The Universe of Design

Horst Rittel's Theories of Design and Planning

Jean-Pierre Protzen, David J. Harris, David Harris

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136970443
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Architecture General

This book examines the theoretical foundations of the processes of planning and design.

When people – alone or in groups – want to solve problems or improve their situation, they make plans. Horst Rittel studied this process of making plans and he developed theories – including his notion of "wicked problems" – that are used in many fields today. From product design, architecture and planning – where Rittel's work was originally developed – to governmental agencies, business schools and software design, Rittel's ideas are being used. This book collects previously unavailable work of Rittel's within the framework of a discussion of Rittel's theories and philosophical influences.

Part One
Foundations

This first section is the longest in the text. Its work is to lay the foundations—the basic premises—for Rittel’s research. Though there is a clear evolution in Rittel’s work as he develops new ideas and changes old ones, there is yet a basic foundation that is consistent. Rittel, throughout, is committed to the use of clear, sound logic— conscious rationality in all its strengths. Indeed, it is his careful use of rationality and logic that guides him to his later conclusions. Throughout his career, he considers the same basic question: what can we learn from a rational examination of the process of design? We can see the basic answers laid out in a schematic form in the first article in the section, “Reflections on the Scientific and Political Significance of Decision Theory,” which is also the earliest work in this collection, and then explored in much greater detail in the seminar series, another early work. The seminar series also presents many of the philosophers and philosophical perspectives that influenced Rittel: it defines his basic questions, and the primary sources that shaped them.

In a way, these articles are Rittel’s history; they provide both a foundation and a beginning. More generally, we can see these works of Rittel as paralleling the history of the study of design methods; in the terminology of the prologue, we can see them as defining the beginning of the reflective phase of design theories. The first conference in the field was held one year after the decision theory article was published, and just two years before the seminar series was held. For Rittel, and others, design had become the object of study, thus initiating the reflective phase.

This section starts by looking at the basic ideas that are necessary to consider how decisions are made, and how this interacts with the basic propositions of the first generation. The first article by Rittel that we discuss (mentioned above) is rooted in Rittel’s assumption of the value of science, and his commitment to apply those rational principles that he sees as lying beneath the progress that has been made in practical applications (he is not yet speaking of design theory at the time of writing this article).

But, he says, this use of scientific reasoning ought to be amenable to scientific study. And this reasoning is what drives his practice as he moves forward to his later works. Here, in this early article, he is just starting down this path. He can see that there may be significant issues in the “scientification” in decision-making. This is seen in his concern for politics, reflected in the title of the article. And so his aim in this article is to lay out the concerns that he sees in this use of science in the realm of decision-making. As he notes, when one is no longer looking only to describe, but rather is looking to create and change, it is no longer pure science.

In addition to presenting the fundamental issues that he will examine through his career, he also describes the basic method that he intends to use, and will use through his career, to drive his examination: the scientific method as applied to the study of scientific design. He is looking at design as if the process itself was the subject of his scientific study.

In the “Science and Design” seminars, he has begun to explicitly consider design rather than decision-making. It is here that he lays out in great detail both his intended program of research—to which he remains fundamentally true during the rest of his career—as well as many of the ideas that provided the context according to which he reasoned about the problems of design. In the seminars we can see him bring in the ideas of many of those who influenced him, most notably Karl Popper and Kenneth Boulding.

We can also see an optimism that matches the mood of the decision theory article. This optimism is reserved—he can already see potential problems—but it is an optimism that is still present—a belief that the scientific systems will be of great value, and that rationality will guide the way out of the difficulties.

There is no reason to believe he lost this belief in the possibility that scientific systems would add great value, nor that we should do our best to use rationality whenever possible. But as his studies took him further, he began to see that the area in which rationality was applicable began to shrink, as he realized that more and more—and ultimately all—decisions had a political element. Even in the 1961 article he struggles with this, but the full ramifications are not yet apparent. It is, perhaps, a parallel to Wittgenstein’s conclusion to the Tractatus, a conclusion that so reduces the value of work on one path that we must be silent, and thus the work that follows is forced to take a different path and to work from different conclusions. But in these early works he is not yet envisioning the “second generation” of design theories that he will propose later; he is still setting the groundwork that will eventually lead him to the conclusion that such new design theories are necessary.

