We have pointed to the traditional modes of information—where meaning is restricted by an inherited worldview, and what we can do is restricted by an inherited language and method—as an impediment to evolution. We have pointed at epistemology as a leverage point for enabling change. Design epistemology is offered as a research prototype to illustrate the type of work that can now be developed on this foundations frontier, and its possible consequences.

   When we defined the design epistemology we did not say anything new; indeed, we have only repeated what Einstein said in the passage we quoted in the preamble: Information does not reflect reality but experience; and the “toolkit” (language, method, criteria ...) we bring to the task of communicating experience is our own creation.

   The only difference was in the way we said that: Einstein made his statement as his “epistemological credo”; we stated ours as a deliberate choice, that is, as a convention. This, however, turned out to be “a difference which makes a difference”, because it was a step that brought us from tradition to design; postulation or convention making provided a foundation for deliberate departures from traditional modes of information, and for designing new modes. We showed how a particular mode can be developed on design epistemology as foundation, which may help us resolve both fundamental-academic and practical knowledge-work and social anomalies, and open up manifold possibilities for creative contribution. Those possibilities were illustrated by polyscopy,

Knowledge Federation, Barcelona 2011 Good Journalism Prototype and The Game-Changing Game.

   What new cultural direction, and what human condition, might result from this re-evolutionary change? We point at an answer by updating the parable that has served for the related purpose in our tradition, namely the Biblical creation myth. Adam’s eating an apple from the forbidden tree of knowledge and his resulting expulsion from Paradise might in a modern interpretation be understood as symbolizing the end of our unconscious immersion into nature and the beginning of civilization.

Our ancestors assumed a proactive attitude towards nature: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground.” Culture resulted from cultivation of soil, which with time enabled commerce and art, philosophy and science. But this first phase of our cultural evolution, the tradition, operated through an unconscious immersion into—culture! Our ancestors treated their culture’s worldview as reality; they were socialized to accept their social order as similarly immutable

as the natural one .

   The condition to which the spontaneous development of our civilization has brought us calls for a similarly radical step—we must now develop a taste for another kind of hitherto forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge, and assume a proactive attitude towards our cultural and social environments; just as once upon a time our ancestors began to understand nature and cultivate land.

   We predict that this will lead us to a whole new phase of evolution.

   We let the epigram “design is the alternative to tradition” point at this fertile new direction.

设计认识论

Dino Karabeg

摘要：从视图中获得解放，只有一个办法是合法的方法（一个“对应于现实”），正如20世纪的科学和哲学，使我们自觉地选择和分配到一个位置上并显示创造的意义，选择，开发全新的信息模式，以适应各自选择的目的。我们提出这种方法通过一个实例，信息和知识的工作被视为重要的社会系统性组件，然后再设计，因为它可能最适合此作用有关的各种功能，特别是明确了所有其他部分的工作方式的功能。设计认识论这种方法提供学术基础知识联合会社区并在实践中实现它。