thus universally understandable and communicable — character of moral norms belonging to the sphere of the natural moral law. There has also been an attempt to reaffirm the interior character of the ethical requirements deriving from that law, requirements which create an obligation for the will only because such an obligation was previously acknowledged by human reason and, concretely, by personal conscience. Some people, however, disregarding the dependence of human reason on Divine Wisdom and the need, given the present state of fallen nature, for Divine Revelation as an effective means for knowing moral truths, even those of the natural order, have actually posited a complete sovereignty of reason in the domain of moral norms regarding the right ordering of life in this world. Such norms would constitute the boundaries for a merely "human" morality; they would be the expression of a law which man in an autonomous manner lays down for himself and which has its source exclusively in human reason. In no way could God be considered the Author of this law, except in the sense that human reason exercises its autonomy in setting down laws by virtue of a primordial and total mandate given to man by God. These trends of thought have led to a denial, in opposition to Sacred Scripture (cf. Mt 15:3-6) and the Church's constant teaching, of the fact that the natural moral law has God as its author, and that man, by the use of reason, participates in the eternal law, which it is not for him to establish.

8.5.5. Paragraph 40. The rightful autonomy of the practical reason means that man possesses in himself his own law, received from the Creator. Nevertheless, the autonomy of reason cannot mean that reason itself creates values and moral norms. Were this autonomy to imply a denial of the participation of the practical reason in the wisdom of the divine Creator and Lawgiver, or were it to suggest a freedom which creates moral norms, on the basis of historical contingencies or the diversity of societies and cultures, this sort of alleged autonomy would contradict the Church's teaching on the truth about man. It would be the death of true freedom: "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day

8.5.6. Paragraph 48-49. [ Cf. the "body" in "the philosophy in the flesh"]. One has to consider carefully the correct relationship existing between freedom and human nature, and in particular the place of the human body in questions of natural law. A freedom which claims to be absolute ends up treating the human body as a raw datum, devoid of any meaning and moral values until freedom has shaped it in accordance with its design. Consequently, human nature and the body appear as presuppositions or preambles, materially necessary for freedom to make its choice, yet extrinsic to the person, the subject and the human act. Their functions would not be able to constitute reference points for moral decisions, because the finalities of these inclinations would be merely "physical" goods, called by some "pre-moral". To refer to them, in order to find in them rational indications with regard to the order of morality, would be to expose oneself to the accusation of physicalism or biologism. In this way of thinking, the tension between freedom and a nature conceived of in a reductive way is resolved by a division within man himself. This moral theory does not correspond to the truth about man and his freedom. It contradicts the Church's teachings on the unity of the human person, whose rational soul is per se et essentialiter the form of his body. The spiritual and immortal soul is the principle of unity of the human being, whereby it exists as a whole — corpore et anima unus — as a person. These definitions not only point out that the body, which has been promised the resurrection, will also share in glory. They also remind us that reason and free will are linked with all the bodily and sense faculties. The person, including the body, is completely entrusted to himself, and it is in the unity of body and soul that the person is the subject of his own moral acts. The person, by the light of reason and the support of virtue, discovers in the body the anticipatory signs, the expression and the promise of the gift of self, in conformity with the wise plan of the Creator. It is in the light of the dignity of the human person — a dignity which must be affirmed for its own sake — that reason grasps the specific moral value of certain goods towards which the person is naturally inclined. And since the human person cannot be reduced to a freedom which is self-designing, but entails a particular spiritual and bodily structure, the primordial moral requirement of loving and respecting the person as an end and never as a mere means also implies, by its very nature, respect for certain fundamental goods, without which one would fall into relativism and arbitrariness. A doctrine which dissociates the moral act from the bodily dimensions of its exercise is contrary to the teaching of Scripture and Tradition. Such a doctrine revives, in new forms, certain ancient errors which have always been opposed by the Church, inasmuch as they reduce the human person to a "spiritual" and purely formal freedom. This reduction misunderstands the moral meaning of the body and of kinds of behaviour involving it (cf. 1 Cor 6:19).

8.5.7. Paragraph 51. The separation which some have posited between the freedom of individuals and the nature which all have in common, as it emerges from certain philosophical theories which are highly influential in present- day culture, obscures the perception of the universality of the moral law on the part of reason. But inasmuch as the natural law expresses the dignity of the human person and lays the foundation for his fundamental rights and duties, it is universal in its precepts and its authority extends to all mankind. This universality does not ignore the individuality of human beings, nor is it opposed to the absolute uniqueness of each person. On the contrary, it embraces at its root each of the person's free acts, which are meant to bear witness to the universality of the true good.

8.5.8. Paragraph 53. The great concern of our contemporaries for historicity and for culture has led some to call into question the immutability of the natural law itself, and thus the existence of "objective norms of morality" 96 valid for all people of the present and the future, as for those of the past. Is it ever possible, they ask, to consider as universally valid and always binding certain rational determinations established in the past, when no one knew the progress humanity would make in the future? It must certainly be admitted that man always exists in a particular culture, but it must also be admitted that man is not exhaustively defined by that same culture. Moreover, the very progress of cultures demonstrates that there is something in man which transcends those cultures. This "something" is precisely human nature: this nature is itself the measure of culture and the condition ensuring that man does not become the prisoner of any of his cultures, but asserts his personal dignity by living in accordance with the profound truth of his being.

