Rhetoric, Humanism,and DesignRichard Buchanan

Introduction

Confronted with the vast array of products in the contemporaryworld, an observer is justified in wondering whether there reallyis a discipline of design shared by all of those who conceive andplan such things as graphic communications, the physical objectsproduced by craft and machine, structured services and activities,and the integrated systems which range in scale from computersand other forms of technology to urban and humanly managednatural environments. The scope of design appears to be so great,and the range of styles and other qualities of individual productswithin even one category so diverse, that the prospects for iden-tifying a common discipline seem dim. To compound the prob-lem, histories and theories of design arc also exceptionally diverse,representing a wide range of beliefs about what design is, how itshould be practiced, and for what purpose. For example, designhistories typically identify their subject matter as the history ofobjects, or the careers of individual designers who have influ-enced society, or the development of the technical means and pro-cesses of a specialized branch of design practice such as graphicdesign, industrial design, or engineering, or the influence of

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24 Richard Buchanan

broad cultural ideas on the practice of all of the fine and usefularts. Similarly, designers and design theorists present a seeminglyendless array of special procedures and maxims required for whatthey believe to be effective designing. And, finally, design critics,as well as historians, designers, and theorists, offer a great varietyof incompatible, if not contradictory, principles and slogans toexplain what designers should and should not seek to accomplishthrough their work.

What is needed to reduce the welter of products, methods, andpurposes of design to an intelligible pattern is a new conceptionof the discipline as a humanistic enterprise, recognizing the in-herently rhetorical dimension of all design thinking. The key tosuch a conception lies in the subject matter of design. There is atendency among theorists to reduce design to a form of science, asif there is a fundamental predictive quality in designing that haseluded practicing designers. The assumption is that design has afixed or determinate subject matter that is given to the designerin the same way that the subject matter of nature is given to thescientist. However, the subject matter of design is not given. Itis created through the activities of invention and planning, orthrough whatever other methodology or procedures a designerfinds helpful in characterizing his or her work. Of course, onemay argue that the subject matter of the sciences is not entirelygiven; it must be discovered in the activities of scientific inquiry.But discovery and invention are essentially different. Discoveryimplies that there is something constantly available, waiting pas-sively to be uncovered, and that the discovery will yield only oneresult, which may be confirmed by other experimental techniquesfor questioning nature. In other words, there is a determinacy innatural science, and the goal of inquiry is knowledge of propertiesand predictability of processes.

There is no similar determinacy in the activity of designing.The subject matter of design is radically indeterminate, open toalternative resolutions even with the same methodology,' One mayspeak of "discovering design" because one is concerned with de-termining what design and the products of design are, or havebeen, in the twentieth century. The issue is a question of fact, andobservations may be verified if someone else examines the evi-dence from the perspective of the claim. But of the designer, onespeaks most often of creation and invention, and only casually or

RHETORIC, HUMANISM. AND DESIGN

mistakenly of discovery. The scientist discovers a natural processor a natural law, but the engineer or designer invents a possibleapplication or a new use suited to a particular product. There aremany determinate constraints on the work of the designer, butthe consideration of constraints is only a background for the in-vention or conception of a new product.

Why is the indeterminacy of subject matter in design signifi-cant? There are several reasons. First, it immediately serves todistinguish design from all of the natural and social sciences,which are directed toward the understanding of determinate sub-ject matters. (With this in mind, appeals to science among designtheorists must be viewed with caution, because the appeal may beonly a rhetorical tactic that conceals a personal preference or in-terest that has nothing to do with the necessities of science.) Sec-ond, it directs attention to the exceptional diversity of the prod-ucts created by designers and to the continual change going onamong those products. The subject matter of design is not fixed;it is constantly undergoing exploration. Individual designers ex-tend their vision to new areas of application or focus on one areaof application and refine a vision. In general, design is continuallyevolving, and the range of products or areas where design think-ing may be applied continues to expand. Third, indeterminacy ofsubject matter serves to characterize design as a discipline funda-mentally concerned with matters that admit of alternative reso-lutions. Designers deal with matters of choice, with things thatmay be other than they are. The implications of this are immense,because it reveals the domain of design to be not accidently butessentially contested. The essential nature of design calls for boththe process and the results of designing to be open to debateand disagreement. Designers deal with possible worlds and withopinions about what the parts and the whole of the human envi-ronment should be. Any authority of the designer comes fromrecognized experience and practical wisdom in dealing with suchmatters, but the designer's judgment and the results of his or herdecisions are open to questioning by the general public, as are allmatters of public policy and personal action, where things may beother than they are.

What is the consequence for the discipline of design of the in-determinacy of its subject matter? Does it mean that there can beno discipline or art of design thinking, as the diversity of descrip-

26 Richard Buchanan

tions of design seems to suggest? Quite the opposite. There canbe a discipline of design, but it must be different in kind fromdisciplines which possess determinate subject matters. Design isa discipline where the conception of subject matter, method, andpurpose is an integral part of the activity and of the results.

On the level of professional practice, the discipline of designmust incorporate competing interests and values, alternativeideas, and different bodies of knowledge. This is nothing new todesigners, who have understood that they must be persuasive indealing with others and find concrete techniques for assessing themany perspectives from which products are viewed by clients,manufacturers, business and other technical experts, and poten-tial users. What is new is the possibility of systematizing thc dis-cipline of design to explain how designers invent and develop thearguments contained in their products and how designers maypresent their ideas persuasively to clients and other members ofproduct development teams. However, the elements of a new dis-cipline of design do not have to be created entirely anew. Nearlya century of exploration and reflection have provided the mate-rials for a synthesis which is, arguably, underway today in con-temporary design thinking.

If the subject matter of design is indeterminate - potentiallyuniversal in scope, because design may be applied to new andchanging situations, limited only by the inventiveness of the de-signer then the subject matter of design studies is not products ,

as such, but the art of conceiving and planning products. In otherwords, the poetics of products the study of products as theyarc is different from the rhetoric of products the study ofhow products come to be as vehicles of argument and persuasionabout the desirable qualities of private and public life. The inter-play between the rhetoric and poetics of products is a significantissue in design studies, but the orientation in logical sequence isfrom rhetoric to poetics. Recognition of this is important becausedesigners, and those who study design, often confuse the qualitiesof existing products with the problems of designing new prod -

ucts. There is a tendency to see determinacy in existing productsand project that determinacy back into the activity and disciplineof designing. This is what Kenneth Burke means when he dis-cusses "prediction after the fact" in literary studies. Predictionafter the fact is what designers and design theorists do when they

RHETORIC. HUMANISM, AND DESIGN 27

conclude that design is a determinate activity anactivity of dis-covery—rather than an activity of invention concerned with theindeterminate. A designer's beliefs are sometimes elevated to thestatus of determinate principles governing all of design, ratherthan personal visions infused into a rhetorical art of communica-tion and persuasion. From this perspective, design history, theory ,

and criticism should balance any discussion of products with dis-cussion of the particular conception of design that stands behindthe product in its historical context. Indeed, different conceptionsof design also carry with them different conceptions of history,further complicating the task of design studies. For this reason,one way to investigate the different forms of the discipline of de-sign in the twentieth century is to consider different accounts ofthe origins of design.

The Origins of Design

Serious discussions of design seldom omit some reference to theorigins of the discipline. Such passages are perhaps regarded bythe casual reader as ceremonial rather than substantive, but thetreatment of this commonplace reveals a great deal about a writ -

er's perspective on the nature of design and the significance ofcontemporary practice. There is a surprising pattern in accountsof the origins of design, revealing the systematic pluralism of thediscipline in the twentieth century.

The origins of design are usually traced to one of only fourbeginnings. Some argue that design began in the twentieth cen-tury with the formation of new disciplines of design thinking.Others argue that design began in the early days of the IndustrialRevolution with the transformation of the instruments of pro-duction and the social conditions of work. Still others argue thatdesign began in the prehistoric period with the creation of imagesand objects by primitive human beings. And, finally, some arguethat design began with the creation of the universe, the first actof God, who represents the ideal model of a creator which all hu-man designers, knowingly or unknowingly, strive to imitate. Thealternative origins may be represented in a schematism whichsuggests interesting relations and potential oppositions (fig. 1).

Such wide disparity in a matter which on first considerationseems to admit only a single answer suggests, at once, that the

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Industrial Revolution

Creation of the Universe

ORIGINS OF DESIGN — Early Twentieth Century

Prehisto ages & Objects

Figure 1. Schematism of the origins of design

issue at stake cannot be resolved by a simple appeal to facts or his-torical data What is at stake is not fact, as such, but the principlewhich gives meaning to data and allows the assertion of factualclaims: the principle by which facts are established and made per-tinent to the practice, study, and experience of design. This isconfirmed to the degree that whatever principle is selected bya writer, the data which are primary in other accounts of theorigins of design arc not excluded or ignored but merely givenlower priority and different meaning; the data of alternative ac-counts do not bear directly on the question of the origins of designbut on other factors related to human nature, social conditions,cultural myths, and so forth. In short, the way a writer identifiesthe origins of design indicates a broad rhetorical perspective onthe nature of design. Such perspectives are perhaps endless intheir subtle differences, but they may be grouped into four kinds,each indicating a rhetorical commonplace which may be madefundamental in the practice and study of design. These common-places arc represented in the schematism of figure 2.

The history, current practice, and theory of design are pre-sented differently from each perspective, accounting for the plu-ralism of conflicting approaches to design that are evident in thecontemporary period. However, this pluralism does not under-mine the possibility of understanding the common discipline ofdesign shared by all designers. The scope and nature of design inthe contemporary world are determined by two considerations:the pluralism of principles which have guided designers in ex-ploring the human-made world, and the pluralism of conceptionsof the discipline which have provided new instrumentalities forsuch explorations. The principles of design arc grounded in spiri-tual and cultural ideals, or in material conditions, or in the powerof individuals to control nature and influence social life, or in the

Rile ORIC, HU ANtSI , AND DESIGN

Spiritual Ideals

Power & Control DESIGN Character & Discipline

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Material Conditions

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qualities of moral and intellectual character which stand behindthe integrative discipline of design thinking and the productivearts. Such principles arc presupposed and pre-existent in the con-cerns of each designer. They are expressed as theses, maxims, orslogans to guide practice, and their elaboration and adaptation tonew circumstances is a process of discovery.

However, the discipline of design is in a process of formationin a way that principles are not. The discipline is being inventedthrough the exploration of instrumentalities, technologies, andspecific methods which are suited to the changing circumstancesof contemporary culture. The discipline of design, in all its forms,empowers individuals to explore the diverse qualities of personalexperience and to shape the common qualities of community ex-perience. This makes design an essential element in a new phi-losophy of culture, replacing the old metaphysics of fixed essencesand natures which Dewey critiqued throughout a lifetime ofwork directed toward the experimental nature of inquiry afterthe philosophic and cultural revolution at the beginning of thetwentieth century. 2

To investigate the various forms of the discipline of design inthe twentieth century, we may take as our beginning point theperspective which specifically focuses on design as a discipline.Later, we may consider how the other perspectives on design havealso contributed to the standing of design as a liberal art of tech-nological culture.

