²(Churchman, 1971; McKinsey, 1940; Myhill, 1952)

³"The symbols may have many different forms: they may be sentences, or 'codes', or a set of digits, or 'pictures', or some other images."(Churchman, 1971, p. 20.)

⁴This sort of inquiring system, like the other sorts which are to be mentioned in the following text, is developed in its theoretical implications by Churchman, (1971, chaps. 2 and 4). In our research area and discipline a book this old is often unjustly considered as a museum piece. It is therefore interesting to note the lasting importance of some of its main ideasas in their latest revival by Britton and McCallion (1994).

⁵A passage from a Kantian "minimal a priori" to a "maximal a priori" in data representation. (Churchman, 1971, p. 130ff.)

⁶By now a "heroic" attempt at a general semiotic theory which would encompass hypermedia is the one by Andersen (1990). In an earlier work on the concept of humanistic computer science (Ivanov, 1991), however, I wrote: The main "father" of pragmatism, C.S. Peirce, argued that logical theory rested ultimately on ethics because logic aims to determine what sort of reasoning we ought to adopt in conducting our inquiries into truth, and ethics is the science of what we ought to do. Peirce, however, goes on understanding that what we ought to do ultimately depends on what goals we desire to achieve [not what we ought to desire, my note], and what is desirable in the end is a question of aesthetic judgement. Peirce, however, cannot offer any criterion of what would constitute a reasonable basis for aesthetic judgement in his hierarchical triad of logic, ethics, and aesthetics (Dictionary of the history of ideas: Studies of selected pivotal ideas, 1973, P. Wiener's article on pragmatism, p. 568).

⁷(Churchman, 1971, p. 159-176, 197-202; Ivanov, 1972)

⁸(Forsgren, & Ivanov, 1990; Ivanov, 1993b, p. 4.44)

⁹Churchman's has the merit of having dealt with the aesthetics of design, and of having tried to ground it philosophically, long before any researcher in informatics seems to have thought of it (Churchman, 1979, pp. 188-194). I consider, however, his attempt to be rather superficial - and therefore inconclusive - in the light of other treatments of aesthetics as in the references of this paper.

¹⁰Axelos (1961), referenced by Morin, (1983, p. 205n)

¹¹It has been pointed out, for example, that comparisons can be made between postmodern architect Ricardo Bofill's buildings and Bill Atkinson's programs such as MacPaint and HyperCard (Thackara, 1988). What is problematic is the break of continuity implied in the claims of the sudden rise or revival of a science of design, and the claims of the validity that its various experiences or findings should have in a high tech industrial context. Concerning the shift from design of inquiring systems to design or science of design, cf. Stolterman (1991).

¹²(Gulyga, 1977, p. 204)

¹³I understand that the problems of such a sort of equation was the historical program of the Deutscher Werkbund (Campbell, 1978). Ongoing studies by Gunnela Ivanov (1995) focus on the Swedish scene as represented mainly by the Swedish Society of Crafts and Design (Föreningen Svensk Form, earlier Slöjdföreningen).

¹⁴What follows is a first written formulation of some ideas of mine - based on Gulyga (1977, p. 194ff, 277ff) - in a plenary lecture of mine which supplemented the recent presentation of a contribution to the Scandinavian IRIS conference (Ivanov, 1994). Some ideas are developed along the lines of three earlier essays of mine (Ivanov, 1991; Ivanov, 1993a; Ivanov, 1993b).

¹⁵The terms are my own translation into English of the Swedish translation from the Russian text by Gulyga, an uncommonly relevant interpreter and synthesizer of Kant's work, with the Swedish terms in italic: the choice of English concepts may not be fortunate, and it must be elaborated further on the basis of established translations of Kant's work into English.

¹⁶I assume this has to do with the Kantian incorporation of the Aristotelian context of phronesis, as considered in my earlier work. (Ivanov, 1991, pp. 46ff; Ivanov, 1993a, p. 40, 54)

¹⁷(Niebuhr, 1986, p. 143ff)

¹⁸(Gulyga, 1977, p. 203f)

¹⁹I thank John Waterworth for pointing out to me the increasing reference to "theater" in research on human-computer interaction.

²⁰As I wrote in my earlier essay on "Belief and Reason", lately, syncretist tendencies have appeared under the label of "design", and "design theory". In such a context, a contextual theory of styles in design of computer artifacts has been envisaged, and it intended to be built mainly on the basis of a "repertoire" of paradigmatic examples, of scenarios (or "style gallery"), in analogy to architecture.

The need of "systematizing" the repertoire of paradigmatic examples, scenarios or styles-in-"context" throws us, however, back into the "system"- problem, leading further to HyperSystems, etc. (Ivanov, 1993b). The idea of repertoire (cf. "toolbox", and the Swedish "smörgåsbord") summons, of course, the problems of pluralism, syncretism, eclecticism and of postmodern constructivism. The acceptance of historically defined and legitimated (paradigmatic) classes, or the construction of new classifications or coding schemes, is also, of course, a systems "design" problem (Churchman, 1961, "The teleology of measurement"; Churchman, 1971, chap. 9). Form, structure, and function, which exercise obvious fascination in the field of design can, then, be accomodated in the interplay between morphological, functional, and teleological classes (Churchman, 1971, chap. 3). Choice from a repertoire is (ought to be) a "monistic" aesthetical and ethical issue, and an integral part of the theory itself. In other words: each item of a "repertoire" may have been a life long commitment and struggle on the part of somebody, as often documented in the history of art. Which is, or ought to be, your commitment? What directs your choice or ("Hegelian"?) synthesis of items from the repertoire, or of archetypes from your unconscious, or of "partners to marry"?

