In Design Review, April-May issue there is an editorial article under the caption. “What is Design.” In that article the writer declares that it is his intention in future issues to discuss particular objects of design. He makes quite explicit that he wishes to avoid the broader questions as to the nature of design, its established values, etc. In declaring such an intention the writer expresses a current of opinion which has been popular among certain modern philosophers and which has, apparently, some influence with “Design Reviewers.” This particular approach to design takes what has been termed a relativistic standpoint in the Philosophy of Values. The underlying assumptior is that in the world of human values in the first place and for ever more, all things are matters for individual preference. Between individuals there is no meeting ground, except that of the quite accidental concurrence of otherwise divergent preferences. Because, therefore, everything is so much a matter of individual taste it is declared impossible to state any general truths about values. Unlike science, where the regularities of the subject matter allow laws of some definiteness to be formulated about them, the world of values has so few regularities, say between this preference and those tastes, that it is impossible to formulate such general truths or laws.

As a result from the relativistic viewpoint it is regarded as impossible to have “knowledge” about any laws of design. The author of the article “What is Design” has as a philosophic background just such a relativistic viewpoint, and consequently becomes entangled in all the difficulties which are involved in saying something about that, which by definition has nothing which can be said about it.

I will endeavour in the following paragraph to expose some of the ins and outs of this tangle of inconsistencies. Before doing so, however. I would like to make it quite clear that in this protesting against such extreme relativism in the philosophy of values. I am not thereby advocating its opposite absolutism. Rather, I am advocating something in between these two. Because all knowledge depends as much upon the constancies of human attitudes as upon the constancies of non-human material, knowledge depends ultimately as much on human agreement as on objective facts. As modern anthropolgy clearly demonstrates citizens within one community are in many respects conditioned alike, and therefore viewpoints are never as purely relative as “Relativists” would have us imagine. The amount of overlapping in our common social nature is the basis for common attitudes in matters of taste, that is the basis for a formulation of rules of design. Such rules while they deliver us from the “negativism” of extreme relativism, at the same time, owing to the changing nature of their basis, are a long way from the “Eternal” laws of the absolutists. And now, with an apology for the oversimplification involved in the use of such blanket terms as “relativism” and “absolutism,” I will proceed with a point by point discussion of the statements in the article “What is Design.” (My proper subject matter.)

It is the declared intention in that article that in future issues there shall be a discussion of the nature of “particular” objects of design. Such an attitude involves the following points:

1. If the author is to make statements about the “merits or demerits” of a particular object of design his attitude to many objects of design will be involved. That means his philosophy of design will also be involved. To say that his philosophy of design is involved is another way of stating that all the rules and definitions that exist in his mind with reference to design are also involved. And, like it or not, to make any value-judgments about design as he is doing when he discussess the merits and demerits of a particular object, is to involve himself in having such rules and definitions in his own mind whether consistent or inconsistent, conscious or semi-conscious.

2. If these rules and definitions of his on the values or merits of certain objects are to have any significance to the reader then both the writer and the reader must have at least some common values with respect to design. If this is not so his statements would be merely the individual ejaculations of the “naturally-gifted” falling on stony ground. All profitable discussion of values requires some basis of greement before that discussion can proceed. Again if this were not so then the statements, for example in the April-May issue, that the Hoffman House does not waste space, gets the sun, is simple to the last degree, would be meaningless to us. We are expected to agree that these are values in design. It is because we do thus agree that the discussion can proceed.

3. Yet although we must thus agree on certain things about good design before we can profitably discuss examples of it, he nevertheless declares in his article that “in fact there is no such thing as good design or bad design. These are only handy words for non-existent things.” But if good design does not exist how can common views on this non-existent thing be a basis for discussion? How can there be any discussion? It would appear that there is some contradiction in his article.

5. I believe that it is possible to make rules and definitions about the nature of good design. Such rules are based on the constancies of human and material factors which are interdependent in the process of designing objects. At the same time because human and material factors are constantly changing, such rules and definitions must be tentative and kept in accord with these changing realities. It is my belief that it is not a matter of either making rules or not making rules. Man is a rule-making defining being, whether he likes it or not. The question is whether you choose to makes these rules consciously and thus be aware of your assumptions or whether you choose to proceed making rules semi-consciously and thus end up with contradictions in your beliefs such as I have endeavoured to illustrate above. Perhaps in he long run, to use his psychology, it is just as neurotic to withdraw from the responsibility of making rules as it is to wave the “big stick” of rigid definitions. Perhaps in flying from rules and definitions he displays as wavering a confidence as do those who fly to rules and definitions. Why avoid the traditional philosophic extreme of value ruling fact and yet insist on the equally fallacious extreme of fact ruling value. This is the “fallacy page break of misplaced concreteness.” Surely both fact and value are interdependent.

6. Finally, on the basis of what has been said above. I believe it is necessary for the author of that article to rethink his policy with respect to the question “What is Design.” I believe he may follow either of the alternatives which I set out below:—

(i)If he continues to believe that discussion is possible, then he will proceed to tell us something about good design in the world today. It will not be left to the purely arbitrary and mystical insight of those with the “natural gift” to discern for themselves.

(ii)If he believes that “good design” does not exist and hence that discussion is impossible then he will cease discussing and begin ejaculating. My suggestion is that he should show us the picture of his completely anarchic idea of the non-existent good design with a tick or a cross beside it and nothing more. There is after all nothing more to be said. On further thought I believe he should use a red colour to denote a positive attitude to his representation and no colour for the negative. A recent investigation shows that red is the favourite colour chosen by children in their toy selections.

Our correspondent's argument (the upshot of which is no doubt clear to him) leaves us coldly unconvinced. In fact, the entanglement of his dialectic only serves to convince us more firmly in our belief that words, words, and more words get us nowhere. What matters is things — not rules, arguments, and theories.— Editor.