8.5.9. Paragraph 63. [Cf. "right feeling" or intuition in "design"] In any event, it is always from the truth that the dignity of conscience derives. In the case of the correct conscience, it is a question of the objective truth received by man; in the case of the erroneous conscience, it is a question of what man, mistakenly, subjectively considers to be true. It is never acceptable to confuse a "subjective" error about moral good with the "objective" truth rationally proposed to man in virtue of his end, or to make the moral value of an act performed with a true and correct conscience equivalent to the moral value of an act performed by following the judgment of an erroneous conscience. It is possible that the evil done as the result of invincible ignorance or a non-culpable error of judgment may not be imputable to the agent; but even in this case it does not cease to be an evil, a disorder in relation to the truth about the good. Furthermore, a good act which is not recognized as such does not contribute to the moral growth of the person who performs it; it does not perfect him and it does not help to dispose him for the supreme good. Thus, before feeling easily justified in the name of our conscience, we should reflect on the words of the Psalm: "Who can discern his errors? Clear me from hidden faults" (Ps 19:12). There are faults which we fail to see but which nevertheless remain faults, because we have refused to walk towards the light (cf. Jn 9:39-41). Conscience, as the ultimate concrete judgment, compromises its dignity when it is culpably erroneous, that is to say, "when man shows little concern for seeking what is true and good, and conscience gradually becomes almost blind from being accustomed to sin"

8.5.10. Paragraph 101. In the political sphere, it must be noted that truthfulness in the relations between those governing and those governed, openness in public administration, impartiality in the service of the body politic, respect for the rights of political adversaries, safeguarding the rights of the accused against summary trials and convictions, the just and honest use of public funds, the rejection of equivocal or illicit means in order to gain, preserve or increase power at any cost — all these are principles which are primarily rooted in, and in fact derive their singular urgency from, the transcendent value of the person and the objective moral demands of the functioning of States. When these principles are not observed, the very basis of political coexistence is weakened and the life of society itself is gradually jeopardized, threatened and doomed to decay (cf. Ps 14:3-4; Rev 18:2-3, 9-24). Today, when many countries have seen the fall of ideologies which bound politics to a totalitarian conception of the world — Marxism being the foremost of these — there is no less grave a danger that the fundamental rights of the human person will be denied and that the religious yearnings which arise in the heart of every human being will be absorbed once again into politics. This is the risk of an alliance between democracy and ethical relativism, which would remove any sure moral reference point from political and social life, and on a deeper level make the acknowledgement of truth impossible. Indeed, "if there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power. As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism".

8.5.11. Paragraph 113. While exchanges and conflicts of opinion may constitute normal expressions of public life in a representative democracy, moral teaching certainly cannot depend simply upon respect for a process: indeed, it is in no way established by following the rules and deliberative procedures typical of a democracy. Dissent, in the form of carefully orchestrated protests and polemics carried on in the media, is opposed to ecclesial communion and to a correct understanding of the hierarchical constitution of the People of God. Opposition to the teaching of the Church's Pastors cannot be seen as a legitimate expression either of Christian freedom or of the diversity of the Spirit's gifts. When this happens, the Church's Pastors have the duty to act in conformity with their apostolic mission, insisting that the right of the faithful to receive Catholic doctrine in its purity and integrity must always be respected. "Never forgetting that he too is a member of the People of God, the theologian must be respectful of them, and be committed to offering them a teaching which in no way does harm to the doctrine of the faith".

8.6. Other Christian and traditionalist sources

8.6.1. Traditional Catholic Reflections

8.6.1.1. http://www.catholic.net/

8.6.1.2. http://tcrnews.com

8.6.1.3. http://209.1.224.14/Athens/Ithaca/3251/genratzinger.html

8.6.2. Ideology and Christianity

8.6.2.1. Clark, S. B. (1980). The new intellectual environment: Ideology and Christianity. In Man and woman in Christ: En examination of the roles of men and women in light of Scripture and the social sciences (pp. 507-540). Ann Arbor: Servant Books. (Cf. ideological feminism)

8.6.3. Traditionalist Conservatism

8.6.3.1. http://www.panix.com/~jk/trad.html

8.6.3.2. http://www.freespeech.org/antitechnocrat/trad.html

9. *Further and future contributions

9.1. The Ecclesiastes (Predikaren, Qoélet) from the New English Bible

9.1.1. §1:8-11 All things are wearisome; no man can speak of them all. Is not the eye surfeited with seeing, and the ear sated with hearing? What has happened will happen again, and what has been done will de done again, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, 'Look, this is new'? No, it has already existed, long before our time. The men of old are not remembered, and those who follow will not be remembered by those who follow them.

9.1.2. §1:17-18 So, I applied my mind to understand wisdom and knowledge, madness and folly, and I came to see that this too is chasing the wind. For in much wisdom is much vexation, and the more a man knows, the more he has to suffer.

9.1.3. §2:12-19 I set myself to look at wisdom and at madness and folly. Then I perceived that wisdom is more profitable than folly, as light is more profitable than darkness: the wise man has eyes in the head, but the fool walks in the dark. Yet I saw also that one and the same fate overtakes them both. So I said to myself, 'I too shall suffer the fate of the fool. To what purpose have I been wise? What is the profit of it? Even this' I said to myself, 'is emptiness. The wise man is remembered no longer than the fool, for, as the passing days multiply, all bill be forgotten. Alas, wise man and fool die the same death!' So I came to hate life, since everything that was done here under the sun was a trouble to me; for all is emptiness and chasing the wind. So I came to hate my labour and toil here under the sun, since I should have to leave its fruits to my successor. What sort of a man will he be who succeeds me, who inherits what others have acquired? Who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will be the master of all the fruits of my labour and skill here under the sun. This too is emptiness.