Character and the Formation of the Discipline of Design

When the origins of design are traced to the first decades of thetwentieth century, the principle lies in human character. Designrests on the ability of human beings to reason and act with

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prudence in solving problems that are obstacles to the func-tioning, development, and well-being of individuals and society.Furthermore, design is inquiry and experimentation in the activ-ity of making, since making is the way that human beings pro-vide for themselves what nature provides only by accident. Thereis a deep reflexive relation between human character and thecharacter of the human-made: character influences the formationof products and products influence the formation of character inindividuals, institutions, and society.

integrative Arts in the Ancient World

Although design emerged as a distinct discipline only in the twen-tieth century, its precursors may be traced from the ancient worldthrough the disciplines of art and changing attitudes toward pro-duction and making. In the ancient world, Aristotle discovereda science of production directed toward an understanding of thedifferences among all of the arts and their products due to thespecific materials, techniques of production, forms, and purposesthat are relevant to each kind of making.) He called this "poeticscience," or poetics, derived from the Greek word for making.The only remaining example of this science, as it was explored byAristotle, is the Poetics, a treatise on the literary arts and, specifi -

cally, the art of tragedy. (Reportedly, there was a parallel treatiseon the art of comedy, but it is lost.) There are many references tomechanical objects, domestic implements, and other products ofthe useful arts throughout Aristotle's other treatises. These ref-erences and brief analyses provide tantalizing hints about how hewould have investigated design, but there is no evidence thathe ever wrote a treatise specifically devoted to a poetic analysis ofwhat we, in the modern world, would regard as the result of de-sign. Nonetheless, Aristotle's method of studying the artificialeven limited to the literary arts, as the most important examplesare—exerted a strong influence on all subsequent discussions ofmaking in Western culture. If not his specific philosophy, thenthe terms and distinctions of his analysis directly or indirectlyprovide the basis for how we discuss design in the contemporaryworld.

For Aristotle, the differences among the various literary andconstructive arts depend on a fundamental understanding of the

RHETORIC. HUMANISM, AND DESIGN 31

human capacity to make, considered to be independent from thespecialization of a particular art. All making is an integrative ,

synthetic activity. It is what he describes as an intellectual vir-tue: a reasoned state of the capacity to make, different from, butclosely related to, the intellectual virtue that stands behind thetheoretical sciences and the moral virtues that stand behindaction.4 However, Aristotle also found it important to distinguishthe element of forethought from the specific considerations andactivities that are relevant to each kind of making.' Forethoughtin making is a kind of universal art, in the sense that it is indepen-dent of any particular art of making and, therefore, able to rangeover all potential considerations and subjects that may enter intothe making of this or that kind of product. Forethought is an"architectonic" or "master" art, concerned with discover), andinvention, argument and planning, and the purposes or ends thatguide the activities of the subordinate arts and crafts.

The element of forethought in making is what subsequentlycame to be known as design, although no distinct discipline of de-sign emerged in the ancient world, perhaps because forethoughtand making were most often combined in the same person, themaster builder or craftsman. However, one exception was in thediverse arts of language and literature. A core art of rhetoric pro-vided the basis for systematic forethought in all of the distinctforms of making in words: history, drama, poetry, political andlegal speeches, prayers, and religious sermons . 6 Rhetoric servedas the design art of literature; it provided the organization ofthought in narrative and argument as well as the composition andarrangement of words in style. Yet rhetoric was not conceived byAristotle as an art of words. It was an art of thought and argu-ment whose product found embodiment in words as a vehicle ofpresentation.

However, since words refer to things, and the use of wordshas consequences for action and understanding, even the literaryform of rhetoric has often provided a way of connecting ethics,politics, and the theoretical sciences with the activities of making.Indeed, the themes of rhetorical thinking have exerted a powerfulinfluence on those arts of making which employ materials otherthan words. For example, rhetoric and the intellectual virtues as-sociated with rhetoric the humanism established by Cicero in

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the Roman republic stand behind Vitruvius's account of archi-tecture.? His portrait of the architect parallels Cicero's portrait ofthe well-educated rhetorician, except with regard to the type ofproduct that follows from the art. The architect is an individualtrained in the liberal arts and sciences of his day, prepared topractice the integrative liberal art of architecture for the fabrica-tion of buildings, instruments for measuring time, and the devicesof war.

Integrative Arts in the Renaissance

The relation between rhetoric and the arts of making, whether inwords or things, is one of the most complex themes in Westernculture. However, the development of this theme in the Renais-sance has special significance for the subsequent understanding ofdesign in the twentieth century. In the Renaissance, the fine artswere distinguished from the practical arts in a fashion more com -

plete—or, at any rate, with greater cultural impact than at anytime in the past.' The reason for this was an unusual confluenceof Platonic and Aristotelian ideas, along with a rebirth of rhet-oric through the direct or mediated influence of Cicero, Horace,Quintilian, and Longinus.9 New readings of Plato supported anintense interest in the imitation of ideal models. In conjunctionwith the rebirth of rhetoric as a cultural art, this led in turn tothe imitation of ideal literary models. Finally, the translation ofAristotle's Poetics into a variety of languages in the sixteenth cen-tury "provided a technical vocabulary, a statement of problems,and an array of literary data" that was adjusted to the rhetoricaltradition of poetry, stemming from Horace and Longinus. 1° Theresult was the rhetorical humanism of the Renaissance, directedtoward the creation of the new liberal art of belles lettres as thehighest achievement of culture. This was conceived as a return tothe ancient union of the arts of making in words and things.However, it was, in fact, a departure from classical and modernideas that decisively reoriented culture toward the literary arts.

It is no contradiction that some Renaissance artists exploredthe practical arts of architectura and grafter (including the art ofpittura) at the same time that they explored new literary arts, be-cause the practical arts were conceived as an extension of poeticvision. The highest forms of making remained rhetoric and

RHETORIC. HUMANISM, AND DESIGN 33

poetry, since these arts were regarded as closest to the spirit ofthe ideal. Nor is it a contradiction that the creation of the liberalart of beaux arts soon followed the creation of belles lettres: thebeautiful arts, similarly based on rhetoric, provided a new wayfor exploring the delightful and noble, thereby extending thesubject matter and concepts of beautiful letters." Thus, the firstacademies of art were created in the sixteenth century, "basedoriginally on the assumption that the visual arts may be analyzedintellectually, and criticized and improved according to laws notdifferent from those governing literature codified by Aristotleand other authors of the ancient world." 12

The great achievement of the Renaissance was the creationof belles lettres and beaux arts, along with a rebirth of rhetori-cal thought. This influenced all areas of culture and all arts ofmaking, yielding a secularized humanism which influenced thesciences, as well. Yet this achievement, particularly as carriedforward in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ultimatelyeroded the intellectual foundations of rhetoric and the practicalarts of making, with nearly disastrous consequences for the con-ception and practice of design. Although the Renaissance artistdistinguished the rational arts of rhetoric and poetry from thepractical or useful arts, he also understood and appreciated theirrelation, and frequently cultivated the practical arts of making ininnovative ways. Leonardo da Vinci's speculations on mechanicaldevices were simply another expression of his poetic and visualimagination. But the successors of the Renaissance artist, inherit-ing a reified distinction between the fine and practical arts, pro-gressively lost understanding of, and interest in, the fertile con-nective link. 13

Renaissance inventions were based on an architectonic art ofrhetoric. However, what was invented by means of rhetoric thenew subject matters of culture, identified as literature, history,the fine arts, science, and philosophy gradually attracted moreinterest and attention than the integrative art from which theyemerged." For example, Galileo was inspired by the design artspracticed in the great arsenal of Venice, but he directed his worknot toward the nature of design but toward the creation of thetwo new sciences of mechanics. The result is easy to see: the artsof making were progressively distinguished, specialized, and

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fragmented into many forms; the practical arts were developedwithout sound intellectual foundations which could be integratedinto a humanistic conception of making; and the theoretical sci-ences underwent explosive growth, often relying on the indus-trial, mechanical, and practical arts for inspiration and devices ofinvestigation, but without a framework for relating theoreticalknowledge to its practical impact on the development of humancharacter and society. As for rhetoric, it became one more tech-nical, specialized branch of the literary arts, ultimately dissociatedby Descartes, Newton, and others from philosophy, practical rea-soning, and the new sciences. 15

It is true that in the period from the Renaissance to the earlydays of the Industrial Revolution the invention of techniques formass production in support of the practical arts allowed andrequired—a- - separation of designing from making. However, de-sign was also separated from the intellectual and fine arts, leavingit without an intellectual foundation of its own. Therefore, in-stead of becoming a unifying discipline directed toward the newproductive capabilities and scientific understanding of the mod-ern world, design was diminished in importance and fragmentedinto the specializations of different types of production, leaving itsconnection with other human enterprises and bodies of knowl-edge vague and uncertain. Design was rescued periodically by ex-ceptional individuals with natural talent who could provide ex-amples of successful design thinking, based on an intuitive graspof broader considerations. But these individuals could not providea systematic discipline with principles and methods appropriateto the tasks of design.

Following the Renaissance, the consequence of separating thetheoretical from the practical, the ideal from the real, and the cog-nitive from the noncognitive was a loss of the essentially human-istic dimension of production. The forms of making which hadthe widest impact on the daily life of society engineering andthe other practical arts were guided merely by a narrow profitmotive or by military necessity, 16 rather than a deeper considera-tion of the interplay between human character and products.Design was practiced by chance and intuition as a trade activityor military occupation, rather than in its full potential as an ar-chitectonic master art that guides all of the diverse forms of mak-ing which are central to human culture. In short, design became

RHETORIC, HUMANISM, AND DESIGN 35

a servile activity rather than a liberal art. It was not conceived asan art which could promote the freedom of men and women inthe circumstances of the newly emerging technological culture.

Integrative Arts in the Twentieth Century

Efforts to reunite design with the arts of making began in thenineteenth century, when Ruskin, Morris, and others attemptedto elevate the status of craft production as an alternative to massproduction by machines. However, the most significant efforts torejoin design and making came with the cultural and philosophicrevolution at the beginning of the twentieth century. The originsof design are reasonably traced to the early decades of the twen-tieth century because it was in this period that individuals beganto formulate new disciplines of design thinking that would com -

bine theoretical knowledge with practical action for new produc-tive purposes. 18

Walter Gropius was among the first to recognize in design anew liberal art of technological culture. In the wake of the FirstWorld War, he realized that he had a responsibility to train a newgeneration of architects who could help to overcome the disas-trous gulf which had emerged between idealism and reality. Thebasis of that training would be a "modern architectonic art" ofdesign.

