A corollary of the convenience paradox result is that the way to wellbeing must be illuminated by suitable information; and that when it is, our cultural direction may profoundly change.

   The convenience paradox example illustrates that design is not opposed to tradition, on the contrary: Design enables us to preserve, organize, combine and put to use the information heritage that has been developed within ancient and modern traditions.

5. Design of Meaning

Within the design mode of information, there is no “objective” way to ascribe meaning to an experience or situation. By liberating meaning from habitual or traditional patterns, we allow ourselves to make sense of things and situations in completely new ways.

    Among them, we give priority to those that best suit our chosen purpose (wholeness).

    Polyscopic Modeling orients the design of meaning by using the keywords perspective and gestalt.

    We say that we have a correct perspective of a given subject (or phenomenon or situation) when we have seen it from all sides and in correct proportions (nothing is left obscure or distorted; we have, as it were, seen through it) . We use scope design (see below) to illuminate what may have remained hidden and correct the perspective. A suitable metaphor is inspecting a hand-held cup to see if it has cracks, by looking at it from all sides.

    A gestalt is a way to understand a situation or phenomenon as a whole. “Our car is having a flat tire” is a textbook example of a gestalt. A gestalt that is appropriate to a situation points at an appropriate course of action. By convention, having an appropriate gestalt is tantamount to being informed.

A core technical element of Polyscopic Modeling is the notion of scope. A scope is a way of looking (what we choose to look at, and in what way), which tends to determine the view (what is seen). Multiple scopes are needed to see the whole, and for other specific purposes. Polyscopic Modeling defines its approach (polyscopy) as scope design. Scopes are designed by designing concepts (i.e., by postulating their meaning) and in other ways.

To attribute a meaning to a scope (a collection of concepts), polyscopy relies on a technique called pattern. A pattern is “an abstract relationship”. Patterns may be understood as generalized mathematical functions. A characteristic result in traditional science is to show that certain scientific quantities such as mass and energy are related according to a certain mathematical formula; a characteristic result in polyscopy is to show that certain (possibly designed) concepts are related according to some specific (possibly designed) pattern.

   Polyscopy may be understood as the use of scope design to correct the perspective and acquire an appropriate gestalt.

   Visual metaphors called ideograms, and contemporary media techniques, are used for communicating gestalts.

   Polyscopic Modeling provides also a general method for “proving” or justifying gestalts and other claims: A scope, consisting of a collection of concepts (pointing at points in experience) and a pattern, are given to the reader, together with the view that those given concepts are related to one another as specified by the pattern. The reader is asked to “look through” that scope at experience; if by “looking through the scope” the reader sees the provided view, this “communication experiment” is considered successful.

   Hence Polyscopic Modeling shows how the conventional scientific approach can be generalized—made independent of disciplinary terminologies and interests.

   Since a pattern can represent any kind of relationship, even an emotional one (“X likes Y” is an example of a pattern), the described method provides us a way to “prove” (Polyscopic Modeling prefers the word “justify”) even obviously “subjective” yet essential insights such as gestalts, as well as statements about goals and values—and to give them a legitimacy analogous to the legitimacy of facts.