9.1.4. §6:10-12 Whatever has already existed has been given a name, its nature is known; a man cannot contend with what is stronger than he. The more words one uses the greater the emptiness of it all; and where is the advantage to a man? For who can know what is good for a man in this life, this brief span of empty existence through which he passes like a shadow? Who can tell a man what is to happen next here under the sun?

9.1.5. §8:16-17 I applied my mind to acquire wisdom and to observe the business which goes on upon earth, when man never closes an eye in sleep day or night; and always I perceived that God has so ordered it that man should not be able to discover what is happening here under the sun. However hard a man may try, he will not find out; the wise man may think that he knows, but he will be unable to find the truth of it.

9.1.6. §9:10-12 Whatever task lies to your hand, do it with all your might; because in Sheol, for which you are bound, there is neither doing nor thinking, neither understanding nor wisdom. One more thing I have observed here under the sun: speed does not win the race nor strength the battle. Bread does not belong to the wise, nor wealth to the intelligent, nor success to the skilful; time and chance govern all. Moreover, no man knows when his hour will come; like fish caught in a net, like a bird taken in a snare, so men are trapped when bad times come suddenly.

9.1.7. §10:5-7 There is an evil that I have observed here under the sun, an error for which a ruler is responsible: the fool given high office, but the great and the rich in humble posts. I have seen slaves on horseback and men of high rank going on foot like slaves.

9.1.8. §12:12 One further warning, my son: the use of the books is endless, and much study is wearisome.

9.1.9. Cf. Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) §38:6, 24: The Lord has imparted knowledge to men that by their use of his marvels he may win praise...A scholar's wisdom comes from ample leisure; if a man is to be wise he must be relieved of other tasks. [Cf. the rationale for technique, and the role of universities.]

9.2. Eliot [≈duplicate above]

9.2.1. Eliot, T. S. (1963). Collected poems 1909-1962 . London and Boston: Faber and Faber. Selections by Kristo Ivanov 991118

9.2.2. page 161 (Choruses from "The Rock"–1934)

9.2.2.1. The endless cycle of idea and action,

9.2.2.2. Endless invention, endless experiment,

9.2.2.3. Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;

9.2.2.4. Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;

9.2.2.5. Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.

9.2.2.6. All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,

9.2.2.7. All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,

9.2.2.8. But nearness to death no nearer to God.

9.2.2.9. Where is the Life we have lost in living?

9.2.2.10. Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

9.2.2.11. Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

9.2.3. page170-171 (Choruses from "The Rock"–1934)

9.2.3.1. A thousand policemen directing the traffic

9.2.3.2. Cannot tell you why you come or where you go.

9.2.4. page 174 (Choruses from "The Rock"–1934)

9.2.4.1. They constantly try to escape

9.2.4.2. From the darkness outside and within

9.2.4.3. By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.

9.2.5. page 202-203 (Four Quartets–East Cooker–1940)

9.2.5.1. So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years–

9.2.5.2. Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres–

9.2.5.3. Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt

9.2.5.4. Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure

9.2.5.5. Because one has only learnt to get the better of words

9.2.5.6. For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which

9.2.5.7. One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture

9.2.5.8. Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate

9.2.5.9. With shabby equipment always deteriorating

9.2.5.10. In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,

9.2.5.11. Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer

9.2.5.12. By strength and submission, has already been discovered

9.2.5.13. Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope

9.2.5.14. To emulate–but there is no competition–

9.2.5.15. There is only the fight to recover what has been lost

9.2.5.16. And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions

9.2.5.17. That seems unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.

9.2.5.18. For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

9.2.6. page 222 (Four Quartets–Little Gidding–1942)

9.2.6.1. With the drawing of this Love and voice of this Calling

9.2.6.2. We shall not cease from exploration

9.2.6.3. And the end of all our exploring

9.2.6.4. Will be to arrive where we started

9.2.6.5. And know the place for the first time

9.3. The paradox of reading vs. writing

9.3.1. Includes the relationship to graduate students. The older man reading more of what the students have written than the other way round, including recommended literature

9.3.2. The thought experiment that writing time (effort) should be as long as reading time (multiplied by the wished number of readers). Vs. that my reading time should equal my writing time

9.3.3. Note that scientific or philosophical acting is somehow "beyond" writing

9.3.4. My high respect and regard for some people who do not write (cf. Socrates) or do not "systematize" (Plato, Jung) or do not strive for building schools (Jung, Churchman), or do not achieve (short-run) celebrity (Bach). Reflective listeners and readers who respect the responsibility of talking and writing

9.3.5. My intent: synthetize own and available research against the background of cultural criticism

9.4. The international network

9.4.1. Again: counterpoint vs. mainstream (kontrapunkt mot huvudfåra). For more exclusive basic research issues the build up of the network requires the international scene

9.4.2. The duck-pond (Swedish, ankdamm)

9.5. Perspectives conceived as selective Singerian "sweep in"

9.5.1. as in Churchman, C. W. (1971). The design of inquiring systems: Basic principles of systems and organization . New York: Basic Books. Out of print.