Thus the Bauhaus was inaugurated in 1919 with the speci ficobject of realizing a modern architectonic art, which like humannature was meant to be all-embracing in its scope. It deliberatelyconcentrated primarily on what has now become a work of im-perative urgency—averting mankind's enslavement by the ma-chine by saving the mass-product and the home from mechanicalanarchy and by restoring them to purpose, sense and life. Thismeans evolving goods and buildings specifically designed for in-dustrial production. Our object was to eliminate the drawbacks ofthe machine without sacrificing any one of its real advantages. Weaimed at realizing standards of excellence, not creating transcientnovelties. Experiment once more became the center of architec-ture, and that demands a broad, coordinating mind, not the nar -

row specialist. ! 9

The ground of the new art of design was not to be found in theprinciples of idealism, materialism, or "art for art's sake. 'z4 It

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was to be found in human character and in the essential unityof all forms of making in the circumstances of a new cultural en-vironment strongly influenced by engineering, technology, andcommerce.'-'

What the Bauhaus preached in practice was the common citi-zenship of all forms of creative work, and their logical inter-dependence on one another in the modern world. Our guidingprinciple was that design is neither an intellectual nor a materialaffair, but simply an integral part of the stuff of life, necessary foreveryone in a civilized society. Our ambition was to rouse the cre-ative artist from his other-worldliness and to reintegrate him intothc workaday world of realities and, at the same time, to broadenand humanize the rigid, almost exclusively material mind of thcbusinessman. Our conception of the basic unity of all design inrelation to life was in diametric opposition to that of "art for art'ssake" and the much more dangerous philosophy it sprang from ,

business as an end in itself.-

However, the significance of the new architectonic art of de-sign lay precisely in encouraging the cultivation of alternative andoften conflicting principles as hypotheses for making. Gropiusdid not claim that the new art of design provided an ultimate so-lution to the problems of industrialized society. What he claimedwas that it revitalized design thinking by initiating a new path ofexperimentation and pluralistic exploration grounded in art andhuman character. Aside from the broad principle that an archi-tectonic art of design connected the arts, the path or disciplinepresented by Gropius did not presuppose or require any particu-lar principles of art. Rather, it was a way to explore a variety ofprinciples in order to discover their potential consequences formaking and practical life: "Modern painting, breaking throughold conventions, has released countless suggestions which are stillwaiting to be used by the practical world. But when, in the future,artists who sense new creative values have had practical trainingin the industrial world, they will themselves possess the means forrealizing those values immediately. They will compel industry toserve their idea and industry will seek out and utilize their com-prehensive training." 23

It is easy to confuse the idea of design that gave purpose to theBauhaus with the separate directions in which it was developed

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by the faculty in the short period of the school's institutional ex-istence. Gropius, Moholy-Nagy, Klee, Kandinsky, and others de-veloped individual visions that favored one or another principleof making. But to substitute particular visions and consequent re-sults for the concept of a new discipline of design thinking missesthe point of the liberal art that Gropius sought to establish. Thegoal was to provide a concrete connection between artistic explo-ration and practical action, where artists could learn how theirconceptions of art might be carried forward as experiments inshaping the broad domain of the artificial in human experience,extending beyond traditional forms of artistic expression intomaking in all phases of life, supported by new technologies andadvances in science.

Interpreted in its weakest form, this is "aesthetic" explorationin the reductive sense of the term, leading toward decoration andstyling that appeals only to the senscs. 24 However, interpreted inthe strongest sense, it is "artistic" exploration in the sense thatDewey speaks of art, as the quality of unity and satisfaction be -

longing to any experience, whether the experience is primarilyintellectual, practical, or aesthetic. Art should not be somethingoutside of experience or segregated to a small area of experience.It is experience in its most vital and essential form. 25 Mechaniza-tion has tended to diminish the human qualities developed in allphases of life, but the new art of design sought by the Bauhausoffered a way to discover and express human qualities and values,to make them an integral part of the human-made environment.

The most important practical criticisms of the Bauhaus do notconcern its effort to establish a new architectonic art of designthinking. Rather, they concern what the nature of that art shouldbe. Evidence for this is that subsequent discussion turned towardthe proper methodology of design. Unfortunately, "methodol-ogy" was interpreted in its narrow form as specialized techniquesor methods rather than in its architectonic form as systematic dis-ciplines of integrative thinking, within which diverse techniquesand methods are given direction and purpose. 26 The proper ques-tion should have been, what is forethought in the new circum-stances of twentieth-century culture? The leaders of the Bauhausexpressed a new attitude toward making that was consistent withthe cultural and philosophic revolution that began in the earlydays of the twentieth century. Indeed, the Bauhaus was part of

38 Richard Buchanan

that revolution precisely because of its effort to establish a newarchitectonic art of design grounded in character and making.However, the Bauhaus did not fully develop the new disciplinesof design thinking. It left the architectonic art of design withopen-ended possibilities that required further concrete develop-ment in order to be effective. It is no surprise, therefore, that theissue for debate in evaluating the contribution of the Bauhaussoon became whether it succeeded in providing the necessaryintellectual tools for integrating the arts of making with knowl-edge gained from the natural and social sciences, and whether itsucceeded in integrating design thinking with industry and theworld of practical action.

The Bauhaus opened paths in these directions, but it lackedinstrumentalities of forethought essential for further explorationand development instrumentalities that were required to com-plete the revolution in attitude and direction of thinking that ithelped to initiate. Forethought at the Bauhaus derived its strengthfrom the creative imagination of artists. And, despite debunkingby critics, the leaders of the Bauhaus went to a correct source, because all making is, in essence, an artistic, not merely an aesthetic,activity.27 But the thought that must stand behind making in thenew circumstances that have emerged in the twentieth centurywas only partly grasped in the vision and preparation of artiststhat existed at the Bauhaus. When Gropius spoke of the "compre-hensive training" of the new artist, it was more an expression ofoptimism about future possibilities than accurate reporting aboutthe reality of the Bauhaus program.

Considering the relation between rhetoric and making, whichhas been an ongoing source of innovation in Western culture, it isreasonable to suggest that what the Bauhaus lacked was a revo-lutionary vision of rhetoric to match its revolutionary vision ofmaking. This would be rhetoric as a broad intellectual discipline,expanded from an art productive of words and verbal argumentsto an art of conceiving and planning all of the types of productsthat human beings are capable of making. Without such a disci-pline for integrating design and making with science and practi -

cal action, the accomplishments of the Bauhaus were necessarilylimited. Thus, design may have had its origin at the beginning ofthe twentieth century, but it required further development appro-priate to the new circumstances of culture.

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Moholy-Nagy took an important step in this direction when heestablished the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937. As part of thenew program, he invited a philosopher from the University ofChicago, Charles W. Morris, to design a component of the cur -

riculum suited to prepare students with a broader understandingof the relations among art, science, and technology that the schoolwas attempting to explore in practice. 28 Morris accepted the chal-lenge with enthusiasm and promptly recruited distinguished col-leagues from the university to assist. The resulting curriculumfollowed the pattern of general education at the University ofChicago, with courses in the subject matter and methods of thephysical and biological sciences, the social sciences, and the hu-manities, as well as two interdisciplinary courses: "intellectualand cultural history," and "intellectual integration." 29

Morris taught the course in intellectual integration, using theuncorrected galley proof of his Foundations of the Theory of Signsas a background reading. His goal was to use "the theory ofsigns and the results of the unity of science movement to ob -

tain a philosophical perspective on human activity," and therebybroaden the understanding of design students who were active inthe workshops and studios of the school. 0 Unfortunately, thisexperiment was cut short because of financial difficulties, whichforced the school to close for a short period. When it reopened,Morris and his colleagues continued to teach for a short timewithout compensation, but there is little documentation to sug-gest that the venture in intellectual integration reached its poten-tial. Nonetheless, Moholy-Nagy viewed such explorations as anessential part of the new liberal art of design that he sought todevelop and that he described in detail in Vision in Motion.-31Relying on the contingent of professors from the University ofChicago to teach subject matters and methods of intellectual in-tegration, he viewed the overall program of the New Bauhaus asa further integration in the activity of making. This was a con-crete development of the original Bauhaus idea, although the sig-nificance of the innovation has passed largely unnoticed becauseit lasted only a short time and few results were immediatelyevident.

Without a Bauhausler at once sensitive to the connection be -

tween design and making and prepared to explore new disci -

plines of forethought, further development of the Bauhaus idea

Richard Buchanan

was difficult, if not impossible. This is illustrated in the fate ofthe Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) Ulm, widely regarded asthe most important and influential school of design since WorldWar II. Founded in 1953 by Max Bill and others to promote theprinciples of the Bauhaus, HfG Ulm was soon racked by irrecon-cilable differences between Bill and those among the staff whowanted to pursue new methods suited to the needs of industry.Bill, an alumnus of the Bauhaus, resigned after a short time, suc-ceeded by his deputy, Tomas Maldonado, who encouraged thedevelopment of scientific planning more deeply informed withmathematics and analytical techniques.

The differences between Bill and his colleagues are usually de-scribed as methodological, but they were far more. The combinedinfluence of the Frankfurt School and the Vienna Circle on Mal-donado and his colleagues helps to explain the unusual and, attimes, explosive contradictions that formed the atmosphere atHfG Ulm, representing a shift away from the principles of an in-tegrative discipline of design sought by Bill and the leaders of theBauhaus. The contrast of principles is evident in the confidencedisplayed by Maldonado that HfG Ulm could tell the world whatforms should and should not be created to serve social goals. "TheHfG we arc building in Ulm intends to redefine the terms of thenew culture. Unlike Moholy-Nagy in Chicago, it does not merelywant to form men who would be able to create and express them-selves. The school at Ulm ... wants to indicate what the socialgoal of this creativity should be; in other words, which forms de-serve to be created and which do not." 32 While the Bauhaus basedits work on a belief in thc essential freedom of individual humancharacter in a society and culture influenced by industrialization,Maldonado viewed industry itself as thc central agency shapingculture. Indeed, for Maldonado industry was culture.

Ulm was based on one basic idea, which we all shared in spite ofdisagreeing on absolutely everything else: the idea that industry isculture, and that there exists the possibility (and also the necessity)of an industrial culture.... At that time I was particularly recep-tive to some of the thinking of the Frankfurt School. Althoughmy own cultural orientation was strongly marked at that time byNcopositivism (I was eagerly reading Carnap, Neurath, Schlick,Morris, Wittgenstein, Reichcnback, etc.), the presence of Adorno

RHETORIC, HUMANISM, AND DESIGN 41

in Frankfurt represented for mc, as it wcrc, a contradictory intel-lectual stimulation.33

Focus on methodology was a way of introducing a collection ofscientific methods and techniques into design. It promoted theidea of a new science of design, grounded in ncopositivist and em-piricist philosophy, which some in the theoretical wing of HfGUlm perhaps naively believed could be harnessed to serve a par-ticular social, political, and intellectual agenda.

What must be remembered is not only the limitless curiositythat we had in those years about anything that was—or seemednew. That was a feverish, insatiable curiosity directed above all atthe new disciplines that were then coming up: cybernetics, infor-mation theory, systems theory, semiotics, ergonomics. But ourcuriosity went further than this: it also extended, in no small mea-sure, to established disciplines such as the philosophy of scienceand mathematical logic.

The mainspring of all our curiosity, or reading, and our theo-retical work was our determination to find a solid methodologicalbasis for the work of design.

