Essential Concepts

New Positivism

There is a notion that scientific design should be justified by correctly recognizing the problem situation through research, devising a means to solve the problem based on experimentation, and verifying the extent to which the means actually contribute to solving the problem. In other words, the conceptual aspects of design, concepts, plans, ideas, and thoughts are ensured by the degree to which they correspond to the reality of the world. This way of thinking, which guarantees the correctness of ideas by their correspondence with the reality, is called positivism.

The origins of positivism in this sense can be traced back to the Renaissance and the periods that follow it. In the Italian Renaissance in 15th century Florence, along with the liberal arts of the humanities, which interpreted the ancient literature of Greece and Rome, efforts arose to draw a picture of what is right here and now, and to regard it as the basis of perception. While the truthfulness of liberal arts based on traditional texts still depended on ancient and medieval philosophies and the authority of the Bible, the disegno (drawing) was associated with new technologies, products, observation of nature, and experiments of the same period, and became the source of the scientific revolution of the 17th century.

It was Descartes who applied this positivist way of thinking to texts in the 17th century. In his Le Discours de la méthode (1637), Descartes insisted on seeking the basis of truth in the presence of consciousness, rather than in quotations from authoritative literature. Descartes believed that no matter how complex a situation is if we divide it into as many small parts as possible, if our consciousness intuits each of the divided elements clearly and distinctly, and if we reconstruct the whole by connecting these minimal elements in an orderly linear fashion, we can construct a new text that is free from any authority, hearsay, or quotation. According to him, the composition of such a text is open to all people with “good sense,” not just privileged intellectuals who have a monopoly on texts.

The “method” developed by Descartes in the 17th century became the basis for later science and technology, and in the 19th century, it became the principle of the line system in the factory-based machine industry. In the line system, all materials are divided into simple elements with a single function, and the human beings involved in the production are divided into individual abilities, and by arranging pairs of single elements and simple abilities on a line, precise products are reproduced in large quantities.

Such industrialization progressed from the 19th to the 20th century, coupled with the sophistication of social institutions and science and technology. Capitalism, science and technology, and international affairs have become incomprehensible to many people, especially those belonging to the working class, and have become magical things that irrationally determine their own destiny. The texts that supported the institutions also became incomprehensible to the uneducated, to those with different specialties and mother tongues. Philosophy, too, lost its Cartesian lucidity of simply matching ideas to immediate events, and, as in Hegel’s dialectical system, developed a high degree of speculation that led to the construction of a huge castle of words whose truth or falsity could not be verified. Science and technology, philosophy, social institutions, and texts have once again become like a Tower of Babel dividing people in the modern age.

Austrian philosopher Otto Neurath, one of the authors of the Vienna School’s manifesto The Scientific Conception of the World(1929), invented an iconographic language called ISOTYPE with the slogan “Words divide, images unite (Worte trennen, Bilder verbinden).” The essence of the isotype is that it is a text of images with positivist meaning. The most fundamental idea of the isotype is to make a one-to-one correspondence between the smallest elements of the signs and the smallest ones of the world and apply the methodology of disegno in Renaissance to the textual media itself. If the positivism recommended by Descartes has become unpredictable in the process of developing it to a high level, the idea of the Vienna School is to revive the idea of positivism by constructing a unified scientific language, and this idea is called “New Positivism (Neopositivismus).”

Once the simple correspondence between signs (images) and objects is reestablished, propositions consisting of signs (images) and the state of affairs in the real world become epistemically equivalent, and the two become indiscriminate. People can then weave language and thoughts as if they were manipulating the objects themselves. This idea that the language of things is equal to the language of images transcends educational and linguistic barriers caused by text and letters and enables all people to perform advanced mathematical and logical operations (reasoning) in a tangible (tactile) way.

Visualization is an idea of design whereby complex situations can be intuitively understood through the use of elemental symbols that have a guaranteed relationship to the situation. This kind of visualization is the basis of rationalistic graphic design, including computer GUIs, slide presentations, infographics, and universal design. The Enlightenment philosophy of liberating thought from magical and authoritative domination is based on the idea today that, through the visual use of advanced computer technology, anyone can overcome educational and language barriers and easily understand the world, use logical thinking accurately, express themselves effectively and freely, and thus constitute a horizontal and liberating human network. The ideal of global democracy, based on a sort of anti-intellectualism has come to fruition to some extent.

In addition, the scientism of design led by the new positivism provides the foundation for the design based on research and experimentation that originated with Hannes Meyer of the Bauhaus. Design is now not just aesthetic, but it is about accurately recognizing the physiological, cultural, and social conditions of the environment and human beings, integrating the various disciplines, transcending the barriers of language and education, making appropriate technical means available to all people, and design satisfies claims about their effectiveness. In this sense, positivism is compatible with the philosophy of human-centered design, and functions as a bridge between design and the human sciences, including ergonomics, physiology, psychology, cultural anthropology, and social science.

(KOGA Toru)

Related Classes

Design Futures Course, Philosophy of Design

References

  • Neurath(1932:1983), Protocol statements , in Philosophical Papers 1913-1946, D.Reidel Publishing Company.

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