9.5.2. Rich understanding of the fundamental phenomena that comprise our field, and searching for consensus regarding the "core": edited from the formulations by Benbasat, I., & Zmud, R. W. (1999). Empirical research in information systems: The practice of relevance. MIS Quarterly, 23(1), 3-16, p. 8. Cf. the implications for undergraduate education

9.6. Continue bridging to IT-IS with Churchman

9.6.1. The Design of Inquiring Systems

9.6.2. Complementary word-index to the book "The Design of Inquiring Systems (http://www.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/chuindex.html)

9.7. First extensions: Churchman, Jung, I Ching, Bible

9.8. Against the overview of the past, history

9.8.1. Empirical basis: Ericsson: lab-birth of AXE-system–> IBM manufacturing of 360-systemets komponenter – technique and organization for product/process databases. France+USA+Sweden

9.8.2. Quality-control of data in databases: 1969+3years –> dr-dissertation

9.8.3. Umeå – Stockholm/Linköping – asst. professor

9.8.4. Umeå prof (and head 1986-1998). Management empiricism

9.8.5. IBM->system science->philosophy->theology (vs. design & postmodernism).

9.8.6. Research policy as dept. head 86-98

9.8.7. The future and us in perspective (cf. door locks & 1968 års studenter).

9.8.8. *Today: Churchman, Luc Ferry, & Lindbom -> Kant -> Plato, Aristoteles, Bible (ref Jerome's Biblical Commentary including Hermeneutics & Mythopoieic thinking). Closing off the circle? Again: quote T.S. Eliot [≈duplicate above and below]

9.9. My present program

9.9.1. See http://www.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov: IT as embodyment of logic and cultural criticism

9.9.2. My attitude to dissertations and Ph.D. ambitions: I do not make the graduate students' own existential choice among (1) Petty "successful" small engineer, (2) Trivialize big issues inflating the own "successful" ego, and (3) Attack big or important issues at the risk of "failing", at least in the shorter run. Please note the possible false humility of the self-imposed positivistic limitation

9.9.3. My graduate students orientations, besides those with Ph.D and colleagues participation->design, evolutionary co-constructive systems, auto-poiesis, citizens' IS, technological diffusion and adaptation (1) Computerization vs. organisational and individual social behavior, (2) Face technological constraints, (3) maintenance vs. continuous creativity, (4) flexibility & changes vs. stable core

9.9.4. Latest: to "keep together" as in a system (cf. latest trends like "make sense") the department's trends and the disciplinary pluralism ≈ system (applied philosophy≈pragmatism)

9.9.5. From the beginning it was not philosophy but industrial quality of data (quality as truth ≈ philosophical truth)–>

9.9.6. System (organization)–>politics 70-80's Marx/participative systems development –>psychology (Jung & math-logic/empiricism/emotions-intuition–>ethics/theology (technology's base), towards HyperSystem

9.9.7. Technological assessment (>than "methods") = good/better as ground for design: Research-libraries IS LIBRIS & statistics quality–>system–>hypersystem–>human computer science HCS–>ethics in Belief & Reason B&R–>aesthetics (cf. VR after MIS/databases, AI/ESS, and participation) and its place i Eastern/neo-romantic design (ECIS'98). Lately on pluralism->Kant->Plato/Aristotle (design, rethoric, technique, sophistry, VR-perception vs cognition, learning, politics vs. law and VR-communities / political science (cf. T. Lindbom)

9.9.8. "The gap" [duplicate above] between my research and mid-generations and undergraduate students (but tolerant "pluralism" vis-a-vis build-up of schools and research empires)

9.9.9. My future after the sabbatical 1999/2000: > time for students, especially graduate students who are instructors in undergraduate education, but mainly research as above

9.9.10. The importance of philosophy (vs. science and religion, cf. Plato 991208)

9.10. Informatics includes cultural criticism of technology

9.10.1. Cf. Spengler's The Decline of the West about social philosophers vs. engineers

9.10.2. The essence of IT: different from steam machine, electricity, railway, motorcar, nuclear power, biotechnology

9.11. Beware the cost of empiricism (see above ≈duplicate)

9.11.1. The feeling of acting the "stooge" (The Design of Inquiring Systems, chap. 12)

9.11.2. It should be noted that the verification of the theory depends as much on the cost of trying to apply it as it does on other empirical evidence;...verification is based in part on economic-decision criteria no matter what is being verified. But managers of firms are perhaps more aware of this fact than purer scientists. [In Churchman, C. W. (1961). Prediction and optimal decision: Philosophical issues of a science of values . Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, p. 331.]

9.11.3. The cost of empiricism: political conversation-killing or ethical psychology

9.12. Ethnomethodology and interpretivistism?

9.12.1. Teleolological attribution of purpose by Hegelian observer, or sense-making = meaning creation? How do I know whether anybody has understood created or got the meaning. What is meaning? More important for those who claim to be useful and practical as consultants or action researchers, who consequently, would be expected to have more concrete and utilitarian measures of performance than "philosophers" have

9.12.2. Dead-end if without insights of Jungian-type (not "philosophical" but humanistic and religious)

9.13. Reinventing the wheel: Senex-puer, Eliot 1940, "key-bolt"

9.13.1. Jungian "Senex-Puer" archetype as in Hillman, J. (1979). Senex and puer: An aspect of the historical and psychological present. In J. Hillman, et al. (Ed.), Puer papers (pp. 3-53). Irving, Texas: Spring.

9.13.2. The "ground-bolt" (cf. "grundbulten")

9.13.3. Eliot quotation: p. 202-203 (≈duplicate above, Four Quartets–East Cooker–1940) "So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years– Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres– Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure Because one has only learnt to get the better of words For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling, Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer By strength and submission, has already been discovered Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope To emulate–but there is no competition– There is only the fight to recover what has been lost And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions That seems unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss. For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

9.14. Psychoanalytic borderline syndrome = Plato's "narrow minds"

9.14.1. Kernberg, O. (1980). Internal world and external reality: Object relations theory applied . New York: Jason Aronson. (See esp. part III. Swedish trans.: Inre värld och yttre verklighet: Tillämpad objektrelationsteori. Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 1986.)