This was a highly ambitious undertaking, admittedly: wewere seeking to force through, in the field of design, a transfor-mation equivalent to the process by which chemistry emergedfrom alchcmy. 34

However, the result of the work at HfC; Ulm was not a newintegrative science of design, but a further exploration of the re-lation between design and the natural and behavioral sciencesbegun at the Bauhaus and continued at the New Bauhaus. 35 Fur-thermore, without the humanistic orientation of the Bauhaus,the tendency at HfG Ulm was toward specialization, somewhatalong the lines developed by Hannes Meyer in the closing days ofthe Bauhaus,36 involving a belief in the ability of experts to en-gineer socially acceptable results through industry. 37 HfG Ulmshould not be credited with initiating the "design methods move-ment" or the effort to find a ncopositivist science of design think-ing. It was a meeting ground for individuals from around theworld who held such interests. It was a place where design edu-cators could experiment with potentially useful techniques gen-erally invented elsewhere.

42 Richard Buchanan

However, ncopositivism and empiricism are not inherently op-posed to the concept of an integrative liberal art of design. This isevident in one of the most important works of design theory inthe twentieth century, Herbert Simon's The Sciences of the Artift -cial. The problem addressed by Simon is the relation between thenecessary in natural phenomena and the contingent features of thehuman-made: "The contingency of artificial phenomena has al-ways created doubts as to whether they fall properly within thecompass of science. Sometimes these doubts are directed at theteleological character of artificial systems and the consequent dif-ficulty of disentangling prescription from description. This seemsto me not to be the real difficulty. The genuine problem is to showhow empirical propositions can be made at all about systems that,given different circumstances, might be quite other than theyare." 38 His insight was not the reduction of design to any one ofthe established theoretical sciences as appears to have been thegoal at HfG Ulm. Rather, it was a recognition of the theoreticalsubstance of design distinct from the substance of its supportingsciences. The result was the discovery of a new kind of science,radically distinct from the sciences of nature.

Finally, I thought I began to see in the problem of artificialityan explanation of the difficulty that has been experienced in fillingengineering and other professions with empirical and theoreticalsubstance distinct from the substance of their supporting sciences.Engineering, medicine, business, architecture, and painting arcconcerned not with the necessary but with the contingent—notwith how things are but with how they might be—in short, withdesign. The possibility of creating a science or sciences of designis exactly as great as the possibility of creating any science of theartificial. The two possibilities stand or fall together. 39

The problem identified by Simon is surprisingly similar to theproblems discussed by Aristotle in the first chapter of the Rhetoricand in the first chapter of the Poetics: how human beings reasonand reach decisions about matters which may be other than theyare, and how the artificial or human-made is different from, butrelated to, the natural.'° Simon's proposed solution is a science ofdesign, with features that are both rhetorical an emphasis ondeliberation and decision making and poetic, in the sense that

RHETORIC. HUMANISM, AND DESIGN 43

all products made by human beings arc subject to analysis andunderstanding based on the nature of the activity of making.;Like the leaders of the Bauhaus, Simon is not concerned with atrenchant Renaissance distinction between the fine and practicalarts. He is interested in the elements of forethought operating be -

hind all arts of making.

The real subjects of the new intellectual free trade among themany cultures are our own thought processes, our processes ofjudging deciding, choosing, and creating. We are importing andexporting from one intellectual discipline to another ideas abouthow a serially organized information-processing system like ahuman being—or a computer, or a complex of men and womenand computers in organized cooperation —solves problems andachieves goals in outer environments of great complexity.

The proper study of mankind has been said to be man. ButI have argued that man—at least the intellective component ofman may be relatively simple, that most of the complexity of hisbehavior may be drawn from man's environment, from man'ssearch for good designs. 111 have made my case, then we can con-dude that, in large part, the proper study of mankind is the scienceof design, not only as a professional component of a technical edu-cation but as a core discipline for every liberally educated person'

The basis for the integration that Simon seeks for design is thenew discipline of decision making, and he explores this disciplinein the context of neopositivist and empiricist philosophy. How -

ever, the particular philosophic orientation of Simon's approachshould not distract from appreciation of the broader direction ofdesign thinking toward which he points. Simon is investigatingthe themes and arts of rhetoric in their relation to new arts ofmaking.

Rhetoric and the New Technologies of Design Thinking

The effort to establish a new liberal art of design at the Bauhaushas given way to a search for a plurality of design arts which canprovide suitable instrumentalities of forethought for a disciplinewhich increasingly requires the incorporation of diverse kinds ofknowledge. Since the search is still underway and no conventionsof terminology, description, or formulation have emerged with

Richard Buchanan

clarity, the precise nature of these arts remains uncertain and opento debate. Yet, central themes arc evident throughout contempo-rary explorations of design and reflections on design practice, andthe roots of those themes in rhetoric and poetics is an indicationof the shape that the new integrative disciplines of design think-ing may eventually take.

When Herbert Simon refers to the thought processes of creat-ing, judging, deciding, and choosing as the real subjects of thenew intellectual free trade among cultures and disciplines, he isgiving new voice to the traditional arts and themes of rhetoric.However, the foundation of these processes of forethought in thedisciplines of rhetoric is not yet widely recognized or understood.Rhetoric is still perceived by many people in its Renaissance ori -

entation toward poetry, belles lettres, and beaux arts, rather thanin its twentieth-century orientation toward technology as the newscience of art, where theory is integrated with practice for pro-ductive purposes and where art is no longer confined to an exclu-sive domain of fine art but extends to all forms of making. None-theless, the themes of rhetoric have emerged in twentieth-centurydesign precisely because they provide the integrative connectionsthat are needed in an age of technology.

The pattern of rhetoric in twentieth-century design builds ondistinctions which were established early in the formation of rhe-torical theory and developed to meet changing circumstances. Inearlier periods of Western culture, when rhetoric was orientedtoward words and verbal arguments, the traditional divisions ofrhetoric were invention, judgment, disposition (planning the se-

quence of argument), delivery (choosing the appropriate vehiclefor presenting arguments to different audiences), and expression(choosing the appropriate stylistic embodiment of arguments). Inthe expanded rhetoric of Francis Bacon, who sought to overcomethe separation between words and things in order to explore sci-ence and technology, the traditional divisions of rhetoric survivedin the groundplan for the advancement of learning and in thefour intellectual arts needed to carry out that advancement: thearts of invention, judgment, custody, and tradition. Significantly.the fifth division of rhetoric, expression, did not disappear. It wasdistributed by Bacon among the four intellectual arts, integrateinto the larger task of intellectual exploration in each area.

In the new rhetoric of twentieth-century design and tech-

RHETORIC. HUMANISM. AND DESIGN 45

Inventing ; Signs eS Images

Fhyslcol Objects

Dec i d ln Actions & Services

o•

•

EvalJ3 ideas d Systems

Figure 3. Matrix of abilities and disciplines in design

nology, where the effort is also to overcome the separation be-tween words and things, the traditional divisions of rhetoric haveemerged once again to give coherence to inquiry. The investiga-tion of design in theory and practice centers around four themes,which may be stated briefly and ambiguously as invention andcommunication, judgment and construction, decision making andstrategic planning, and evaluation and systemic integration. Thesethemes may be represented in the form of a matrix in order tosuggest issues and problems that stand behind the shifting debateabout design in the past seventy years (fig. 3).

in this framework, the fifth division of rhetoric, expression andstyling, emerges as a persistent issue in each of the disciplines.Few designers arc content to describe their work as mere styling.Yet, most recognize that the appearance and expressive qualityof products is critically important not only in marketing but inthe substantive contribution of design to daily living. The prob-lem is how to accommodate sensitivity to expression with theintellectual and analytical issues belonging to communication,construction, strategic planning, and systemic integration. The

46 Richard Bur nan

neopositivist approach is to distinguish sharply between emotionand cognition, leaving expression as something emotive, irra -

tional, intuitive, and noncognitive. However, in the context ofa rhetorical approach, the expressive appearance or styling of aproduct carries a deeper argument about the nature of the prod-uct and its role in practical action and social life. Expressiondoes not clothe design thinking; it is design thinking in its mostimmediate manifestation, providing the integrative aesthetic ex -

perience which incorporates the array of technical decisions con-tained in any product.

The disciplines or arts of design have their counterparts in theintellectual virtues of designers. Designers should be (1) curiousand inventive beyond the bounds of specialization in addressingdesign problems; (2) able to judge which of their inventions areand which are not viable constructs in particular circumstancesand under given conditions; (3) able to participate with others, in-cluding technical specialists from many fields, in decision-makingprocesses which develop products from conception to production,distribution, disposal, and recycling; (4) able to evaluate the ob-jective worth of products in terms of the needs of manufacturers,individual users, and society at large; and (5) able to embody ideasin appropriately expressive forms throughout the process of con-ception and planning. The disciplines of design arc enabled by therhetorical abilities of designers.

Design has become an art of deliberation essential for makingin all phases of human activity. It applies to the making of theorieswhich attempt to explain the natural operations of the world. Itapplies to making policies and institutions which may guide prac-tical action, as in a constitution for a newly emerging state or inpolitical, social, and economic institutions relevant to new cir-cumstances. And, it applies to making all of the objects in the do-main of production that the Renaissance arbitrarily divided intobelles lettres, beaux arts, and the practical arts. Deliberation in de-sign yields arguments: the plans, proposals, sketches, models, andprototypes which arc presented by designers as the basis for un-derstanding, practical action, or production. Design is the art ofshaping arguments about the artificial or human-made world, ar-guments which may be carried forward in the concrete activitiesof production in each of these areas, with objective results ulti-mately judged by individuals, groups, and society .

RHETORIC. HUMANISM, AND DESIGN 47

Expanding the Discipline of Design

Three other perspectives have also exerted strong influence on theformation of design thinking in the twentieth century. However,they have shifted attention away from the discipline of design,toward different types of philosophic or cultural content. Thishas sometimes led to new characterizations of the method of de-signing that are more closely aligned with politics, science, ordialectic. Nonetheless, the discipline has expanded quite easily toaccommodate such interests, demonstrating the potential of de -

sign to adapt to different rhetorical purposes and objectives.

Power to Control Nature and Influence Social Life

When the origins of design are traced to the industrial Revolu-tion, the principle lies in the power of individuals to control theirsurroundings, satisfy needs and desires, and influence social lifethrough mechanization and technology. For example, John Hes-kett begins his history of industrial design with a description ofthe quantitative and qualitative change that has taken place in thelast two hundred years.

in the last two centuries, human power to control and shapethe surroundings we inhabit has been continuously augmented, tothe extent that it has become a truism to speak of a man -madeworld. The instrument of this transformation has been mecha-nized industry, and from its workshops and factories a swellingflood of artefacts and mechanisms has poured out to satisfy theneeds and desires of an ever-greater proportion of the world'spopulation. The change has not only been quantitative, but hasalso radically altered the qualitative nature of the life we live, oraspire to live.' 3

For writers such as Heskett, the origins of design arc best

traced to the Industrial Revolution, because it was during thisperiod that the power to invent and shape useful products wasdistinguished from the laborious physical activities of makingthem. Prior to this period, design was closely associated withcraft methods of production, and the crafts, in their most refinedforms, were instruments to satisfy the desire of princes and kingsfor luxury. With the advent of new techniques for mass pro-duction, design became an instrument of merchant princes in a

48 Richard Buchanan

new world of technological capabilities, economic competition,political and social ideas, and masses of consumers from all so-cial classes. Design and designers came into existence withinthe competitive organization of production, distribution, andconsumption.