In this sense it is true that Churchman's classes of inquiring systems fall short of the challenge offered by the relation between aesthetics and ethics. But, that was the point of expanding the classes into Hegelian and Singerian inquiring systems (Churchman, 1971, chaps. 7 and 9, esp. pp. 170ff). This raises the issues around Hegel and romanticism, as they were foreshadowed by, e.g., by Kant's friend and "metacritic", the philosopher J.G. Hamann. So called paradigmatic examples of the style repertoire or style gallery should then be, rather, understood in terms of types and Jungian archetypes.(Philipson, 1963) This hints at the potential importance of "theological aesthetics", not to mention the importance of theological ethics with which aesthetics should converge. We deal, then, of course, with much more than a supposed "theory of style" seen as a "conceptual framework".

²¹Cf. the historical physico-theology or mathematico-theology, or the - albeit problematic - theology of Cartesian mathematization on the one hand, and theological aesthetics on the other. (Marion, 1981; Sherry, 1992)

²²Cf. Mitroff (1984) and the warnings about the contexts preceding hypermedia.

²³Concerning the aesthetical approach to the meaning of information technology, cf. "computer programming as a branch of cinema", see Linderholm (1991, p. 42) who edits Ted Nelson's contribution to a round-table discussion: "The real problem is that the design of software virtuality, as I prefer to say, is an extremely complex, aesthetic design issue - and universally confused with a technical issue. In other words, I hold that the design of software is intrinsically a branch of cinema. This is an exact statement about the nature of software and the nature of cinema. Motion pictures are events on a screen that affect the minds and the hearts of the viewer. Software is events on the screen that affect the mind and heart of the viewer, with interaction. So the only difference is that interaction is possible, so you have extended cinema in which the user exerts a certain measure of control. Now, virtuality is my term for the most important defining traits of software. Other people say things like interface, and to me the entire issue is one of virtuality. Virtuality is essentially the seeming of something as distinct from its reality, which is the nuts and bolts of the hardware. So, everything has a virtuality, and you either design it explicitly or you do not."

It has also been pointed out, however, that for non-positivists everything is "virtuality" at least in the sense that reality must be defined teleologically. The increased emphasis on interaction makes us realize the pervasiveness and diffusion of the supposed "interface" within the artifact. Cf. the following: "We obviously will arrive some day to questioning the concept of "interface" itself, to the extent that "face" does not relate mainly - as it should - to "doing" (Latin facere), but rather to visual connotations. Maybe we must prepare for the time when some smart scientists will discover that they can launch the concept of "interbody", if this has not already been done by smart advertisers. The transformation of the discussions and negotiations on hypersystems into some kind of "interbody", inter-action or intermind is supposed, in the spirit of dialectical social systems theory to represent the active dynamic, i.e. continuous, re-definition of the system. (Ivanov, 1992)

²⁴(Hamann, 1967)

²⁵Rolf (1991) has written an apparently unique work which addresses the issue of tradition in the particular context of information systems.

²⁶Cf. hypermedia and virtual reality with Gross (1992, pp. 58-59) who writes: "With the ascendancy of a visual culture has naturally come the ascendancy of the image as a primary mode of communication. Again, television has played an especially central role here, as has the whole electronics revolution of the past four decades. Today it is the visual media, including advertising, that help to define everything from the roles we play (i.e. what it looks like to be a mother or father, a friend or lover) to the popular rituals we conduct (i.e. what it is that should be celebrated of mourned). But what is often not noticed is that the image is not anchored in traditional or historical experience the way the spoken or written word is. Words are steeped in the past: they carry resonances that persist, and they have special meanings which can be exactly defined. Images, on the other hand, are more easily lifted out of their original contexts and made to mean practically anything one wants. Unlike words, images are volatile and unstable; they carry no precise content or message which can be readily agreed upon, but are instead open-ended and continuously reinscribable with new meanings to replace old ones. The inherent emptiness of images is of course one reason why they are so valuable for certain kinds of communication. Since they have no specific meanings of their own, a variety of meanings can either be projected into or associatively identified with them. Either way, because images are so useful politically and economically the business of producing and circulating them has by now moved into the center of contemporary life. To some critics, the reliance on images seems to have become so extensive today that images appear to have literally merged with "reality" and become indistinguishable from it."

²⁷(Heim, 1987)

²⁸Cf. Morin (1983, e.g. pp. 118, ) writing "La caméra, le micro qui saisissent et transmettent l'instantané sont comme les instruments prédestinés d'une culture adhérente à la réalité immédiate. En principe, pourtant, caméra et micro sont aussi bien destinés à l'enregistrement et à la conservation, c'est à dire à la mémoire collective. mais cette fonction a été atrophiée par le développement prodigieux de la fonction immédiate, sous la pression d'une civilisation du présent qui, à son tour, s'est trouvée surdeterminée par la caméra et le micro....L'adhésion et l'adhérence au présent font de la culture de masse la culture d'un monde en dévenir; mais culture en devenir, elle n'est pas culture du devenir. Elle permet à l'homme d'accepter, non d'assumer sa nature transitoire et évolutive. Culture de l'aujourd'hui éternel et changeant, elle offre une "succession non structuré de moments présents"...Elle contribue à ce nouveau conformisme, nommé "contemporanéisme"...Le sentiment qu'il faut chercher la vérité et le sens dans les apparences phénoménales devient dominant. L'étant devient la réalité essentielle."