9.14.2. Sass, L. A. (1992). Madness and modernism . New York: Basic Books.

9.14.3. Treffert, D. A. (1991). Geniala idioter: Om specialbegåvningar hos mentalt handikappade . Stockholm: Prisma. (Orig. title Extraordinary People. Bantam, 1989.)

9.15. *The limits of aesthetics and its relation to ethics

9.15.1. The lack of philosophical reflection in latest research on design of IT-based virtuality (virtual reality, virtual communities, virtual universities, etc.). Cf. research associated with Michael Heim at http://mheim.com/, and http://design.ucla.edu/eda/, and "postmodern" conferences such as the one on "generative art" http://www.generativeart.com/

9.15.2. Ferry, L. (1990). Homo aestheticus: L'invention du goût á l'age démocratique . Paris: Grasset. (English trans.: Homo aestheticus : the invention of taste in the democratic age, trans. by Robert de Loaiza. Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 1993.)

9.15.3. Kant, I. (1790/1987). Critique of judgement . Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett. (Trans. with an introduction by Werner S. Pluhar. Foreword by Mary J. Gregor.)

9.15.4. Burch-Brown, F. (1990). Religious aesthetics: A theological study of making and meaning . London: Macmillan.

9.15.5. Ivanov, K. (1997). Strategies and design for information technology: Eastern or neo-romantic wholes, and the return to Western systems . Umeå: Umeå University, Dept. of Informatics. (http://www.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/chinese.html. For a shorter revised version cf. Ivanov, K., & Ciborra, C. (1998). East and West of IS. In W. R. J. Baets (Ed.), Proc. of the Sixth European Conference on Information Systems ECIS'98, University of Aix-Marseille III, Aix-en-Provence, June 4-6, 1998. Vol. IV (pp. 1740-1748). Granada & Aix-en-Provence: Euro-Arab Management School & Institut d'Administration des Entreprises IAE. ISBN for complete proceedings: 84-923833-0-5.)

9.16. * "Phenomenological Eastern" informatics"

9.16.1. Ivanov, K., & Ciborra, C. U. (1998). East and West of IS. In W. R. J. Baets (Ed.), Proc. of the Sixth European Conference on Information Systems ECIS'98, University of Aix-Marseille III, Aix-en-Provence, June 4-6, 1998. Vol. IV (pp. 1740-1748). Granada & Aix-en-Provence: Euro-Arab Management School & Institut d'Administration des Enterprises IAE. (ISBN for complete proceedings: 84-923833-0-5. For an earlier longer version of the paper cf. Ivanov, K., Strategies and design for information technology: Eastern or neo-romantic wholes, and the return to Western systems . Umeå: Umeå University, Dept. of Informatics, 1997.)

9.16.2. Zhu, Z. (1999). Integrating ontology, epistemology and methodology in information systems design: The WSR case. In J. K. Allen, M. L. W. Hall, & J. Wilby (Ed.), Proceedings of ISSS 1999, The 43rd Annual Conference of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, Asilomar, Calif., June 27th-July 2nd 1999: ISSS Int. Soc. for the Systems Sciences. (ISBN 09664183-2-8.)

9.16.3. As presupposed in ongoing work by e.g. Claudio Ciborra, as non-explicitly influenced by François Jullien (see below)

9.16.4. Jullien, F. (1996). Traité de l'efficacité [Treatise on efficacy] . Paris: Grasset, and Jullien, F. (1992). La propension des choses: Pour une histoire de l'efficacité en Chine [The propensity of things] . Paris: Seuil. (English trans. The propensity of things: Toward a history of efficacy in China. New York: Zone Books; Cambridge: distributed by MIT Press, 1995.)

9.16.5. Varela, F. J. (1992). Un know-how per l'etica [A know-how for ethics] . Roma-Bari: Laterza.

9.16.6. I Ching. (1968). The I Ching: Book of Changes . London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. (3rd edition. The Richard Wilhelm translation rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes. Foreword by C.G. Jung.)

9.16.7. Radhakrishnan, S. (Ed.) (1949). The Bhagavadgita. London: George Allen & Unwin.

9.17. The big issue of "people vs. technology"

9.17.1. Teleological objects and system entities vs. actants and hybrids

9.18. Science and ethics-religion

9.18.1. Suggested positioning: questioning the basis of Cartesian and Popperian doubt or falsification

9.18.2. Mythopoieic Hebrew-Greek thought (cf. the emperor's new liturgical clothes) in Jung, C. G. (1953-1979). Collected Works - CW (20 volumes) . Princeton: Princeton University Press. (R.F.C. Hull et al., Trans.) and in Brown, R. E., Fitzmyer, J. A., & Murphy, R. E. (Ed.) (1993). The new Jerome biblical commentary. London: Geoffrey Chapman. Cf. professorial duties and e.g. Bible's Syrach 39:2 to conserve, interprete (sense-making) and explain

9.18.3. Whitehead, A. N. (1978). Process and reality: An essay in cosmology . New York and London: The Free Press and Collier Macmillan. (Corrected edition of original from 1929. Ed. by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne.)