From this perspective, design is an instrument of power."It is the art of inventing and shaping two-, three-, and four-dimensional forms that are intended to satisfy needs, wants, anddesires, thereby effecting changes in the attitudes, beliefs, and ac-tions of others. Of course, after two hundred years of develop-ment, design is no longer the exclusive instrument of merchantprinces. Yet, it is still significantly dependent on the interests ofbusinesses and corporations, making products that are competi -

tive in the global marketplace. The competitive environment ofbusiness provides the framework for understanding the diverseroles of professional designers today. Some work within corporatestructures; some work outside, in design consultancies; and somework alone, with even greater independence, serving their owninterests, working with only marginal concern for the interestsof corporations, content with personal satisfaction in small-scalework or quietly seeking to bypass corporate intermediaries in or-der to serve the long-term interests of the general public.° In-deed, one aspect of the qualitative change in culture that hasfollowed the Industrial Revolution is the widening range of in-dividuals who may exercise the power of design.

From the perspective of design as power, a variety of tradi-tional themes in design history and theory take on special signifi-cance. In Objects of Desire, Adrian Forty emphasizes the role ofdesign in society. He argues that excessive concentration on de-

sign as an art of making things beautiful has severed design fromits function in making profit and in transmitting ideas. In effect,it "has obscured the fact that design came into being at a particu-lar stage in the history of capitalism and played a vital part in thecreation of industrial wealth. Limiting it to a purely artistic ac-tivity has made it seem trivial and relegated it to the status of amere cultural appendix." 46 For Forty, design is indeed concernedwith the look of things, but the look of things is more than a mat-ter of pure, idealized beauty: "Those who complain about theeffects of television, journalism, advertising and fiction on ourminds remain oblivious to the similar influence of design. Far

RHET©RK. HUMANISM, AND DESIGN 49

from being a neutral, inoffensive artistic activity, design, by itsvery nature, has more enduring effects than the ephemeral prod-ucts of the media because it can cast ideas about who we arc andhow we should behave into permanent and tangible form." `'Forty argues that design is the preparation of instructions for theproduction of manufactured goods. However, these instructionsinclude more than information about formal shapes. They inevi-tably include an expression of ideas or myths about the world inwhich we live. "Every product, to be successful, must incorporatethe ideas that will make it marketable, and the particular task ofdesign is to bring about the conjunction between such ideas andthe available means of production. The results of this process isthat manufactured goods embody innumerable myths about theworld which in time come to seem as real as the products in whichthey are embedded."48

Throughout his work, Forty seeks to establish a better under-standing of the balance that exists among various influences onthe design process. On the one hand, he warns against excessiveemphasis on the creative power of the individual professional de-signer, observing that the entrepreneur's final selection among al-ternative design proposals is just as important a design decision asany decision made by the formally designated designer.' 9 On theother hand, he warns against excessive emphasis on "extremelygeneral dominating ideas" at the social or cultural level. This is aclear criticism of dialecticians who attempt to trace the signifi -

cance of design to broad cultural ideas grounded in the spirit ofthe time, without adequate recognition of the diversity of specificideas held by designers and entrepreneurs or of the variety ofdesires operating among individuals and groups within societyat any moment in history.s0 Design is part of a social process inwhich there are professional designers and many others who arenot formally described as designers but who make design deci-sions—whether in the process of product development, manufac-turing, or distribution and consumption.

Material Conditions and Aesthetic Appeal

When the origins of design arc traced to the creation of imagesand objects by primitive human beings, the principle lies in thematerial conditions of life. The origins of design in prehistorywill never be fully understood because the surviving evidence is

50 Richard Buchanan

fragmentary. Nonetheless, based on images and objects whichhave survived, the broad outlines of an account are possible ,

throwing light on the problems of design in the twentieth cen-tury. The earliest examples of design are tools, images drawn oncave walls, and ornamental objects with images drawn on bone orother materials. These objects reveal rudimentary technical skillsin shaping materials into useful forms and, at the same time, anadded psychological factor: aesthetic delight in the sensuousnessof materials, patterns, and forms. The development of designthroughout prehistory and recorded history is an elaboration ofthe technical and aesthetic considerations which have contributedto a satisfying physical and emotional life for mankind. 51

Characteristic of this approach, human life is seen as progres-sively complicated by a hierarchy of needs, ascending from thephysical and biological, to the emotional and psychological, to thespiritual—the most refined of the emotional needs of the humananimal.S2 Design is the natural ability of human beings to shapeand use materials to satisfy all of these needs." However, designis partly rational and cognitive, and partly irrational, emotive, in-tuitive, and noncognitive. It is rational to the extent that there isconscious understanding of the laws of nature; it is irrational tothe extent that the sciences have not yet succeeded in revealing thelaws of complex phenomena. Indeed, there is reason to believethat design will always retain an irrational or intuitive compo -

nent, because there are properties of materials and forms that pos -

sess aesthetic and spiritual appeal for which no scientific expla-nation seems possible. However, this is not a confirmation of theexistence of a transcendental realm, since the spiritual is regardedby the materialist merely as a complex emotional state of mind.

There are three basic elements that contribute to the develop-ment of design in the contemporary world. The first element isthe technique or technology of craft production, supported by agradual accumulation of scientific understanding of the underly-ing principles of nature that guide construction." This has led tothe technology of machines, mass production, and computers. In-deed, engineering, with its reliance on natural science and mathe-matics, is the basic form of design for the materialist." The secondclement is our understanding of the psychological, social, and cultural needs that condition the use of products. 56 (Practical me-chanics and engineering may provide the fundamental example

RHETORIC. HUMANISM, AND DESIGN SI

of design, but industrial dcsigncrs are quick to argue that theyhave special expertise in addressing the behavioral considerationsthat are associated with products.) The third element is awarenessof the aesthetic appeal of forms. This sometimes leads to proposalsfor a "science of art" which grows out of perceptual psychologyand other branches of social science. 57

The treatment of aesthetics from this perspective may be illus-trated by Herbert Read, whose book Art and Industry was a stan-dard text in many design schools in the United States and Britainand served as an exceptionally influential introductory work ondesign for general readers." Although Read is associated withthe Bauhaus movement, and was a friend and strong supporter ofMoholy-Nagy, his book represents a different philosophic orien-tation that deserves careful consideration. 59 Relying on similarthemes and many of the same commonplaces of design history astold by Moholy-Nagy, he tells a subtly different story about thehistory of design and introduces a different thread into the his-tory of the Bauhaus and into design thinking in the twentiethcentury.ó0

For Read, the problem of design in the twentieth century isprecisely the consequence of developments that have followedin the linear progression of history through advances in thetechnology of production and efforts to add aesthetic value toproducts.

For more than a hundred years an attempt has been made to im-pose on the products of machinery aesthetic values which are notonly irrelevant, but generally costly and harmful to efficiency.Those aesthetic values were associated with the previously pre-vailing handicraft methods of production, but they were not es-sential even to these. Actually they were the superficial styles andmannerisms of the Renaissance tradition of ornament. Neverthe-less, the products of machinery were at first judged by the stan-dards of this tradition, and though there have been attempts, no-tably the one lcd by Ruskin and Morris, to return to the morefundamental aspects of handicraft that is to say, to the formsunderlying ornament yet the problem in its essentials remainsunresolved. For the real problem is not to adapt machine produc-tion to the aesthetic standards of handicraft, but to think out newaesthetic standards for new methods of production.6'

52 Richard Buchanan

The method proposed by Read to address this problem indi-cates a sharp reversal of the dialectician's concern for spirit andculture. Instead of seeking an explanation for design in the uni-fying ideas of a particular cultural epoch, he seeks to strip awaycultural irrelevancies and reduce design to its essential elementsin art and industrial production.

[W]hat is required as a preliminary to any practical solution ofthe division existing between art and industry is a clear under -

standing, not only of the processes of modern production, butalso of the nature of art. Not until we have reduced the work ofart to its essentials, stripped it of all the irrelevancies imposed onit by a particular culture or civilization, can we see any solutionof the problem. The first step, therefore, is to define art; the sec-ond is to estimate the capacity of the machine to produce worksof art.'

This involves a twofold use of reasoning that leads to a "scienceof art" that is coordinate with the natural sciences: first, a decom-position to fundamental parts, elements, or essentials; second, asubsequent construction of understanding by the progressive ad-dition of the complicating factors that eventually yield an ap-proximation of the complexity that is possible in design.

The work of art is shown to be essentially formal; it is the shap-ing of material into forms which have a sensuous or intellectualappeal to the average human being. To define the nature and op-eration of this appeal is not an easy task, but it must be faced byanyone who wishes to see a permanent solution of the problemthat concerns us.

The problem, that is to say, is in the first place a logical or di-alectical one. It is the definition of the normal or universal ele-ments in art.

It is then complicated by the purposes which the objects we areshaping have to serve. That is to say, we are concerned, not withthe works of art whose only purpose is to please the senses or in-tellect, but with works of art which must in addition perform autilitarian function.°

The result is recognition of a type of art which is abstract or non-figurative with "no concern beyond making objects whose plastic

RHETORIC, HUMANISM. AND DESIGN 53

form appeals to the aesthetic sensibility." Furthermore , the natureof this appeal may be either rational or intuitional the formerobeying rules of symmetry and proportion, the latter appealing to"some obscurer unconscious faculty."' "We must recognize theabstract nature of the essential element in art, and as a conse-quence, we must recognize that design is a function of the abstractartist. The abstract artist (who may often be identical with the en-gineer or the technician) must be given a place in all industries inwhich he is not already established, and his decisions on all ques-tions of design must be final." 65 Designers construct objects to sat-isfy fundamental human needs that are susceptible to some levelof scientific or engineering analysis.ó' However, the constructionsare inevitably complicated by arbitrary factors of taste and pref -

erence which the designer is often able to address only by emo-tional sensitivity and intuitive understanding. Design is based onscience, but it extends its reach in addressing emotional needsthrough aesthetics.

Spiritual Life: Hellenum and Hebraicism in Design

There is a persistent thread of spirituality in twentieth-century artand design which has never found an adequately articulate voicein modern design theory. This is disappointing, because the wide-spread discontent with the fruits of science, technology, and busi-ness cannot be easily dismissed. Judged by the ideals of Westernand Eastern cultures, the obsessive materialism, injustice, war-fare, environmental degradation, and inhumanity of the pastcentury of progress is a cruel denial of something fundamental inthe human spirit, a betrayal of reason and conscience, of rightthinking and right acting. Ironically, the two great theories of de-sign in Western culture one embedded in Hellenism, the otherin Hebraicism—have exerted little explicit influence on the de-velopment of design thinking in the period when design is mostwidely practiced and discussed as a cultural art. 67 Yet, traces ofthese theories emerge occasionally as a reminder of a resource thatremains available to illuminate the work of those designers whoarc not content with pragmatic design and insist that design has amore important role to play in promoting human well-being.

