On Science and Design

“The natural sciences are concerned with how things are. Design on the other hand, is concerned with how things ought to be.” (Mahdjoubi, p. 2) This distinction between the descriptive and prescriptive roles that, ostensibly, science and design occupy respectively, is one worth examining further. Herbert Simon, by way of Mahdjoubi, is here claiming that there exists a fundamental role attributable to each of these disciplines, and is at least suggesting that these roles are mutually exclusive. While Simon’s remark may do a good job at describing the way that practice in the fields of each of science and design often occurs, it is reductive, perhaps dangerously so. To suggest that science is purely descriptive fails to understand the basics of the scientific process. While the outputs of scientific endeavors often take the form of laws, theorems, and the like, science is very much concerned with the set of how things might be, which is a set that necessarily contains how things ought to be, in any practicable sense. In order to generate hypotheses for testing, scientists have to have a firm grasp of the unverified possibilities surrounding their work. These possibilities form the body of what designers are able to prescribe. Conversely, design must concern itself with how things are, in order to generate appropriate suggestions as to how things ought to be. If a designer does not have a clear understanding of the state of the world surrounding the design challenge at hand, she will be hard-pressed to deliver a serviceable design. While it is a worthwhile endeavor to attempt to form neat categories in which to place science and design, its achievement ought not to come at the cost of misrepresenting the fields to be categorized.

Works Cited: Mahdjoubi, Darius. "Epistemology of design." In Proceedings of the Seventh World Conference on Integrated Design and Process technology. 2003.