9.18.4. Stengers, I. (Ed.) (1994). L'effet Whitehead. Paris: Vrin.

9.18.5. Lindbom, T. (1999). Västerlandets framväxt och kris . Skellefteå: Norma. (ISBN 91 7217 017 - 4.)

9.19. Why to Kant, Aristotle and Plato (and pre-Socratics?)

9.19.1. Tage Lindbom's "what is romanticism" in Lindbom, T. (1988). Fallet Tyskland . Borås: Norma.

9.19.2. Cultural criticism of modernist communication, conversation and debate as claimed by Victor Hugo, V. (1970). Paris. In Œuvres complètes de Victor Hugo: Littérature et philosophie mêlées (pp. 435-512), esp. pp. 500-502, Paris, London & New York: Nelson, Éditeurs. (Introduction pour le livre Paris-Guide, publié pour l'Exposition Universelle de 1867.)

9.19.3. Socrates as a pre-figuration of Christ

9.19.4. Today's postmodernism as Plato's sophists

9.19.5. Knowledge and technique

9.19.6. Show Plato's vs. I Ching knowledge "information"

9.20. Why Plato

9.20.1. "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." In Whitehead, A. N. (1978). Process and reality. New York and London: The Free Press and Collier Macmillan. (Corrected edition of 1929 original. Ed. by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne.). Page 39

9.20.2. PLATO AS AN "UNTIMELY PERSPECTIVE" from Cottingham, J. (1998). Philosophy and the good life: Reason and the passions in Greek, Cartesian and psychoanalytic ethics . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 34-35 "In our 'postmodern' culture, which has come to be so sceptical of many of the aspirations of philosophy to construct a rationally informed overview of the human predicament, the optimistic [ref. Jean-François Lyotard, La Condition Post-moderne, 1979, and Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, pp. 299ff.] the optimistic aims of Greek philosophical ethics may well strike many as bizarre. Yet part of a philosophical study of the history of thought is that it should generate what Nietzsche called an 'untimely perspective" on the past, making the familiar seem strange and vice versa [in Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen, 1873, trans. as Unmodern Observations, ed. W. Arrowsmith, p.88, and ref. to Bernard Williams in J. Cottingham, ed. Reason, Will and Sensation, pp. 19ff.] To confront the grand classical systems it to realize how far they diverge from most modern philosophy in their assumption of the magisterial authority to lay out the conditions for the good life. From our contemporary perspective, such ambitions may now seem overweening, and their implied conception of the scope of philosophical reason appear to verge on the grandiose. But unless we keep clearly in view just how ambitious were the claims made in these ancient ethical systems, we will miss that enriching sense of strangeness that has the power of reinvigorate our grasp of how our modern world-view diverges from what has gone before. In order to appreciate our present situation, we need to understand how and why the traditional authority of philosophy to pronounce on the good life has been lost...[W]e could not enter into a constructive dialogue with the systems of the past unless there were some points of contact. But keeping the differences clearly in view helps to preserve the sense of distance which is needed if a study of the past is to play a philosophical role in giving us a sharpened perspective of our own predicament. [Follows: The ethics of reason in Plato and Aristotle].

9.20.3. My present attitude, with due regard for proportions: Socratic (vs. sophists, etc., and Christian, with Socrates seen as a prefiguration of Christ!)

9.21. Last extensions: Cultural criticism & Greek and Christian thought

9.21.1. Mitcham, C., & Grote, J. (Ed.) (1984). Theology and technology: Essays in Christian analysis and exegesis. Lanham: University Press of America. (Esp. pp. 3-42, 53-119, 193-225. Bibliography of 478 entries.) and Noble, D. (1997). The religion of technology: The divinity of man and the spirit of invention . New York: Knopf. Cf. Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) §38:6

9.21.2. See how "religious" aspects of IT are being more or less fortuitously discovered in IT-research in e.g. Buland, T., & Dahl, T. (2000). Technological visions for social change: Information technology, telework, and the integration of the disabled persons. In Proc. of ISTAS 2000, IEEE Int. Symposium on Technology and Society, 6-8 September 2000, Rome, Italy (pp. 263-268). New York: IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers' Society for Social Implications of Technology SSIT.

9.21.3. My ongoing work on Platonic (and later Aristotelian) informatics. The paper, initiated with an introduction and terminating in conclusions, is structured along the following chapter headlines and subchapters. DESIGN: Rhetoric, Master of many arts, Dialectic: design of information vs of objects, Design of a social 'city' system, Technique, Judgment, Visualization & Virtual Reality, Body: senses and pleasures, Bricolage, Improvisation, Empirical pragmatic "Schön-paradox", Mind and necessity, Use, participation, democracy, Cultivation-care-hospitality, Market-client orientation, Money, Consultancy; THINKING: KNOWLEDGE AND INFORMATION: Soul and body, The will, Technique-tools-instruments, Pluralism-relativism-perspectives, Measurement against appearances and perception vs. virtual reality, Strong visions vs. good visions, Metaphors vs definitions, Science and scientific method, Figures of thought, Small smart minds, Against philosophy, System; IMPLEMENTATION: Leisure, Success: profit, power and ethics, Action, Management and change; EDUCATION: Socratic method, Seminars and mentorship, Basic undergraduate education, Teaching-learning-instructing, Writing

9.21.4. My latest discovered standard comparison texts: Roochnik, D. (1990). The tragedy of reason: Toward a Platonic conception of logos . New York and London: Routledge

9.21.5. Roochnik, D. (1996). Of art and wisdom: Plato's understanding of techne . University Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press