Distinguished designer George Nelson argues that the designprocess is integrated in the principle of appropriateness, and he

Richard Buchanan

grounds this principle in the model provided by God and naturalorder.

Going through the entire design process, which includes theportant collaborations all the way down the line, with materials

people, engineers, technicians in specialized arcas, and marketingpeople, the steady movement is in the direction of a solution thatis ultimately seen, not as beautiful, but as appropriate. The creationof beauty cannot be the aim; beauty is one of the aspects of appro-priateness, and it still lies pretty much in the eye of the beholder ,

which makes it a by-product rather than a goal.There is very powerful support for this view in nature, which

is always the best model to be followed, for God, so to speak, isstill the best designer. People who work with natural organismsat any scale, such as biologists, are invariably the expression ofsome function or other.... Everything in organic nature func-tions in relation to survival needs; we find these things beautiful,because as creatures of nature we are programmed to respond toevidence of appropriateness as an expression of beauty. For math-ematicians, and for scientists generally, words like "elegant," "ap-propriate," and "beautiful" are synonymous. 68

The spiritual feature of Nelson's work is sometimes neglected bydesign critics and historians who interpret "function" in a narrow,mechanistic way, rather than as a connection between human be-ings, products, and the broader system of nature and the universe.The principle of appropriateness, regarded as a spiritual quality,serves to explain some features of Nelson's writings which other-wise appear paradoxical. For example, he offers harsh criticismof excessively narrow concepts of "functional" design; so-called"good" design, as judged by aesthetic standards such as those oncepromoted by Edgar Kaufmann, Jr. at the Museum of ModernArt; the pretensions of design for design's sake; and the equallypretentious idea of the designer as creator and purveyor of socialmeanings. Yet, he argues for a vision of design as communicationand of the designer as artist. The only explanation is that he re -

gards the designer as an artist in the Platonic sense, an enlight-ened practitioner seeking unity and harmony among the dispa-rate elements of every product. Indeed, he argues that productswhich internally achieve harmony and balance serve the ethicallife of human beings, who arc actively seeking their own place in

RHETORIC, HUMANISM, AND DESIGN 55

a unity of social experience and nature precisely at a time whenculture appears to be disintegrating. 69

The elements of Hellenism and Hebraicism which are bal -

anced in Nelson's work —a concern for right thinking and forright acting, consciousness and conscience are echoed when-ever the origins of design are traced to the creation of the universe.The principle lies in spiritual life and the natural order. Unfor-tunately, scholars have exercised little ingenuity in exploring therich, complex theory of design provided by Plato in the Tinureasand the Republic, or in rethinking the Christian tradition repre-sented, for example, by St. Augustine. 70 Until this material is re-discovered, the spiritual discontent with design and technologywill remain inchoate. We will speak of an environmental crisis,when we mean a spiritual crisis in the relation of human beingsto natural order. We will be charmed by some products and in-furiated by others, while remaining oblivious to their spiritualmeaning. We will be mystified by the absence of an adequate cul-tural critique in design theory which is based on more than ma-terialist economics and the conflict of social classes. Finally, wewill be puzzled by the failure of systems theory to reach beyondits materialist origins and explore unifying cultural ideas andvalues as the core of all systems.

Conclusion

The four perspectives identified in this essay arc based on rhe-torical commonplaces in the study and practice of design. Eachcommonplace orients our ideas about design in a different direc -

tion, opening up a broad avenue for exploration and integration.The purpose in identifying these perspectives is to gain a moreadequate representation of the pluralism of twentieth-century de-sign thinking. The diversity of design in the contemporary worldis less bewildering than it appears to the casual observer. Productsembody the intentions and purposes of their makers, and there isan intelligible pattern in the ongoing development and applica -

tion of design. The essential humanism of design lies in the factthat human beings determine what the subject matter, processes ,

and purposes of design shall be. These are not determined by na -

ture, but by our decisions.In the contemporary world, design is the domain of vividly

56 Richard Buchanan

competing ideas about what it means to be human. However, theexploration of design does not break our connection with thepast. The central themes and commonplaces of design—powerand control, materialism and pleasure, spirituality, and charac-ter—reveal deep continuities with ancient philosophic traditions.Indeed, the pluralism of design in the twentieth century is intel-ligible because it rests on a pluralism of philosophic assumptionswhich are familiar. The exploration of design is therefore, a con-tribution to the philosophy of culture in our time .

Notes

1. Richard Buchanan, "Wicked Problems in Design Thinking," DesignIssues, 8, no. 2 (Spring 1992): 5-21.

2. John Dewey, "By Nature and by Art," Philosophy of Education (Problemsof Men) (1946; rpt. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams, 1958), pp. 286-300.

3. Philosopher Richard McKeon provides a useful interpretation of Aris-totle's position on the arts. "The productive sciences are differentiated accordingto their products, and there are no sharply defined lines imposed by nature toseparate the arts or to differentiate the kinds of artificial things. The Greeks didnot differentiate the fine arts from the mechanical in the fashion that has beencustomary since the Renaissance, and they have therefore been criticized by hu-manists for confusing arts and trades, thereby degrading the artist, and by prag-matists for separating science from art, thereby reducing operations and me-chanical contrivances to a servile level. The arts as conceived by Aristotle includenot only such arts as painting, music, and poetry, but medicine, architecture, cob-bling, and rhetoric. Since the arts imitate nature, they may be differentiated byconsideration of the object, means, and manner of their imitation, and therefore,although he has no words for fine arts, Aristotle is able, in the opening chapterof the Poetics, to assemble the arts which we call fine by isolating their means ofimitation and to differentiate tragedy from the other arts. Aristotle did, how-ever, have a word by which to differentiate the liberal arts from the mechanical,and he sought their differentiation in the educative influence of the arts in theformation of men for freedom." Richard McKeon, ed., Introduction to Aristotk(New York: Modern Library, 1947), pp. xxiii—xxiv.

4. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 4.4.1140a1 23. Also, Metaphysics,1.1.980a20-982a 1.

5. Aristotle, Poetics, 1450b5-12. For a discussion of this issue, see RichardMcKeon, "The Uses of Rhetoric in a Technological Age: Architectonic Produc-tive Arts," in Rhetoric: Essays in Invention and Discovery, ed. Mark Backman(Woodbridge, CT: Ox Bow Press, 1987), p. 4. The balanced relation betweenrhetoric and poetics in Aristotle's philosophy gave way in the work of his suc-cessors to an emphasis on rhetoric and a rhetoricized poetics. This led to a

RHE I ORIC, HUMANISM. AND CESIGN 57

reading of the Poetics as a body of rules or laws of making to guide the literaryartist, rather than a scientific analysis of made things, as Aristotle intended..Such an approach, evident in Horace and Longinus, has dominated Western lit-erary theory in many periods, including the Renaissance.

b. Aristotle defined rhetoric as the faculty of finding the available means ofpersuasion with regard to any subject about which we deliberate. Along with itscounterpart, dialectic, rhetoric supplied the arguments and thought which couldbe used by the artist to shape a particular form. Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1.2.

7. Vitruvius, The Ten Rooks on Architecture, trans. Morris Hicky Morgan(Ncw York: Dover, 1960), 1.1.

8. For an extensive discussion of the classification of poetry among the sci-ences in the Renaissance, with useful observations on the practical arts, seeBernard Weinberg,.1 Hühvey of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance (Chi-cago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 1.1- 37.

9. For a discussion of chest three traditions in the context of the arts, seeWeinberg, .4 History of Literary Criticism, 2.797-813. For a broader discussionof these traditions and representative texts by Petrarca, Walla, Ficino, et al., secErnst Cassirer, Paul Oscar Kristellcr, and John Herman Randall, Jr., eds., TheRenaissance Philosophy of Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948).

10.Richard McKeon, "Imitation and Poetry," in nought. Amon, andPassion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954), p. 175. Includes a use-ful discussion of the Platonic, cttristotelean, and rhetorical traditions in theRenaissance.

11. See Leon Battista Alberti. On Painting trans. John R. SpencerHaven: Yale University Press, 1960. Also, John White, The Biseth and Rebirthof Pictorial Space (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), pp. 121, 126.White discusses the invention of "artificial perspective" in the Renaissance andobserves the emerging tendency to connect painting with mathematics, science,and theory: "It is in Alberti's Della Pinura, which he wrote in 1435, that atheory of perspective first attains formal being outside the individual work ofart. Theoretical discussion replaces practical demonstration. The way is open,in art also, for that separation of theory and practice; that particular kind ofself-consciousness which, in the wider view, showed itself most significantlyin the growing realization of the historical remoteness of antiquity, and whichunderlies modern scientific achievement." White also notes the effort to elevatepainting to the status of the liberal arts. "The innate pictorial qualities of arti-ficial perspective were not the only sources of its popularity and prestige. Al-ready in the Della Piitura, it is used as a lever with which to case the humblecraft of painting into the lordly circle of the liberal arts. With this ascent theformerly humble, but now scientific, painter was to move into the sphere ofprincely patrons and attendant men of letters." The transposition of themesfrom mathematics (Euclidean geometry) into painting should be comparedwith Galileo's use of mathematics to treat the new science of mechanics. Com-pare also the use of mathematics in the disciplines of design in the twentiethcentury,

58 Richard Buchanan

12.Joshua C. Taylor, cd., Nineteenth Century Theories of Art (Berkeley: Uni-versity of California Press, 1987), p. II.

13.The increasing separation of art academies from the practical arts is wellillustrated in the founding of the Royal Academy in London in 1768. JoshuaReynolds epitomizes the extent of the division. "An institution like this has oftenbeen recommended upon considerations merely mercantile; but an Academy,founded upon such principles, can never effect even its own narrow purposes. Ifit has an origin no higher, no taste can ever be formed in manufactures; butif the higher Arts of Design flourish, these inferior ends will be answered ofcourse." Also, "The rank and value of every art is in proportion to the mentallabor employed in it, or the mental pleasure produced by it. As this principle isobserved or neglected, our profession becomes either a liberal art, or a mechani-cal trade. In the hands of one man it makes the highest pretensions, as it is ad-dressed to the noblest faculties: in those of another it is reduced to a mere matterof ornament; and the painter has but the humble province of furnishing ourapartments with elegance." Sir Joshua Reynolds, Discourses on Art (New York:Collier Books, 1966), pp. 19, 55.

14.The central themes of rhetoric provided the ground plan and intellectualdisciplines for Francis Bacon's The Advancement of Learning and The New Or-ganon. The goal was "the invention not of arguments but of arts; not of thingsin accordance with principles, but of principles themselves; not of probable rea-sons, but of designations and directions of works," with the effect not of over-coming an opponent in verbal argument, but "to command nature in action."What Bacon called the "operative part of the liberal arts," the mechanical artsand the crafts which have not yet grown into arts properly so called, providedexperimental data for the investigation of the principles of nature. FrancisBacon, The New Organon (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960), pp. 19, 25. Fora discussion of rhetoric in Bacon, see R. S. Crane, "Shifting Definitions andEvaluations of the Humanities from the Renaissance to the Present," in The Ideaof the Humanities and Other Essays Critical and Historical (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1967), 1.64-65. Also, John C. Briggs, Francis Bacon and theRhetoric of Nature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989). For an impor-tant account of changes in the liberal arts from the Renaissance to the twentiethcentury, see Richard McKeon, "The Transformation of the Liberal Arts in theRenaissance," Developments in the Early Renaissance, ed. Bernard S. Levy (Al-bany: State University of New York Press, 1972), pp. 158-223.