Chapter 1.1
Reflections on the Scientific and Political Significance of Decision Theory¹

Horst W. J. Rittel

I

The sciences of operations research, cybernetics, information theory, game theory, and systems engineering—to name only the most important ones—developed in the last two decades, share common approaches and overlap in many ways. This is no surprise if we think about their origin. They all are children of World War II. It started with the enrollment of scientists to solve the novel organizational and technological problems of modern warfare, which exceeded the competence of the military and engineers. The development of radar, the support and supply of continental battlefields and the planning of strategies created planning and decision problems that could not be solved with a sufficiently high guarantee of success using conventional techniques. The results of this scientific cooperation are not only new technologies—for example technologies of communication, data processing, or astronautics—but these first efforts also led to new, independent sciences that not only find increasingly “peaceful” applications but also have become important and necessary tools in planning, politics and development. In the USA, for example, there are today tens of thousands of scientists engaged in these new fields and several hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every year in the promotion and, especially, the application of these technologies.

The commonalities of the named disciplines may be explained by the situation that gave rise to them: they were invented for situations with a pressing need for action in which the scientist acted not only as consultant in the traditional way, but became a co-responsible decision maker. There are several motivations for this:

• Too much is at stake: the costs of failure are so high that it is well worth the cost of using the very best means to justify² one’s decisions, or even to develop new methods to do so (e.g. in problems of defense strategies, development of third world countries, projects of atomic technologies and space travel).

• The problem cannot be solved by conventional means: it is too large and too complex (e.g. the space program).

• One seeks more rational and cheaper ways (e.g. automation).

• One seeks to shield a system against catastrophes caused by inadequacies and mistakes (e.g. a defense system against Herostratos and randomness, an economy against crisis).

• One wants to know which goals reasonably to pursue; one realizes that the political and ideological goals are too coarse and too pat to yield instructions for concrete and far-reaching decisions: historical philosophical programs less and less provide practicable norms for political decisions (e.g. development planning or defense policies).

In addition there is the conviction that, in view of these difficulties, the scientific methods are useful and promising. This assumption is inherent in the age of “scientification,” even though it smacks of a positivist philosophy: science that claims objectivity in the name of a last authority is dangerously close to an uninhibited belief in progress. The justification of the scientification can be inferred from its effects: the scientific method, especially that of the natural sciences, has become the most effective tool for shaping reality:

Science spread like a disease … Precise methods can never again be shaken off

(O. Morgenstern)³

The attitude that places the rational sciences and technology at the heart of thinking offers a better chance for survival than the sullen annoyance over technology that often characterizes the western intellectual!

(Steinbuch 1961: 3)

The scientific method is the modern equivalent of Spinoza’s program to investigate the world “more geometrico.”

The new tendency towards an “engaged science” has, however, not been without consequences for science and its ideology. The classic ideal of science gave it a single task: to gain knowledge (Erkenntnisse), for only new knowledge signifies progress in an absolute sense and it therefore becomes desirable “for its own sake.” The applicability of this knowledge is not a problem for the sciences; it will show itself. Science forms its own reality; it is an autonomous province separate from the “extra scientific” world.

This ideal has proven quite effective. The institution of science as a generator of “innovation” isolated from the vagaries of events has become an important element of modern social systems.

The new disciplines to be discussed here, however, represent a type of science that does not fit the classical program:

• Knowledge is no longer sought for its own sake—without any consideration of its later uses—but in view of concrete tasks;

• Its results should be to generate recommendations for action;

• The scientist is an active participant in planning and decision-making.

The decision-making process thus becomes itself an object for scientific investigation. One could doubt whether such an activity deserves to be called a science. If one does it anyway, this means a revision of the concept of science that makes the traditional ideal an extreme case. The basis of such a theory of science cannot simply be an epistemology, because knowledge is only one component of action. Neither can a linguistic theory of science (sprachanlytische Wissenschaftstheorie) fulfill that role. What would be required here as a foundation is a theory of action (Handlungslehre), which recognizes knowledge as a presupposition for action. A science in this broader sense, however, would lose many of its hitherto typical characteristics:

A science that goes that far gives up its objectivity as well as its immunity … The science of tomorrow will not be objective … the future science will not be politically immune.⁴

The above expressed apprehension of a camouflaged positivism is invalidated—or at least moderated—by such a concept of science. If the institution of science abandons its apodictic claim to objectivity and if it accepts that it, including its goals and values, is subject to historical change and the play of forces, it loses the character of a patent ideology and of a rigid, absolute authority.

II

Efforts to draw the consequences, to systematize the above-mentioned new disciplines according to their commonalities and singularities, and to relate the whole to the system of the traditional sciences, are not lacking. There is a whole series of proposals for overarching concepts and collective terminologies, but none of them has imposed itself thus far. Contrary to the specification of the domain of objects of the traditional sciences (physics, economics), the new disciplines are characterized by the arbitrariness (Belieb...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue
• Part One Foundations
• Part Two Wicked Problems
• Part Three Design Reasoning
• Part Four Consequences of Design
• Epilogue
• Author Index
• Subject Index