9.21.6. Platonic information: To exemplify the above we take an example of Platonic discussion which is relevant to the definition of information is the following as excerpted from his seventh Letter, and which belongs to the chapter above on Thinking: knowledge and information is the following: "For everything that exists there are three classes of objects through which knowledge about it must come; the knowledge itself is a fourth, and we must put as a fifth entity the actual object of knowledge which is true reality. We have then, (1) a name, (2) a description composed of nouns and verbal expressions like in a definition, (3) an image, and (4) a knowledge and understanding and correct opinion of the object. There is something for instance called a circle, the name of which is the very word I just now uttered. In the second place there is a description of it which is composed of nouns and verbal expressions. For example the description of that which is named round and circumference and circle would run as follows: the thing which has everywhere equal distances between its extremities and its center. In the third place there is a class of object which is drawn and erased and turned on the lathe and destroyed, processes which do not affect the real circle to which all these other circles are all related, because it is different from them. In the fourth place there are knowledge and understanding and correct opinion concerning them, all of which we must set down as one thing more that is found not in sounds nor in shapes of bodies, but in minds, whereby it evidently differs in its nature from the real circle and the aforementioned three".

9.21.7. Compare Plato's information with the I Ching: Ivanov, K. (2000). Platonic information technology. Reading Plato: Cultural influences and philosophical reflection on information and technology. In Proc. of ISTAS 2000, IEEE Int. Symposium on Technology and Society, 6-8 September 2000, Rome, Italy (pp. 163-168). New York: IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers' Society for Social Implications of Technology SSIT

9.21.8. In Sweden: Lindbom, T. (1999). Västerlandets framväxt och kris . Skellefteå: Norma. (ISBN 91 7217 017 - 4.), with a first approach to him in Ivanov, K. (1993). Belief and reason, power and heroism in the task of the systems designer: Commented selections on presuppositions of participatory cooperative argumentative design and change (UMADP-WPIPCS-47.93.2, ISSN 0282-0587). Umeå University, Inst. of Information Processing. (2nd rev. ed.). Much more accessible alternative than the over-rationalized expert-approach in e.g. Helm, P. (Ed.) (1999). Faith and reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press., and Helm, P. (2000). Faith with reason . Oxford: Clarendon Press.

10. A future policy for the discipline

10.1. The past

10.1.1. Thirty years of informatics (ADB/ADP, NA, datalogi or computing sscience, etc.)

10.1.2. Psychology, business administration (500 accounting): 100 years

10.1.3. Statistics, political economy: 300 years

10.1.4. Physics: 500 years (or 80?)

10.1.5. Mathematics and logic: 2000 (or 80)

10.2. The past in terms of mother-disciplines

10.2.1. Physics, digital electriciy, semiconductor & quantum mechanics

10.2.2. Mathematics (applied, OA/OR, logic, mathematical (symbolic) logic

10.2.3. Statistics (before 1900–>geography-GIS, sociology, political economy)

10.2.4. Business administration (accounting and auditing; administration-organization-management)

10.2.5. Psychology (perception and cognition vs. logic) and pedagogy

10.2.6. Philosophy (Forms of knowledge=information): linguistics, technology in society and history of technology, aesthetics (= multimedia program=film-video, VR, cf. Deleuze, Lakoff & Johnson x Luc Ferry), Political science (organisation theory) expanding into ethics, systemteori

10.3. Amalgamation attempts: examples

10.3.1. ADBADP-Administrative Dataprocessing–>informatics. IS-Information Systems, MIS-Management information systems, Cybernetics (http://www.asc-cybernetics.org/ben/development/index.htm, compare this American Society for Cybernetics ASC with the International Society for the Systems Sciences ISSS, http://www.isss.org/, and IFIP Working Group 8.2 at http://istweb.syr.edu/~ifip/), Information management, IT-management, Information science (and concerning undergraduate education: systems analysis / systems science programme SVP, computing science programme DVP, computer science, Art & communication, IT-media, etc.

10.3.2. Disciplines as eyeglasses, telescope, microscope

10.3.3. New disciplines are inter- (trans?) disciplinary

10.3.4. Biochemistry, physiological botanics, physiological chemistry, physical chemistry, mathematical statistics, historical demography, medicinal biophysics, forensic medicine, social medicine, applied psychology, applied molecular biology, cultural geography, social psychology

10.4. Typical problems studied

10.4.1. Profit vs. work environment, or number of jobs?

10.4.2. Profit vs. "user-friendliness"? HCI -> in "context" ≈ system?

10.4.3. "Quality of work" vs. distribution of power?

10.4.4. Quality of working life vs power? Politics & "democracy" vs economics

10.4.5. Introducing new technique? (Cf. persuasion, reciprocal education, politics)

10.4.6. Automatize, how far? Artificial intelligence or intelligent artifact? Substitute vs. support (computer-support to) personal?

10.4.7. Consultancy and design of new uses (R&D innovation)

10.5. Typical trends in research

10.5.1. Interactive system evolutionary systems

10.5.2. Evaluation for improvement

10.5.3. Design for and with virtual reality

10.5.4. Internet-communication and virtual communities

10.5.5. Distance education

10.5.6. Human-computer interaction

10.5.7. My own: IBM->systems science ->philosophy->theology (vs design & postmodernism)

10.6. Comparative advantages: no military/business parasitism

10.7. Comparative advantages: no (R&D) pseudo-consultancy

10.7.1. Truesdell, C. (1984). The scholar: A species threatened by the professions. In C. Truesdell (Ed.), An idiot's fugitive essays on science (pp. 583-593). Berlin: Springer Verlag.