15.For a discussion of the decline of rhetoric as an intellectual art and itsrebirth in the twentieth century, see Chain Perelman, "The New Rhetoric: ATheory of Practical Reasoning," in The New Rhetoric and the Humanities (Dor-drecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1979), pp. 1-42.

16. This is illustrated in the development of the engineering profession inthe French and British traditions after the Renaissance. The military providedthe primary base of employment for engineers in Europe. The Corps du géniewas created in the French army in 1676. The need for suitable deployment oftroops also led to the creation by the French government of the Corps des pones

RHETORIC. HUMANISM. AND DESIGN 59

a chauu es in 1716. For a brief but useful discussion of the rise of engineering asa profession after the Renaissance, see Terry S. Reynolds, "The Engineer inNineteenth-Century America"; and John B. Rae, "Engineers Arc People," inThe Engineer in America: A Historical Anthology from Technology and Culture, ed.Terry S. Reynolds (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). Also, BertrandGiile, Engineers of Me Renaissance (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966).For another useful discussion of the discipline of engineering, see Carl Mitcham ,

"Engineering as (Productive) Activity: Philosophical Remarks," in Critical Per-

sprctives on Non-Academic Science and Engineering, cd. Paul T. Durbin (Bethle-

hem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1990) .

17.in the twentieth century, the narrow interpretation of the principleof "profit first" in Western culture has been attacked from within and with-out. Criticisms of "profit first" voiced at the Bauhaus were easily dismissedas socialist ideology, but the movement of "quality first" has gained force inthe business community in recent decades, suggesting that profit and qualityare not opposites. For an account of the "quality control" movement that ex-plains some of the connections between Western and Asian thinking, see KaoruIshikawa, What is Total Quality Control: The Japanese Way (Englewood Cliffs ,

NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1985), p. 74. Marketing expert Philip Kotler provides a sug-gestive analysis of the growing perception of the relation between business prac-tices and human character. Philip Kotler, "Humanistic Marketing: Beyond theMarketing Concept," in Philosophical and Radical Thought in Mar ring, cd.

. Fuat Firat, N. Dholakia, and R. P. Bagozzi (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath,1 987), pp. 271-88.

18.For a discussion of this revolution and its influence on the emergenceof new disciplines of design, see R. Buchanan, "Wicked Problems in DesignThinking." The rise of design in the twentieth century could be regarded as acompletion of the Baconian project to command nature in action, after a three-century detour into the theoretic sciences to discover the principles of naturalprocesses. For a discussion of the relations among au, science, and technologyat the beginning of the twentieth century, see John Dewey, "By Nature andby Art."

19.Walter Gropius, "My Conception of the Bauhaus Idea," Scope of Total.4rchiteaure (New York: Collier Books,1962), pp. 19-20.

20.For Aristotle, art for art's sake would be unintelligible and dangerous. Itwould be a vice, representing excessive preoccupation with one or another plea-sure without the balance of moral and intellectual virtues found in well-formedcharacter. Art is not an end in itself but serves human beings as a means forsupplying what nature provides only by chance. in the variety of its forms, art isdirected toward the range of functions which the human being muu perform inorder to sustain life and further the well-being of the individual and communityin a complex environment. There is a sense in which art possesses autonomy andIntegrity as an expression of the soul of the artist and the object of imitation, but"art for art's sake" is the formula of power without responsibility. it is the basisof sophistry.

60 Richard Buchanan

21. Criticism of the Bauhaus has become quite fashionable in recent decades.However, the criticism comes from individuals who hold precisely the principles rejected in Bauhaus writings. The most paradoxical criticism comes fromidealists: some complain about an overemphasis on art (beauty detached fromrational function), while others complain about an overemphasis on the practicalarts (to the detriment of the spiritual aspect of fine art). In contrast, materialistscriticize the Bauhaus for naively seeking to advance utopian idealism while ne-glecting scientific "realism" and true functionalism. Finally, individuals who be-lieve that design should be judged by its power to influence social life criticizethe Bauhaus for a failure to influence the practices of industry to a sufficientdegree. Judged by principles that it did not hold, it hardly comes as a surprisethat the Bauhaus fails to measure up to the wishes of its critics. The controversysurrounding the Bauhaus suggests that Gropius and his colleagues did, indeed,seek to establish a different principle for design, resisting the reduction of designto idealism, materialism, or the sophistic power represented by "art for art'ssake" and its more dangerous expression, "business for business's sake."

22. Gropius, Scope of Total Architecture, p. 20.23. Walter Gropius, `The Theory and Organization of the Bauhaus," Bau -

haus: l919-1928 ed. Herbert Bayer, Walter Gropius, and he Gropius (NewYork: Museum of Modern Art, 1938), p. 29.

24. "An esthetic conception, so to speak, has fatally displaced a creativeconception of art. Creative art and history of art should no longer be confused.'Creating new order' is the artist's task; that of the historian, to rediscover andexplain orders in the past. Both are equally indispensible, but they have entirelydifferent aims." Walter Gropius, "Blueprint of an Architect's Education," Scope

of Total Architecture, pp. 47-48.25. Dewey recognized the importance of those experiences that are pre-

dominantly aesthetic, but he argued that such experiences should not preventone from recognizing the aesthetic quality of predominantly intellectual or prac-tical experiences. John Dewey, Art as Erperience (New York: Capricorn, 1958),pp. 38-39, 55, et passim.

26. Christopher Alexander is often regarded as a leader of the "design meth-

ods movement" of the 1960s. However, he rejected the idea in 1971, rebukingthose who read his important book only for its contribution to methodology.Noting the tendency of readers to miss his central idea, he writes:

"But I feel it is important to say it also here, to make you alive to it beforeyou read the book, since so many readers have focused on the methodwhich kadr to the creation of the diagrams, not on the diagrams themselrus,and have even made a cult of following this method. Indeed, since thebook was published, a whole academic field has grown up around theidea of 'design methods'—and I have been hailed as one of the leadingexponents of these so-called design methods. I am very sorry that thishas happened, and want to state, publicly, that I reject the whole ideaof design methods as a subject of study, since I think it is absurd to sepa-rate the study of designing from the practice of design.... No one will

RHETORIC, HUMANISM, AND DESIGN 61

become a better designer by blindly following this method, or indeed byfollowing any method blindly. On the other hand, if you cry to under-stand the idea that you can create abstract patterns by studying the im-plications of limited systems of forces, and can create new forms by freecombinations of these patterns—and realize that this will work if thepatterns which you define deal with systems of forces whose internalinteraction is very dense, and whose interaction with the other forces inthe world is very weak—then, in the process of trying to create suchdiagrams or patterns for yourself, you will reach the central idea whichthis book is all about. "

Christopher Alexander, Notes on the Synthesis of Form (Cambridge: HarvardUniversity Press, 1971). It is the central idea of this book that elevates Alexan-der's approach from methodology toward a form of architectonic integrativediscipline.

27.A frequent observation about the Bauhaus and the New Bauhaus is thattheir graduates tended to become artists rather than designers and that both in-stitutions found their primary influence in the reform of education for artistsrather than in concrete programs for the education of designers. How is one toevaluate this? On the one hand, the observation tends to confirm the suggestionthat the Bauhaus discovered an architectonic art of making rather than an archi-tectonic art of design chiming. On the other hand, is it without ultimate influenceon design that the Bauhaus and the New Bauhaus served as institutions of basicresearch in the arts of making?

28.For a brief discussion of this event, see Alain Findeli, "Design Educationand Industry: The Laborious Beginnings of the Institute of Design in Chicago,"journal of Design History 4, no. 2 (1991): 97-113.

29.Present and Former Members of the Faculty, The Idea and Practice ofGeneral Education: An Account of the College of the University of Chicago (Chi-cago: University of Chicago Press,1950).

30.Charles W. Morris, Proposed Course Descriptions, 1937, University ofIllinois at Chicago, Special Collection. (Typewritten.) See a selection by CharlesMorris, "The Contribution of Science to the Designer's Task" from the prospec-tus of the New Bauhaus. Reprinted in Hans M. Wingler, The Bauhaus: Weimar,Dessau, Berlin, Chicago (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1969), p.195. Moholy-Nagy rebed on Morris and his colleagues to provide substantive content and connectionsbetween design and the arts and sciences, but he did not share the neopositivistphilosophy of Morris and Rudolph Carnap. Moholy-Nagy's views were muchcloser to the pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey. However, Morris, Moholy-Nagy, and Dewey were able to cooperate in supporting the New Bauhaus beause of a shared vision of the contribution that broader artistic education couldbring to twentieth-century society and culture. See Wingler, The Bauhaus,pp. 195-99.

31. L. Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1947). Al-though usually ignored by scholars trained in the remnants of the Renaissanceliberal arts of belles kttres and beaux arts, this book is an important contribution

62 Richard Buchanan

development of the liberal arts in the twentieth century. Moholy-Nagyremarks that the conventional form of contemporary liberal education hastended to separate words from things, with the result that students are too oftentrained in verbalisms and lack experience and understanding of the things towhich words refer. "'Liberal' education, which is considered a positive step tocounteract a one-sided vocationalism, is at present not much different from it.Vocational education provides external skills while liberal education furnishesthe skill in verbalization, both usually a mechanical accumulation." Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, p. 21.

31. Quoted in Kenneth Frampton, "Apropos Ulm: Curriculum and CriticalTheory," Oppositions, May 1974: 35.

33.Tomás Maldonado, "Looking Back at Ulm," Ulm Design: The Moralityof Objects, ed. Herbert Lindinger (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990), p. 223.

34.Ibid., p. 222.35."Our efforts were, as we now know, historically premature. The bits of

methodological knowledge that we were trying to absorb were too 'hand-crafted'; and our instrumentation was virtually nonexistent. We did not havewhat we have today: the personal computer. We also lacked a full understandingof the notion of 'limited rationality,' which Herbert Simon was just beginningto devdop. And so we remained prisoners of the theoretical generalities of aform of 'problem solving' that was nothing more than a Cartesian 'discourseupon method.' But in the midst of our limitless faith in method—and we werealready dimly aware that it might have a negative aspect in 'methodolatrythere lay some powerful intuitions that the evolution of information technology,especially since 1963, has to a large extent confirmed." Ibid. Regarding thc Bau-haus and science, see Walter Gropius, "Is There a Science of Design," Scope ofTotal Architecture, pp. 30-40.

36.Some of the interesu at HfG Ulm appear to have been foreshadowedin the reductive approach of Hannes Meyer, director of the Bauhaus in itsfinal period. "All things on this earth are a product of the formula: (functiontimes economy) ... building is a biological process. Building is not an aestheticprocess ... architecture which produces effects introduced by the artist has noright to exist. Architecture which 'continues a tradition' is historicist ... the newhouse is ... a product of industry as much as such is the work of specialists:economists, statisticians, hygienicists, climatologists, experts in ... norms, heat-ing techniques ... the architect? He was an artist and is becoming a specialist inorganization ... building is only organization." Hannes Meyer, quoted in FrankWhitford, Bauhaus (London: Thames and Hudson, 1984), p. 180. Meyer's ap-proach is obviously the antithesis of that taken by Gropius and the other leadersof the Bauhaus, most of whom left before or shortly after Meyer's appointmentas director.

37. This appears to come dose to a form of the technocracy movement of the1930s. For a brief discussion of this movement in the context of the history oftechnology, see Alan I. Marcus and Howard P. Segal, Technology in America: ABrief History (New York: Harcourt Brace jovanovich, 1989), pp. 263-64. This

RHETORIC, HUMANISM. AND DESIGN 63

book also provides a useful account of the development of systems thinking inthe nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

38.Herbert Simon, The Sciences of theArtificial (1969; rpt. Cambridge: MITPress, 1981), pp. x—xi. Simon studied with philosopher Rudolph Carnap at theUniversity of Chicago. He also taught economics in Chicago in the 1940s toarchitecture students of a former Bauhusler, Mies van der Rohe.

39.Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial,, p. xi.40.Some of the rhetorical features of Simon's approach arc discussed in a

critical manner in Carolyn R. Miller, "The Rhetoric of Decision Science, orHerbert A. Simon Says," in The Rhetorical Turn: Inirntion and Persuasion in theConduct of Inquiry, ed. Herbert W. Simon (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1990), pp. 162-84.

41.Traces of Aristotle's four causes arc discernable in the four indicia em-ployed by Simon to distinguish the artificial from the natural and set theboundaries for the sciences of the artificial. Simon, The Sciences of the Artifi-cial, p. 8.

42. Ibid., p. 159. (Emphasis mine.)

43.John Heskctt, Industrial Design (New York: Oxford University Press,), p. 7.

44.The ancient precursor of this perspective lies in the philosophy of theGreek sophists, who present an approach to rhetoric that is strikingly different

m the Platonic or Aristotelean. In Plato's Protagoras, the sophist presents anelegant myth of the origin and distribution of powers among human beings.These powers arc held in the form of arts and technologies. Some individualspossess the techniques for creating images and objects for survival and pleasure,while others possess the political art of words, suitable for creating societies andcivilization. In a later period, Machiavelli presents a vivid account of the powerof princes to design their city-states through words and actions. A contemporaryexample of this perspective illustrates the turn from words to things: `Engi-neering schools continued to train generation after generation of possibly themost powerful agents of change that our planet has ever produced." GeorgeBugiarello and Dean B. Doner, eds.. The History and Philosophy of Technology(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979), p. vii. The concept of engineering aspower echoes the sophistic account of technology by Protagoras.

45.For a useful survey of views on the place of design within corporatestructures, see Mark Oakley, ed., Design Management: A Handbook of Issues andtlethods (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990). For a discussion of design and the de-sign process in the context of corporate operations and values, see John Heskctt,'Product Integrity," Design Processes Newsletter 4 (1991). For a view of design aspower outside the corporate domain, sec Victor Papanck, Design for the RealWorld: Human Ecology and Social Change (New York: Pantheon, 1972).

46.Adrian Forty, Objecu of Desire: Design and Society from Wedgwood toIBM (New York: Pantheon, 1986), p. 6.

47.Ibid.48. Ibid., p. 9. Forty suggests an affinity between his approach and structur-

64 Richard Buchanan

alism, but he notes the mechanical quality that often accompanies structuralistanalysis. In personal conversation, he recently acknowledged that his approachperhaps shares more with rhetorical analysis than structuralism.

49. Ibid., p. 241.1t is the entrepreneur not the designer who decides whichdesign most satisfactorily embodies the ideas necessary to the product's success,and which best flu the material conditions of production."

50. ibid., p. 240. This is an appropriate criticism of Siegfried Giedion, whoproposes a dialectical study in anonymous cultural history. "Anonymous historyis directly connected with the general, guiding ideas of an epoch. But at the sametime it must be traced back to the particulars from which it arises. Anonymoushistory is many sided, and its different departments flow into one another. Onlywith difficulty can they be separated. The ideal in anonymous history would beto show simultaneously the various facets as they exist side by side, togetherwith the process of their interpenetration." This is an excellent statement of adialectician's approach, but from Forty's perspective it fails to capture the give-and-take of individual points of view in social life, constituting a debate thatadvances competing ideas and myths. Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization TakesCommand: A Contribution to Anonymous History (1%8; rpt. New York: W. W.

Norton, 1969), p. 4.51. Herbert Read's account of the origin and development of ornamentation

parallels his account of the origins of design and clearly points toward the ma-terialist perspective. Psychological necessity combines with the technology ofconstruction, complicated by the further factor of utilitarian purpose.

Whatever physiological and psychological necessities may exist for orna •

most, its actual origin and development can be explained in simple ma-terialist terms. It is true that for the sake of simplicity we have to neglectcertain anomalous types of ornament belonging to the earliest phase ofhuman civilization—the paleolithic period. To this period belong a fewobjects mostly of bone, and for the most part apparently objects of per-sonal adornment, which bear incised lines, chevrons, and curves, forwhich no obvious explanation exists. A utilitarian explanation seems outof the question, and the suggestion that they are primitive tallies forcounting does not carry much conviction; some of the forms of decorationare too complicated for such a purpose. Historically, therefore, one mustbegin with a psychological explanation. But when we pass to a later stagein pre-history, to the neolithic age, the evidence is much more plentifuland much less equivocal. We arc able to conclude without any doubt, thatwhatever the purpose and appeal of the ornament, its forms arose in, andwere determined by, the material and the process of manufacture. Wemay still assume a previous psychological necessity; but the fulfillment ofthis necessity was inevitable. It was inherent in the material or in the con-structive form assumed by the material.

Herbert Read, Art and Industry: The Principles of Industrial Derign (1 934; rpt.London: Faber and Faber, 1947), pp. 165-67.

HE TORIC. HUMANISM. AND DESIGN 65

52. In this sequence of primary, secondary, and tertiary needs, the lattegrow out of the psychological but are sometimes described as spiritual. Thc ma-terialist account of spiritual needs is easily recognized. These needs vary greatlyfrom period to period and from place to place among human societies. They arcsometimes manifested as superstitions, sometimes as religions, and sometimes inthe most refined forms of art and poetry. But these needs are fundamentally psychological. On the one hand, they represent the desire w express pure, universalfeelings and values that arc independent of practical purpose. On the otherhand, they represent the desire to excite unalloyed emotional response withinourselves and within others.

53. The ancient precursors of this perspective were the Epicureans andatomists, who equate art with pleasure.

54. in the Principia, Newton describes the rise of universal mechanics outof practical mechanics. The latter is based on manual arts, the former onmathematics. H. S. Thayer, ed., Newton's Philosophy of Nature: S&ctions fromHis Writings (New York: Hafner, 1953), pp. 9— 11. Compare this account withGalileo's account of the rise of mechanics. He describes a visit to the greatarsenal of Venice, where the constant activity of artisans and architects, in-:cm on making weapons of war, "suggests to the studious mind a large fieldfor investigation, especially that part of the work which involves mechanics."Galileo Galilei, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences (New York: Dover,1954), p. 1.

55. For an introductory discussion of design as engineering, see M. J. French,Invention and Evolution: Design in Nature and Engineering (Cambridge: Cam -bridge University Press, 1988). For a practical discussion of engineering design,we Gorden L Clegg, The Selection of Design (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 1972). Also, Harry Petroski, To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Fail-zrre in Successful Design (New York: St. Martin's Press,1985), and Harry Petroski,The Evolution of Useful Things (New York: Knopf, 1993).

56. Examples include Donald Norman, The Psychology of Everyday ThingsNew York: Basic Books, 1988); and Edward T. Hall, The Hidden DimensionGarden City, NY: Doubleday, 1%9). The latter is not explicitly about design,:Alt it has influenced design thinking in a variety of ways.

57. The effort to explain art and design by a reductive approach that linkswith aesthetics and psychology is well represented in the twentieth century.

:involves themes such as pleasure, exercise of the senses, recognition of patternand form, and the "hushed reverberations" of associated meanings. In addition

Herbert Read, see George Santayana, The Srnsr of Beauty: Being the Outline/.kcuhctic Theory (New York: Dover, 1955); and "The Rationality of Industrialkrt,~ in The Life of Reason: Or, The Phases of Human Progress (New York:harks Scribner's Sons, 1953); Rudolph Arnhcim, Art and Visual Perception: Achology of the Creative Eye (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974);

Lad E. H. Gombrich, The Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of Decorative(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979).58. Read's book was employed, for example, by Alexander Kostcllow at

66 Richard Buchanan

Brooklyn's Pratt Institute and served as a text for students at Chicago's Instituteof Design in the early years, during the influence of Moholy-Nagy.

59.Read's philosophic position should be compared with that of DavidHume, represented in works such as "Of the Standard of Taste," "Of Refine-ment in the Arts," and "Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences," inOf the Standard of Taste and Other Essays, ed. John W. Lenz (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965). While he could never be regarded as a ncopositivist, Read's em-phasis on a science of art, which is allied with various natural sciences in solvingthe problems of industrial production, appears to support the Unity of Sciencemovement, guided by Rudolph Carnap, Charles Morris, and others.

60.See Herbert Read, "A Great Teacher," in Moholy-Nagy: An Anthology,

ed. Richard Kostelanetz (New York: Praeger, 1970), pp. 203-6. This excellentreview of Moholy-Nagy's Vision in Motion represents a subtle reinterpretationof Moholy-Nagy's ideas in terms of Read's own philosophy.

61.Read, An and Industry, p. 9.62.Ibid.63.Ibid., p. 10.64. Ibid., p. 51.65.Ibid., p. 55.66.For a discussion of aesthetics and ergonomics (sometimes referred to as

"human engineering"), see Niels Diffrient, "Design and Technology," in Designsince 1945, ed. Kathryn B. Hicsinger (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum ofArt, 1983), pp. 12-16.

67.For a discussion of the two traditions of spirituality in Western culture,see Matthew Arnold, "Culture and Anarchy," in Poetry and Criticism of MatthewArnold, cd. A. Dwight Culler (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961), pp. 407-75.The chapter "Hellenism and Hebraicism" is particularly useful in distinguish-ing the spiritual relation between thinking and doing.

68.George Nelson, "The Design Process," in Design since 1945, p. 10.69.George Nelson, "The Enlargement of Vision," Problems of Design (New

York: Whitney, 1957), p. 59.70.The Hellenistic perspective on design, products, and the spiritual life is

best represented by Plato in the Timacus and the Republic (11369c ff.). TheTimacus is an account of the creation of the world and of all things within theworld. The Republic is an account of the origin and development of the city, withextensive discussions of the nature of products and the role of products in humanlife. The Hebraic perspective on design, products, and spirituality is illustratedin an exquisite passage by St. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine (New York:Bobbs-Merrill, 1958), pp. 9-10. One of the best examples of the Hebraic tradi-tion in nineteenth- and twentieth-century design is Shaker furniture.