10.7.2. Ivanov, K. (1984). Mot ett ingenjörsvetenskapligt universitet: Några tankeställare inför universitetets samarbete med intressenter på data-området (Report LiU-IDA-R-84-2). University of Linköping, Dept of Computer and Information Science. (Revised excerpt by same author in "Universitetets bidrag till näringslivets och förvaltningens samhällsnytta". In C. Knuthammar, & E. Pålsson (Ed.), Vetenskap och vett: Till frågan om universitetets roll (pp. 52-62). Linköping: University of Linköping. (ISBN 91-7372-925-6. With a bibliography of 95 entries - pp. 124-127.)

10.7.3. Do consultants do sound practical research, as claimed by Davenport, T. H., & Markus, M. L. (1999). Rigor vs. relevance revisited: Response to Benbasat and Zmud. MIS Quarterly, 23(1), 19-23, p. 21.

10.8. The "new economy"?

10.8.1. Anonymous. (1999). The new economy: Work in progress. On the surface, America's economy is changing dramatically – that much is plain. But just how deep the changes go, and what they imply for the country's growth in the long term, remains an open question. The Economist, (July 24th), 19-21. (See also the editorial in the same issue: "How real is the new economy?" pp. 15-16.)

10.8.2. The Economist. (1997). Productivity: Lost in cyberspace. The Economist, (September 13th), 78. (Cf. Assembling the new economy, in same issue, pp. 77-83.)

10.9. Bottom-up, pluralism, postmodernism

10.9.1. Pluralism is not postmodernism: cf. knowledge vs. politics. We are just not convinced that a laissez -faire climate of 'let a thousand flowers bloom' is the best long-term interest of the academic IS community. In Benbasat, I., & Zmud, R. W. (1999). Empirical research in information systems: The practice of relevance. MIS Quarterly, 23(1), 3-16.

10.10. Change is not improvement

10.11. Theory of improvisation is an oxymoron

10.12. Outside is found also inside (the university)

10.13. The department head's "testament"

10.13.1. Research policy (as dept. head 1986-1998): University ≠ computer manufacturers, IT-consultants or IT-instructors; stable base or core, risk for neither science nor business instead of practical theoretician; parasitary "how" (vs."why") for recurrently obsolete new technique; keep together in the future and the present in perspective (cf. door locks, old buzzwords, 1968-year's students)

11. Hand-out

11.1. See recommended preliminary readings

11.1.1. Ivanov, K. (1995). A subsystem in the design of informatics: Recalling an archetypal engineer. In B. (Ed.), The infological equation: Essays in honor of Börje Langefors (pp. 287-301). Gothenburg: Gothenburg University, Dept. of Informatics.

11.1.2. Ivanov, K. (1984). Systemutveckling och ADB-ämnets utveckling [Systems development and the development of the discipline of informatics/ADP]. In G. Goldkuhl (Ed.), Systemutveckling, av vem, för vem och hur? (Report No. K4/84), Stockholm: Arbetarskyddsfonden. (Also as report LiU-IDA-R-84-1, University of Linköping, Dept. of Computer and Information Science, 1984. The essay's diagram of key philosophers' names for information systems development is also found adapted by Hirschheim, R. A., 1985, Information systems epistemology: An historical perspective, in E. Mumford, et al., eds., Research methods in information systems, Amsterdam: North Holland, 1985, pp. 37-38. Reprinted in R. Galliers, ed., Information systems research: Issues, methods and practical guidelines, pp. 28-60, Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1992.)

11.1.3. Ivanov, K. (1991). Critical systems thinking and information technology. J. of Applied Systems Analysis, 18, 39-55.

11.1.4. Ivanov, K. (1993). Hypersystems: A base for specification of

11.1.5. computer-supported self-learning social systems. In C. M. Reigeluth, B. H. Banathy, & J. R. Olson (Ed.), Comprehensive systems design: A new educational technology (pp. 381-407). New York: Springer-Verlag. (Also as research report, Umeå University, UMADP-RRIPCS-13.91, ISSN 0282-0579.)

11.1.6. Ivanov, K. (1996). Presuppositions in information systems design: From systems to networks and contexts? Accounting, Management, and Information Technologies, 5, 99-114. (Also available through http://www.sciencedirect.com/)

11.1.7. Ivanov, K. (1997). Strategies and design for information technology: Eastern or neo-romantic wholes, and the return to Western systems . Umeå: Umeå University, Dept. of Informatics. (For a later revised shorter version of the paper cf. Ivanov, K., & Ciborra, C. (1998). East and West of IS. In W. R. J. Baets (Ed.), Proc. of the Sixth European Conference on Information Systems ECIS'98, University of Aix-Marseille III, Aix-en-Provence, June 4-6, 1998. Vol. IV (pp. 1740-1748). Granada & Aix-en-Provence: Euro-Arab Management School & Institut d'Administration des Enterprises IAE. ISBN for complete proceedings: 84-923833-0-5.)

11.1.8. Ivanov, K. (1999). En enastående intellektuell gestalt [A unique intellectual personality]. In J. De Geer (Ed.), Vänbok till Tage Lindbom (pp. 56-60). Skellefteå: Norma.

11.2. Lecture notes of course on "Design of Inquiring Systems"

11.2.1. http://www.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/C-Chu71-2000vt.html, accessed 10 April 2000

11.2.2. This document: http://www.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/PerspSem2000.html